Xmas Tech Day 7: Costume time!

Yesterday was a big day - our first time dancing in all of our costumes!

We spent the whole day working through the entire show to get acclimated to our costumes, where we change, how FAST we must change, and so on. It was a bit chaotic at first. We didn't get a chance to try anything on to see the quickest way to put it on or off before we were just thrown into doing it. Skirts and tights and shoes galore were tossed around backstage. Wow.

By the end of the day everything made more sense - who are dressers are and how they help, ways to start stripping down layers as we exit in the wings, how to tuck in our hair under our Santa wig and hat!

Our fastest change (a minute and 20 seconds to be exact) is going from our New York at Christmas outfit to our fat Santa suit. It's rough because it's all of the ensemble PLUS all the Rockettes changing into big red costumes all at the same very fast time. And the costume itself has a zillion pieces, it seems. Fat suit, shoes and spats, beard, wig, and hat. The first time we tried it in real time I was so lost trying to get the beard to stay on and everything. As we started the dance my hat completely fell off (we start bent over so gravity didn't help, haha). I was like, AH what do I do? I couldn't put it back on during the choreography and I knew the stage elevator was about to rise and didn't want to just leave it on the floor in the way! I ended up hurling it into the wing (good thing I'm on the end, haha) but it was stressful. Luckily I wasn't the only one with hat issues, and later we went to the wig room to have everything adjusted. They should be fixing it so it's all set this week.

Besides that, the rest of the costume run went smoothly. I just need to get used to these fast changes. And the other problem is taking my hair up and down and up again. We start in the bear head so my hair gets crazy and frizzy under there, then it goes down for NY at Christmas and is supposed to look nice, haha. Then in that fast change it must go up under the Santa hat and stay up in another hat for the next number. Then down again to look decent. Ah!

It was fun to finally have costumes though. Everything is coming together so quickly. We have a cleaning rehearsal tomorrow just for choreography in the studio, and then Tuesday we do a full dress rehearsal in real time (yesterday we stopped and started a lot). Then Wednesday we have an audience for dress rehearsal! Crazy. Thursday, another dress. And Friday we open!