Finding your comforts in a hotel

Unless you live and freelance only in New York City, a majority of the freelancing that dancers do takes them away from home. Sometimes, you will stay with a host family. At other times, like I am right now, you will be put in a hotel for weeks at a time. While staying in a hotel sounds fun, exotic, and vacation-like, it can leave you feeling quarantined from society and lonely. To fend off these feelings, I have compiled this list of things you can do to find your creature comforts and to feel like you are still an active part of society.

- Sitting in a hotel in a suburban location can become a redundant experience. It is easy to get stuck in boring patterns due to an inability to get around much on your own. Try changing up your routine. Eat out some days, eat in others. Call an old friend that you haven't talked to for a long time to reconnect. Take a bath. Use the pool or hot tub. Watch TV. Schedule a movie night and rent a pay-per-view movie. Interact with the hotel staff. Go for a walk. Try to get out of your mundane patterns and do something different every day.

I went for a short drive along Lake Ontario before rehearsal

- Staying at a hotel rarely allots you a stove or a microwave to prepare your own meals. This usually leads to one of the least comfortable situations for many people. Eating alone at a restaurant. When I first started writing this post, I was doing exactly this. I walked into the restaurant and the host insisted that I would probably enjoy (or...erm...feel more comfortable) eating at the bar. But I wanted to sit at a nice table in the main dining area...by myself. Then, when my server walked up to me, he stated, "you must be waiting for a pretty lady." He must have missed the memo, or multiple memos. Any newbie at eating alone might have felt embarrassed or extremely awkward in this situation, but after a few years on the road I am a pro at eating alone. Bring a book or newspaper. Bring your smart phone and catch up on social media or download a new game to play. Or, like me, bring a pen and paper to journal, log, blog, or anything else that you would like to document or write about. A nice glass of wine will help relax your discomfort, too. Or just sit back, breath, and take in the characters sitting around the restaurant having dinner. I always find great entertainment watching how locals interact with one another.

My items from home

- For me, one of the least comfortable things about staying in a hotel is the sterility and impersonal feeling that most rooms share. You don't have any personal home-y touches. You didn't decorate the room. What I always try to do is to bring a few things from home that make me feel like I am closer to home. It would weigh your luggage down if you carried your favorite piece of artwork. What I do is carry a very few lightweight items with me. I always bring one or two unframed 4x6 photos with me to decorate the room and remind me of loved ones. The pictures tend to get beat up a bit, but they still make me happy. I also have a stuffed sock monkey that my partner gave me as a gift. Yeah, I'll admit that I sleep with it. I haven't slept with a stuffed animal since I was 4 years old. But, only when I am traveling, I sleep with this stuffed creature.

- I always go on an extensive search for new music on ITunes in the days before departing for a gig. That way I have some new music to go along with my old music. I have an IPhone, which has a speaker loud enough for me to listen to music. But if you don't have a phone with these capabilities, consider buying cheap, portable speakers that connect either to your computer or MP3 device. I know I am late to the game, but I have also recently discovered the joys of Pandora. You can type in your favorite artist, song, or genre of music and it plays random songs, like a personalized radio station, for free. I feel music drowns out the stifling silence of sitting in a hotel room.

- One of my biggest issues when staying at a hotel is that I get lonely. After a long day at work, dancers often want to vegetate and rest their body and mind for the next day. It isn't uncommon for dancers to reject invitations to hang out. Sometimes, it is necessary to fight the urge to act like a hermit and enjoy some company. While an invitation from a co-worker may not always sound enticing at first, most of the time you end up enjoying yourself more than you would have staying by yourself in your room. Getting out and being around people will not only keep you company, but it will forge new friendships and relationships.

- You won't have the luxury of having a DVR to record and watch your favorite television shows when you are at a hotel. Sometimes, the wireless doesn't always work well enough to download video. In the worst of situations (for me at least), there is no internet. Always come prepared with a handful of your favorite DVD's. I always bring a few seasons of different TV series on DVD of my favorite shows; like American Dad, It's Always Sunny, and South Park. I like to take a relaxing bath for my muscles, pop a DVD in my computer, and have a good laugh.

- One of my biggest mental comforts is having access to a gym. The gym is an important part of my daily routine at home. What does one do if there is no gym at their hotel or affordable gym options nearby? This one is hard for me. I tend to associate my place of rest, whether it be my home or a room with a bed, with nothing other than that. I can tell myself that I will work out at some point, but it becomes very difficult once I sit down and start to relax. I find that when I wait until later in the day, this effect gets even worse. So, I have created a set of exercises that simulate what I would do in my regular gym workout. And while I despise them, I can do them all without any equipment that I use in my regular routine. I find if I do these exercises earlier in the day, prior to class or rehearsal, I am more likely to complete them. If I wait until afterwards, I do exactly what is supposed to be done in your bedroom. Rest.

