One day more...

Well - we're nearly there!!

Tomorrow is the last day in the UK for the Azura cast for some time, as we fly out to Monfalcone Shipyard   in the morning of Thursday 18th March, and won't be back until the beginning of April.

We finished up our London rehearsals on Saturday with a bit of revision of the shows we have learned so far. It was tough week last week, as we needed to prepare a 'show off' of Hitsville USA, When Swing was King and also Destination Dance with a new number included (watch out for flying flags... that's all I'll say!)

So it was a fairly frazzled cast that said 'Cheerio' to Alford House on Saturday evening, headed home and will be meeting up again at Heathrow at 9.00am on Thursday morning for our flights over to Europe ... "Do not pass go; Do not collect £200; Do not enter the Duty Free"!! :-)

So the next instalment should be from somewhere in Italy - watch this space!

Rehearsals Day 13 - A little bit of Africa

OK. So it is still a bit chilly - hardly some sub-Saharan savannah; nor is it really anywhere near the equator - more like Kennington, but we have been trying to bring a little bit of Africa to rehearsals today. We're working on the next number in 'Destination Dance', and for much of the day we have been singing "Ingonyama nengw' enamabala" - which for those of you who are not fluent in Zulu translates as:

"A Lion and a Leopard come to this open place"

So there! In case you come on board and see the show, you will now be able to impress you fellow audience members with your vast linguistic knowledge. Definitely something to amaze and astound people with over dinner!

The dancers have been hammering through the numbers in the show, finishing off the Bolero number, a bit of leaping and stomping in the Lion King number, and putting together the final bits of the Irish section. Bless them - they've been taking in a lot over the past few days!

As we will be showing the 'powers that be' some of the material we covered thus far, we had a good run through our Motown show "Hitsville USA" with Sarah giving us some help and cleaning up what we'd done. And it also gave Neil a chance to have a real go at it, as he missed out on those rehearsals at the start.

So we have a couple of days of cleaning up and perfecting (well, you know what I mean!) the dance show before showing it off and then moving on up to the next one. No rest for the wicked :-)

Rehearsals Day 9 - Will drive you Maaaaaaad!

Today has been an odd one, it has to be said. More snow traumas for everyone trying to get into rehearsals for a start. It's tad boring now! And it really makes you yearn to be sailing away on the Azura somewhere warm.... ahhhhh.

Also,  our Ashley has moved onto a different ship (no, not 'The Great Cruise Ship in the Sky' - it's not THAT serious!), so we had our Neil joining us today. Bless them both. But I guess things in life are sent to test you, so you bite the biscuit, pick yourself up, wake up and smell the coffee, knuckle down, buckle under, shake rattle and roll, and weave a tangled web. No... wait - I think I've mixed my metaphors somehow...

Anyway. On with the show. Rob is putting the dancers through their paces this week (well, it is the dance show after all!) and we got some time to go over stuff with Neil - as he has a week's worth of material to catch up with. We've got quite a way through "Destination Dance" now, and covered a fair few dance styles already. (Shimmying-around-in-an-oversized-head" style is currently my personally favourite!)

(La, la, la, la, la, laa-la... etc. the guys having a little 'rest' after the Can-Can)

Our "scrunchy" vocal version of 'A Nightingale Sang...' will be gorgeous (when we nail the lyrics!) and the girls are gliding around behind us - almost literally - and making us look pretty, which is never a bad thing! Should be a lovely moment.

And then they up the ante when Emma & Neil and the rest of the gang with something a little more up tempo. I think we're busy changing into Laderhosen at that point (don't ask!)

(Neil & Emma giving us their routine)

We finished off the day with a run-through of everything we've done so far on this show. Quite exciting really - until it hits you how much we've still got to learn, as we're only on show 2!! Eeek....

Rehearsals Day 6 - It's like a Heatwave...

OK - so it's NOT like a heatwave, it's still blinking freezing - but anyhow!

Final day of the first week, so we've been adding on the choreography for a few numbers in Hitsville USA and smartening up the bits we've already learned.

