Tiny Dancer

One of the dances I'm doing in (one of the several) shows I'm working in right now involves a series of lifts, where I have the dancer climbing over me like I am a jungle gym. It looks impressive, almost like I am a professional dancer, but this is so mainly because she does all of the work- I just stand there and help her get up and down. Add to that the fact that it is all done behind a transparent scrim with flashy lighting effects and a smoke machine and I practically look like Baryshnikov.

Of course, such things always come with a price - especially when you do as little exercise as I do. Having done the thing three times in a row before we started and once during the dress rehearsal itself, my body now feels as though it has been lovingly and tenderly pounded by a 7 foot tall man with a large rubber polo mallet.

I don't think this should be a problem though, since my back has more cricks in it than than a fourteen year old boy's fingers after being left alone for a week with his father's porn collection. You see, one of the characters I play is Igor, and he has a hump - alot of which is acted by my back, and some of which is done by a pillow sewn into the lining of the costume. This means that I spend the majority of my time on stage in a crouch, so that when I stand up when the show is over my back gently reminds me by driving a steel spike into the base of my brain that it will not straighten without some considerable discussion.

So, yes, I am still a little stiff. This is all fine and dandy though, because tonight I am hosting a boys' night (note the correct placement of the apostrophe for group ownsership. Anal anyone?) which will go some way to mollifying my cranky back. All I must be wary of is that, in trying to settle my back with alcohol, I don't awaken the even crankier demon in my stomach. The last time I did that it got extremely messy. There was lots and lots of shower water involved all over someone else's house.

But that is a story for another time...