Third surdo for Lions!

Had a hurried dash to Portland yesterday to catch one more Lions rehearsal. 7:30am train out of Seattle and was in Portland by 11am, 3hr rehearsal, then drove back with Lisette. Hey... I love that train.... simple, easy, no security line, no hassle, and you end up right smack in the middle of town, not stuck way out in some airport. The ticket cost only a bit more than the gas would have cost. Then Lisette and I spent the whole drive back talking dance and drum, and listening to Pimsleur Portuguese lessons. Cracking up when it got to the part where they teach you how to say, in Portuguese: "There is a man here who talks a lot. About nothing. He talks very much. And he won't go away. Who is that man? I am leaving now." (Those Pimsleur lessons are pretty funny if you catch the subtext. One of the very earliest lessons is about who pays for the beer; and right after that is how to say "My wife is at the hotel. I am alone right now. My wife is not here." Now this whole segment for an American girl to be able to say "Who is that guy? He won't leave me alone!")

I split my train time between tackling the enormous backlog of grading for my UW classes, and listening to Lions rehearsal recordings to try to cram their repertoire into my head. Turns out I'll be the only third-surdo at their Folklife show. Their major third-surdo guy, Jeremy, a great player, can't make it. I thought I had most of their repertoire down but they pulled out a couple surprises today - an evil thing called Long Wagner that I swear I've never heard, and a baiao I've faked twice in performance but have never really learned, and that damned Area Code (named for its strange sequences of hits - 9-1-4, 2-1-6 and so on)....

Being lone third surdo will be a major thing for me - I've never yet been sole 3rd for the Lions, let alone at a prominent stage show. The Lions use the third to cue a fair number of breaks and entrances. Just little things, but if I miss them it has the potential to crash the band! The most important one is a flashy dancer stage entrance to Viradouro. Empty stage, dancers in big feather bikinis lined up in the wings, caixas ripping away on Viradouro all alone. Lead dancer gives a thumbs-up to the 3rd surdo player, and then the 3rd starts in with a 2-measure break that must be exactly the right thing, and dancers come prancing out, and the 3rd launches into a long, long solo. It's got to all line up exactly so that, a minute later, both dancers and drummers hit a gigantic break together, out of the blue. It's so impressive when we nail it, and this one is up to me to blow or not blow! So that's what I'll be practicing all week....

I spent most of the rehearsal being mesmerized by watching Donna Oefinger dance. I've still never, in all my travels, seen anyone with her sort of magnetic dance presence. I can't take my eyes off her. The thing about Donna is - she never fudges anything, ever. Every step is full on and clean, and she is dancing right out to her fingertips, every part of her body, every little hand gesture, every shoulderblade/ribcage subtlety, everything. Nothing forgotten, nothing done halfway. Sadly, she can't come to Folklife... but hopefully the Seattle crowd will get to see her at the Fundo gig.

The other thing about Donna is - she is really demanding on other dancers too. In the best way. She raises the bar and forces everybody to sharpen up, clean up the choreography, push their own bodies, push to the next level.

yeah, if you're going to do it, DO IT.