Chelsea Retzloff: Being a dancer is tough but totally worth it. Making time for dance, work and a personal life is difficult but again, totally worth it. As an apprentice, you have to be at class, then at rehearsal fully engaged and then run to work (so you can make money to support yourself) and then find time for sleep, relaxation, food and friends. Life as a dancer in NYC is insane; there is nothing like the feeling I get when I dance and nothing that would ever stop me from making a career in dance a possibility. You have to really want it and be fully committed to doing anything to make it happen.
Being an apprentice with Shen Wei means being committed to spending a lot of time diving into an extremely technical and intellectual process that involves so much skill and finesse to fulfill Shen Wei’s creative vision. There are so many pieces and so many specifics to learn that you have to start at the beginning by getting to know each piece, then learning the main phrases from each section of each piece, applying the concepts that helped develop the piece to the movement you have learned and then eventually getting to rehearse the work with company members and hopefully perform and tour with the company.
I am really excited to go to Berlin with the company because I feel like I will get to see how the rehearsal process gets transformed into the performance process. I have toured with other companies but I have heard the the technical process is very involved for Shen Wei’s work so it will give me a lot of insight for what to expect as a dancer with the company.
I watched the Rite of Spring performance in Berlin last night. I have never experienced anything like it. I was bolted to my seat in awe. The dancers were not human…..but really made me wonder at what a human is. Total majesty of movement.