Days 7 & 8 at the Pillow: ASzURe’s Master Class

Our performance went very smoothly last night, and the audience loved us. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, showered and ate, and then went to the cast party at the Bakalar studio. The staff throw a cast party every Saturday for all the dance companies on campus performing that week. In true “Latin time” fashion, the Cultural Traditions group was the last to arrive – when we walked in, dancers from the Jose Limon Company and Aszure Barton’s troupe were already there. There was lots of talking and mingling, and within a half an hour the Cultural Traditions students seemed to take over the room. The lights dimmed, the music went way up, and the dancing began in earnest.

The festivities endured far into the night, moving on to the Sommers Studio when the staff decided to shut down the party in the Bakalar. The Sommers Studio is where we have all of our lectures and classes specific to our program, and we effectively own that studio for the full two weeks we are here, 24 hours a day, to use as we see fit. So most evenings we end up there when we aren’t ready to go back to our cabins and turn in for the night.

The late night made the next morning’s class a grueling endeavor. Each Sunday, the school offers a master class open to all of the students and interns on campus, taught by the artistic director of one of the visiting companies. Aszure Barton’s class began at 10:30am in the Doris Duke theater. I went in with high hopes – ASzURe & Artists had been putting on a fantastic show all week, and everyone was talking about how cool and brilliant she and her dancers are. Forty-five minutes later, however, I was cursing my decision to have gotten out of bed. The class was packed, and it was impossible to see what the teacher was doing. Ms. Barton’s choreography is pretty complex, and my brain and body simply were not following. So much for me making an impression outside of my own program. I slipped out at the earliest opportunity.

We said our goodbyes to Richard, Marily, and the drummers (Jonathan, Ramin, and Nicolas), as a new shift comes in for the second week of the program. Rosa Maria Perez will be teaching the morning Afro-Cuban classes, and Roberto Cepeda will be teaching us bomba (from Puerto Rico) in the afternoons. Our new drummers will be Rubio and Apache.

We had nothing to do on Monday, save a short workshop on singing in the morning, and so we were all shuffling about during the day, bored and restless and missing the crew from last week. Naydir, the apuon (the singer, and only teacher that is here for the entire program), said we were suffering from separation anxiety. Most of us drove into town and converged on the meager restaurants and shops of Lee, the closest town.

I’m trying to keep an open mind, but the general feeling among the students seems to be one of disappointment that we could not continue our work from last week with the same teachers and drummers. I miss Richard terribly, but I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from Rosa Maria and Mr. Cepeda. And even better, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet will be here performing. I cannot believe I am actually going to have the opportunity to meet the Elusive Muse.