Live Performance

Photo credit-  Wimbledon Village Stables

Mascara?  Two coats.  Concealer?  Under the eyes.  Sunblock?  Three layers.

Hair?  Pinned up neatly.  Helmet?  Super-glued all loose, torn bits.  White dressage trousers?  Brand-new, bought from the teenaged boys' section with Bruno patiently waiting.

Patient Bruno.

Belly button?  Un-pierced, sucked towards the spine.  Shoulders?  Soft and held back.  Torso?  Lengthened.  Heels, hips, and ears? In one straight line.  Elbows?  The bane of my equestrian existence, bent.

Horse?  Muddy and Very Alert.

Weather?  Sunny.

Sunny weather.  Oh no.  I have not factored in sun and blue skies.  Dumpling is suddenly invigorated by the sun.  Along the way to the Commons, another horse acts silly, and Dumpling is inspired to buck, and jump, and jump.

Amazing.  I don't get thrown off.

Photo Credit-  Wimbledon Village Stables
Waiting in the Wings...

There are four of us taking the test today.  We do a quick warm-up together, and then we wait our turns.

Dumpling and I go second.  I am thinking- look for the markers, look for the markers!  I am thinking, keep him calm, keep him calm.  And then I am thinking, geez, I haven't lost my stirrups for once, and wow, Dumpling, your right canter lead feels unusually balanced, have we really sorted that out?!  Good boy, good boy!  Surely at this point, choreographically it would make the most kinesthetic sense to do that damn diagonal path, across the arena!  Here I go, and all I need to do next is transition into trotting down the center line into a halt at the G marker, and then the practised bow.  I can't believe it!  Dumpling, we're just about done!  Good boy, Dumpling, good boy, Dumpling!

A loud shout- Tammy, NO!  You are supposed to canter him straight down the long side first! 

And I am awakened from, daydreaming.

Fuck.

Live performance?  A lot of fun!  How not to feel heightened and alive?  Anything can happen, no matter how prepared one gets because the body is the instrument, and the body is human, and the partner is also a living being with mood swings.

Me & my partner.

In dance, we practise religiously.  When dancing, I always think, listen to the music, the music will tell me what to do next.  Because there is the presence of music, there is no need for me to, panic.

Photo Credit-  Ethos Books
'A' is for Achar, 'L' is for Love, Book Launch, all choreography/text/artistic direction by me

My favourite Singaporean dance partner is YW.  We actually listen to the music in the same manner.  And when I get too overwhelmed, and teeter on the edge of daydreaming, YW always catches me; prompting me with a nudge, a clutch of my costume, or a subtle shifting of his eyes as to what step comes next.

(The audience doesn't see all this of course.  The audience sees intimacy, physical skill, and thinks- smoking!)

Photo Credit-  Ethos Books

Today I am grateful that I performed the test with Dumpling.  He is a great little horse.  That same comfort and chemistry YW and I share on stage, I am re-living now with Dumpling.  We just really need to practise more.

Smitten

*all horse pictures taken by Carol at Wimbledon Village Stables.  Thank you, Carol!

More horse stories...

Remember, Dumpling the Delicious?  His owner had him as she was on break, and then he was sent to the farm to rest last month.

But yesterday, in the burst of winter sunshine and fog, I got to ride him again!  My state of mind?  DELIRIOUS.

The best thing about living in London is the access to the great outdoors,

and this delicious horse.

Smitten.

Monday night I went and saw the best show ever, since moving to London.

The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, together with Robert Lopez, wrote this musical, The Book of Mormon.  I keep thinking these guys have re-written musical theatre and brought it to the 21st century.  I've seen War Horse- which is sad, the puppetry stunning, the lead actor never speaks.  I've seen Wicked (Act 2 rambles, you leave the theatre thinking, toss, toss).  The Book of Mormon is in its own league.  It's such a tightly produced and directed show; utterly well choreographed with the most intelligent use of cliched movement phrases, and a committed cast of performers.

I laughed from the very beginning all the way to the end.  I cheered, I bobbed in my seat.  I laughed some more.

Sometimes as a performer you go to a show and enviously wished you could be on stage with the cast. The Book of Mormon was that sort of a show for me.  The humour is merciless.  Even God is not spared.  Nothing is left to chance, everything has purpose.  And although superficially much of the script may appear blasphemous, politically incorrect, perhaps, vulgar, the genius was that it is in fact, from where I sat, a show that celebrated human frailty and why we believe, what we believe.

I can't take my mother to watch The Book of Mormon.  Nor will I recommend it to the more sensitive of Christian friends and family.  But if like me, you are the seed that fell on thorns, go watch.  Tickets sell out, fast.