- I always make sure to show up to a gig with a task to complete that doesn't have to be finished by the time I leave. You never know how much free time you will have and it is better to have a backup plan if you have no other options. For instance, my current task that I hope to complete during my time preparing and performing the Cavalier in The Nutcracker with Rochester City Ballet is to start compiling a list of ballet companies and Broadway shows that I find interesting. I have slowly been gathering information to help clarify the next step of my career. While I am lucky to have friends here from last year and a car to drive myself around, there are still times where I find myself pent up in my hotel room. This is one way to be proactive in my down-time and to occupy hours sitting in my room.

Glad to be back in the studio at RCB rehearsing with my Sugar Plum, Jessie Tretter

How to make your own performance reel

I know that everybody has been patiently waiting for my next posting. Writing a blog has been on the back burner while I have been preparing my freelancer networking event, CONTACT. Since I have accomplished many of the tasks that I needed to get done, including obtaining some door prizes from some very important dance institutions, I can finally focus on this blog again. What better way to get the ball rolling than to write about one of the most important tools for every freelancer: How to make your own performance reel.

It took me months of research, preparation, and work to finally master the art of creating my own performance reel. The first and, sometimes, hardest step of creating your own reel is obtaining and then choosing video clips that show your strengths, technique, versatility, and artistry. At the beginning of your dance career, you may not have very much footage. If you need extra footage, grab a friend and a video camera (handheld camcorder, phone, Ipad, computer, etc) and dance a work in the style that you are trying to show off (whether it be a variation, your own choreography, or something you learned off youtube). If you dance for an AGMA company, it can be very difficult to obtain footage. For instance, in Pacific Northwest Ballet's contract, each dancer is only allotted 30 minutes of footage during their career with the company and 30 more minutes upon their departure from the company (this is very little if you have danced in multiple full-length ballets). Not only that, but if any footage is over 3 minutes in length, there is a required 3 second blackout. This all probably sounds really weird, but it is in place to protect the choreographer's work. If you have been freelancing for awhile or have worked for non-union companies, access to footage of yourself may be easier to obtain. I am always quite aggressive in getting footage of myself dancing wherever I perform, as I like to have an array of options to choose from.

I apologize in advance to everybody that owns a PC, as I'm a Mac. At some point in the future, I may have a guest blogger write the same version of this blog for PC owners. But for the time being, I will be instructing all of you how to make a reel on a Mac. The first step to creating your reel is to get your dance footage from a DVD to your Mac. First, you need to check if your computer has a DVD-burner. If it does, then your computer is capable of pulling footage off of a DVD. Unfortunately, most computers dont arrive with software to help you pull, or "rip," footage off of a DVD. Dont worry! You can easily obtain free software online to perform this operation. I personally use the program Handbrake (Click this link to download). Once you've downloaded the software, put your DVD in and open up Handbrake. It will bring up a search window. Click on the DVD under devices and choose the video file you would like to put on your computer. Let Handbrake do its thing and determine the length of the file. Once the application is completed, under "file" you should rename your file to something specific that will allow you to remember what the footage is. Be sure not to change the file type at the end. (For instance, if it says "file:/users/joeschmoe/movies/midsummers.mp4," you would only change "file:/users/joeschmoe/movies/barrykerollispuck.mp4"). Then, click start. This process will happen at nearly the same speed that the footage you are ripping runs.

Now that you ripped the footage off of your DVD onto your computer, you are ready to start piecing together your reel. You are going to create the reel with the IMovie application that comes pre-installed on your computer. Open up the application and click on "file." Under "file" you will scroll down to "import," then "movies." When you click on "movies," find the folder where you placed your footage and select that. It will take a period of time for IMovie to import into and convert your video for the application. I usually try to do something off my computer during this time, as going online or using other aspects of the computer slows down this process. After the footage has loaded into the program, click on "file" again and scroll down to "new project." After you name the project (which should be something anybody can see because if you burn a DVD sometimes it embeds this name onto the title of the DVD). From here, I like to begin with a basic pen and paper list of pieces that I feel show me off best. From there, I watch the footage again and, if something appeals to me, I add the entirety of that clip to the project. You can do this by clicking the mouse on the spot of the clip in the lower half of the screen. A yellow box will appear and you can move the edges, like an accordian, around to encase that clip. After you have encased the clip, click and drag the yellow box to the top half and drop the clip in the "projects" box. I always go through all of the clips I like and drop them in the "projects" box first. If you do this first, you will see the total length of all of the clips and be better informed as to how much footage you need to cut.

