Student/Teacher/Performer/Admirer: A Correspondence with Ramona Kelley of Twyla Tharp Dance

Many years ago, dancer Ramona Kelley was a student of mine in a teen modern class in Berkeley, California. Over the years, it has been exciting to see her head off to college at NYU and then launch into a professional career. Ramona merges technique and joy onstage and is magical to watch. Knowing that she will come full circle and be back in Berkeley in October 2015 to perform with Twyla Tharp at Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, I thought it would be fun to correspond over a few months prior to the performances. This correspondence, shared on the blog, offers a window into the world of Twyla Tharp as well as following a young and talented dance artist based in New York City.

Ramona Kelley is originally from California, where she began her training at Berkeley Ballet Theater under the direction of Sally Streets. She is a National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA) scholarship award winner, and she holds a BFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Ramona danced the principal role of "Betsy" in the North American/Japanese tour of Tharp’s “Come Fly Away.” A current member of Twyla Tharp Dance, she has also worked with Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance, Oakland Ballet Company and The Phantom of the Opera 25^th Anniversary Tour among others.

—————-

The start of the tour…

We are 17 days, 5 cities, and 6 performances (not including a special daytime performance yesterday) into Twyla’s 50th Anniversary tour. Things have been going very well, but the whole company is exhausted from the traveling/performing schedule. We opened the show in Dallas on Sept 18th after three and a half days of technical rehearsals in the Winspear Opera House. Twyla is known for her promptness, and thanks to this quality, transferring the show from studio to stage was incredibly time-efficient. We never rehearsed past 7 pm, leaving ample time for resting and body maintenance – something often not found during tech time. Our two performances in Dallas were energetic and fun, partnered with wonderfully responsive audiences. It was exhilarating to have a giant stage to dance on! Even though it was hard to adjust to performing with blindingly bright side lights, a magical sense of community came out within our (already tight knit) group of dancers. Looking around at my colleagues’ smiling faces during the opening group section of the show, I felt a strong shared thought: "We made it! We are really performing after countless hours of rehearsal and hard work… And it is incredible!"

Shortly after the thrilling ride of the show’s premiere, the challenge of travel was introduced back into our routine (or lack thereof!). We performed in Santa Fe, Denver and Boulder all in one week. Changing beds and hotels, flying, bussing, packing and unpacking, getting used to differently sized stages and theaters…these were and will be tough things to deal with in addition to performing such demanding movement. The last three cities also brought altitude into the mix – Santa Fe is over 7,000 feet above sea level. The company had a day off when we arrived before our first performance, and I went to take an open ballet class at Aspen Santa Fe Ballet to test out dancing with the considerably lower oxygen levels. The lovely and simple class was incredibly winding! I drank lots of water in preparation for the next day’s show. Onstage I actually felt relatively in control, but I found that my recovery period was much longer after each section – it took forever to catch my breath.

It is truly thanks to Twyla and the rigorous rehearsal schedule we maintained in New York that the past week of shows went so well. It feels like both pieces are solidly "owned" by the dancers (of course there are many technical and acting choices to work on and always will be!), and we can still perform after an exhausting day of arriving at a new theater, taking class, walking the whole show, getting into costume/makeup/hair and finally warming up again. I have also been "double-duty" rehearsing during these intense first weeks of tour – we had our first performance of The One Hundreds yesterday here in Los Angeles.* This is a work Twyla choreographed in 1969-70 which involves 100 unique eleven second phrases. Set in silence, two dancers first perform the full sequence of 100 phrases separated by four seconds to reset for the next phrase. Next, five dancers each perform 20 phrases simultaneously (so each of the 100 movements is represented). Finally, 100 people each perform a different phrase so all are presented in 11 seconds. It is an amazing piece for the community, and quite a memory/physical challenge for the dancers. I perform all 100 phrases in this piece, partnered yesterday with the lovely Kaitlyn Gilliland. We have been sneaking rehearsals into our schedule for the past two weeks to make sure we can hold our unison (by keeping a mental count of the tempo) for the 20 minutes it takes to dance the full 100s. The show went very well and we had a lot of fun teaching community volunteers in the afternoon, then performing in the evening. Our hours of rehearsing paid off. Despite all of the distractions (traffic, passers-by, fidgety audience members, and the bright setting sun), we held our timing and sequence.

Tomorrow begins our four show run in Beverly Hills. After a much needed day of resting by the pool I am ready to get back into the show! Bring on the new adventures of the next theater!

Photo respectfully pulled from the LA Times article this week. Photo by Nicholas Coppula. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-twyla-tharp-the-one-hundreds-wallis-beverly-hills-20150925-story.html

 

*Article about The One Hundreds performance: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-twyla-tharp-the-one-hundreds-wallis-beverly-hills-20150925-story.html

——————-