(Here's Charles and Sara 'bumping' their way through "Heatwave")

Charles has been given a chance  to make use of his long legs, and has been taking over the mantle of 'dancer boy' for the girl's numbers. Lucky him (and lucky them, of course!)

We'll be moving onto a new show next week, which will be quite weird when it feels like we've only just started on THIS one! There's still a bit more to learn, so we will no doubt be coming back to it again soon... fingers crossed!

(Sara getting the low-down on some of next week's music from Leigh)

The Dancers have had the day off today (lucky buggers - school trip, hotel stays, exciting "off site pre-production work" (are you getting the idea with that yet?!), meals out, comedy paint effect... for some of them anyhow ;-) Sounds like lots of fun to me - when's our trip away?

Following the now almost daily trip to Tescos (eeek - that has got to stop!) we spent some time during the afternoon working on the Smokey Robinson section, which gives Ashley the chance to do his 'thang'.

(If you look closer it's easy to trace the tracks of his tears, ya know!)


With a quick look at the last number, the whole show is finally coming together. It'll be fab once we can get the last few bits sorted and try the WHOLE thing. We've also been working with some tracks of the original artists, which has been helpful to get the feel of the styles and rifs and 'interpretation' - so now we need to do our versions. I am sure they will be definitive... in one way or another!!

And yet again, to end the day, I got over excited by some of the material in the next show - Destination Dance. Admittedly the 'dance' bit will not be down to us so much (!) but there are some great numbers in it - and a little bit of comedy to boot... watch this space :-)

(Charles and Sarah discussing the finer points of the Motown era...)

Rehearsals Day 5 - Reach out for Meeeeeee!!

Us boys got done with Stevie's section this morning (that's Stevie Wonder to you and me), in a suitably macho way... well, as macho as we could muster on a Friday morning :-) and then we all hunkered down upstairs with Leigh (our MD) to hammer out some more harmonies.

(Some serious (!) work around the paino...)

It's all very well us thinking we'd learned certain sections just because we vaguely knew the steps and could sing-along, a la Karaoke. But no - we really DIDN'T know them very well at all.

Along with a little uncertainty with the harmonies ran a wee touch of uncertainty over the TUNE of some songs as well.

("Are you really SURE that's a G#?")

It's a case of hearing the tune from one line in the chorus; thinking "Oh, I know that one..."; then trying to actually sing it and realising what you know was just that - one line of the chorus! Hey ho. All part of the process I guess. It's great really though, as it means we're spending time listening to some great classic tracks, which is no real hardship.

Following a quick trip out for lunch, we finished off the last bits of harmony - so in theory we've learned it all now. In theory. Wait and see what the revision session tomorrow brings to light!

And of course, as it's Friday night, we thought it best we pop over to the "local" for a quick drink after rehearsals. Mine was a quick drink, but I left Jerry, Sara and Charles in the Pub... where they may well still be for all I know!

And we're planning to get t-shirts printed with our respective 'gender'/'number'/'pertinent comment' emblazoned on the front... mine would currently be "Boy 1 - I'm smokin'" (don't ask!), Ashley could be "Boy 2 - Tango" (a visual gag more than anything...) and Charles would be "Boy 3 - [something not to be written on my blog!]" But we'll see....

Rehearsals Day 4 - Signed, Sealed, Delivered

With More Snow. More late trains. More Dancing. More Singing. Apart from the first two, what more could you want from a day!

With the dancers away on their "pre-production" mission (- don't ask me about it, because if I told you I'd have to kill you! -) we had Alford House to ourselves today, and got down to it straight off the bat. Most of the material we'd worked on during Tuesday had stuck... with just a few 'pointers' needed from Jerry & Sarah.
(Ashley & Charles discuss the finer points of Motown, whilst Sara and Sarah bevel their socks off as the Supremes)
Steph & Sara took over the mantel as they 'became' the Supremes for their section, so we boys hid away in another room and howled through the new BVs and harmonies we'd got yesterday. Perhaps 'howled' is a little unfair :-) To give the girls a breather, and Steph the chance to head off to be a wicked queen, the boys began making friends with Mr Stevie Wonder's material on the dance floor. I'm sure he'd be impressed!!