Now that you can see how much footage you have, you need to determine a reasonable length of time to make the clip. Sometimes, you are given a specific length for a specific audition/project. Most of the time, it is up to the dancer to determine the proper length of their reel. My general reel is a little over 7 1/2 minutes, but I have made other specific reels, like my video audition for Newsies (which I have reluctantly placed below this paragraph...note...I have very little vocal training) that have been shorter. Some people have told me that the length of my performance reel is a little too long, but I did my best to front-load the reel with what I feel are my strongest roles and show the most diversity in the event that a potential employer gets bored and closes out the video. When paring down footage, I sometimes try to get an outside opinion (and not someone who danced the piece or family, as they are attached in similar ways) of the clips that I have chosen, as it can sometimes be difficult to determine great footage. Often, dancers have an emotional attachment to certain pieces. Even though it may not be the best footage of you, it is hard to detach from how you felt while you were performing the piece. I often go through the entirety of the clips in the project box multiple times and slowly delete or downsize clips that I don't feel belong in the reel or that I feel already have a better representation in the reel.

Since you have pared down the clips to a reasonable length, it is time to start linking your clips together. Start ordering your clips. I prefer to use a clip of my dancing that is very strong, but not my strongest for the first clip. If you give away everything at the beginning, then everything following that will look weak. Don't leave your strongest clip for last or even the middle, but put it somewhere near the beginning in case the potential employer loses interest early. Don't lump one style of dance at the beginning and another at the end. Mix the clips up by double clicking the clip and dragging and dropping them around the "project" box. I would suggest keeping the clips at less than a minute each. Maybe a classical variation at the beginning, a contemporary piece second, some partnering third, and then another variation after that.

Now that you have developed some type of order to the clips, it is time to start linking the footage together. In between the upper "project" box and the lower "event library" box is a light gray toolbar. Look all the way to the right, the second little box from the right that looks like an hour-glass (or four opposing triangles with two being light gray and the other two dark gray) will assist you in creating smooth transitions between clips. There are a variety of "transitions" that can be used between clips. Play with these transitions and see what you like. I find the most professional transitions, which I use most often, are "cross dissolve," "cross blur," and "cross zoom." Once you determine your choice, click and drag the transition style that you would like to use up to the "project" box and place it between two separate clips. Once placed, you can double click the tiny transition box and change the duration of the clip. There is a lot of trial-and-error in this process. At times, things can get glitchy as well. Just stick with it and be patient.

The next step in the process of creating a great performance reel is to add a title box to introduce the clip, end credits to close it out, and subtitles if you feel they are necessary (my current reel doesn't have subtitles, as I figured it out after I created it). The "titles" area is one box over to the left of the transitions section with a capitol "T". Again, peruse the array of options and choose what suits you best. Like the transitions, click and drag whatever you want to introduce your reel at the beginning of the clips. You can adjust the background once you drop the box into the "project" area. Then, the screen to the right of the project will allow you to add text. For the introduction, I usually keep it simple and just put my name along with the words "performance reel." When I auditioned for Newsies, I typed in my name and "auditioning for the role of newsie." Your intention for this reel should determine the text. Then, at the end, I go through this same process and add my name and the best way to contact me (I put my email since that seems safest). If you only have a few clips, you can put the name of the piece and the choreographer. That is unless, you want to add those into the clip.

I am cautious about adding the names of the pieces or the name of the choreographer directly into the reel, as for a moment of time, it covers up a part of the screen and distracts from your dancing. But, if you would like to do this, you can achieve this by going back to the "titles" section of the program. The bottom two rows here can all be placed on top of a clip. Click and drag, for instance, "gradient-white" and place it on top of the beginning of the clip you would like to have a subtitle pop up on. Once you have dropped this box on the clip, a small box will appear that allows you to type in text. As usual, you can adjust the length of time by double clicking.

Now that you have created your entire reel, you need to either post it to youtube, another site, or create a DVD. Creating a DVD is another story, so I will save that for another post. Sharing your reel on the internet is streamlined by IMovie. Go to the top of the screen and click on "Share" and click on youtube. Be sure that you already have an active youtube account prior to sharing with IMovie. Once you have clicked there, a screen will pop up allowing you to sign in and to format the title, description, size & quality of video, and availability to the public. Click start and IMovie will take care of the rest for you. Once it is finished downloading, you can start sending people your link, you can post it on facebook, and you can start promoting yourself without directly auditioning.

An updated performance reel is, in my opinion, the most important tool for any freelancer. It is not cost effective to fly around the country to audition for short projects and the same holds true for companies that are looking for short-term dancers. I have gotten many jobs based off of sending my information or word-of-mouth, then sending my reel to solidify the deal. If you have access to a Mac, this tutorial should help ease any computer literate person into making a strong, easy-flowing performance reel. Stay tuned in the future for a tutorial on how to turn your reel into a DVD.