We arrived back to Keifersfelden at about midnight last night after a long day of traveling from our wonderful visit to Hamburg. Every morning we had an intense dance class with Kati, a gifted dancer who is currently in “Sister Act”. We did lots of stretching and strength training along with learning an awesome dancer combo that pushed all of us as dancers. Kati has a very evident love for dance and it was so infectious. It was a very fun but tiring experience. Then we would have vocal technique masterclasses with Eva Maria, the head of the voice faculty at Joop Van Den Ende Academy. Her ability to listen to a voice and then immediately address problem areas was amazing to me. It such an enlightening experience but also confusing as we are now trying to fully grasp the new places she took our voice to. It is such a blessing to me to under the teaching of such gifted and experienced instructors. In the afternoon we had masterclasses with Ralf Schaedler, the casting director for Stage Entertainment. First everyone did a mock audition for him and he got to hear us all sing. Then, he worked with specific people on their songs. He spent alot of time trying to help people connect emotional with their songs and was very successful. At times we joked that we felt like we were in group therapy. Ralf really revealed the depth that is in the soul of all of us and brought that into the performance and it was very moving.
It was such a incredible experience to see all of my new friends succeeding to such a great extent. We all had an emotional moment after one long, tiring, frustrating day in Hamburg where we all let out our feelings in dance rehearsal. Christopher, our instructor these past weeks, wisely took the moment for all of us to focus on why we were happy and blessed to be here instead of letting us beat ourselves up. It was an incredibly God-glorifying time as we reflected on the journey we had been on and the supportiveness of this company we are blessed to be a part of. Reese summed our group feeling up wonderfully saying he would rather see the rest of the group succeed more than he even wanted himself to succeed. That is a strange thing to hear in the theatre world often filled with divas and competition. But, it is the wonderful spirit that God has put over this company. Praise be to Him!!