Slightly scary is the fact that we only have 2 days left this week, and will need to have basically completed work on Hitsville USA, to be ready to move on to your "next" show on Monday. But exciting too, as it means a whole load more new material to work on. Bring it on, I say.

Oh - and although this won't mean much to many of you, today - for the record:
Ashley: "No way"
Jerry: "Ask me again in 6 months"

I'll explain this another time!

Rehearsals Day 3 - Stormy Weather

Clearly that's not a reference to the title of a song we're doing, or with any internal cast politics and more a reference to the fact that half the company struggled to get into rehearsals today... the snow is pretty enough, but a pain when you've got routines to learn!

(Our rehearsal space - Alford House... pre-snow!)

More work on Hitsville USA today, with some consolidation of our dance learned from yesterday (and yes - we pretty much remembered all of it... we even ran it WITHOUT mirrors....ooooh!) and then heading on into the mass of BVs (backing vocals) we'll be doing as well. Cool :-)

Us singers were left along today as the dancers headed off to do some 'off site pre-production work'. Which is a way of me saying "I'm not telling you what they were doing"! Suffice to say it's just another part of one of the exciting staging pieces that will be in our shows. Plenty more where that came from as well it seems.

Sadly, as Steph is still working hard as the Wicked Queen in "Snow White" at the Thameside Theatre (you can still catch it if you hurry!) and had to dash off early, she missed out on a little preview the producers gave us of the set drawings for the stage in the Playhouse Theatre onboard. They looked awesome, and I can't wait to see how it looks 'in the flesh' when we get to Italy.

Fingers crossed the weather gets no worse and we can actually carry on learning the stuff to put ON the stage!

Rehearsals Day 2 - Dancing up a storm

I must admit to being a little but "achy" this evening, following a good solid day of dancing. OK - maybe even more than a little bit, but it's a good 'ache'. Clearly my "youthful" outlook on life is not one shared by my ageing body! But it's all good exercise, so I can't complain.

(Here's Steph taking a bit of a breather...)

We spent the best part of today working with Jerry (one of the choreographers who is working on the shows with us) on the first section of one of our 'singers' shows "Hitsville USA". It's a FAB collection of songs from the 60s & 70s with a Motown influence- with some stuff from the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas, and a whole load more to boot.

We revised our vocal stuff first thing just to get our heads back into what we're learned yesterday. Yes, it may LOOK like sitting around, texting, gossiping etc., but it was in fact singing! Honest :-)

(Charles giving us his "Buttercup" while Ashley & Sarah look on...)

There's plenty of the show still to learn, but we got through the first medley of songs, with a fair amount of dancing for a group of "singers"! I even managed to get appointed "Funk Dance Captain" - who'd have thought... if you want the proof, you'll have to come onboard and see the show ;-)

(Ashley & Charles holding court ... discussing lyrics no doubt!) 

So - it's a hot bath tonight I think, as there may be a whole load more of the same tomorrow. And then another 7 shows to learn after that... easy. Bring it on!

Rehearsals Day 1 - Over Excited!

Which is exactly how I felt as we were talked through the array of shows we will be doing onboard the Azura from April!

Today was the 1st day of rehearsals, and - a la the first day of school - we all gathered in the playground....ok, the green room - and introduced ourselves, compared mutual friends, discovered jobs we'd all done etc. and all this whilst being filmed for the documentary that is being prepared of the whole process.

Once all together, we had an little "introduction" to our rehearsal space, the choreographers and MD we'll be working with, and then we were shown some little snippets of material for our onboard shows - which is where it really got exciting!

Not only does Azura boast an 850-seater, two-tiered theatre, it will be fully equipped with all the latest technology, so the shows can include all the staging effects you would expect to see in a West End theatre - and more.

There are a number of shows that are more dance-based, and a couple which are more singing-based so today the dancers focussed on one of their shows, and the singers set about learning our songs for our Motown show. It should be a good 'un! This one will be performed in the lounge (we get to perform in the theatre, in the lounge and also up on deck on the outdoor stage around the pool - how cool is that!)

I've spent the evening pouring over my lyrics and music to start the process of getting it all in my head - wish me luck!