My first rehearsal

I had my first rehearsal for my MFA work last night. I have nine dancers, which is the biggest cast I've ever worked with. Almost all grad students, so mature, technically savvy folks--very exciting and a little intimidating. We spent a lot of time talking about the work, and then I had them do some reflective writing on their earliest memories of childhood encounters with religious experience, practice, ideas, etc. (Religious scholar Robert Orsi talks about these early encounters being some of the most formative in terms of shaping and influencing our future ideas about religion.) I thought it would be pretty uncomfortable to share, but each person ended up talking for about 10 minutes. I have several dancers that grew up in Christian homes or regularly encountering Christianity in a more humanistic, "it's about being good" kind of way, an atheist, an agnostic, and a Mormon. I think that we successfully navigated the discussion and employed our "ethos of engagement" with aplomb. People were genuinely curious and asking each other what they believed about this or that--it ended up taking up the whole rehearsal time, 90 minutes. So no actual dancing, but hopefully that will come on Thursday.