The last weekend in July is traditionally the weekend of the Basingstoke Tappers & Jazz Dance Company’s  summer show at the Anvil Theatre. Back in January the dance company’s director set the theme for the show and started developing ideas for routines.   The dance classes now will start to incorporate the development of the routines now.

As the webmaster and for the last few years stage manager my involvement comes in short bursts.  Currently the site is getting updated with show details, the information has to be disseminated to various (largely) community sites.  This is a slow process as these sort of sites and their impact change year on year.  This year I’ve been using Google Alerts to help identify when sites get updated and how quickly Google picks up the information.

Once all of that is done, it is increasingly quiet, largely because my other half is going to classes five days a week plus performances for community organisations to help with PR. Then at the start of July (a couple of weeks before the show) it all goes a little crazy. I need to attend the rehearsals so I can see how things should work and produce a set of notes for the crew. Plus contributing with some media for the dancers and last year late on I had additional video media to produce for the show.

Things don’t end after the performance. Between shows if there are any little hitches from the previous night these get worked through – which could be a technical job for the crew with the scenery, or rehearsing part of a routine for the Tappers. Then there is the get out – stripping all the staging, lighting, sound (and there is a lot of cabling for a 20 piece Jazz Orchestra plus mics for picking up the tap from the stage plus monitors for the sound around the Orchestra and dancers), band, scenery that is being ‘flown’ in from above need to be backed and shipped out of the theatre straight after the last show.

If you would like to know more about the Basingstoke Tappers – go here. To book tickets with the Anvil Theatre go here.