Our first tour of season six was quite the success! We are insanely thankful to have performed four of our repertory pieces with the students, faculty, and community in Allendale, Michigan at the Louis Armstrong Theatre of Grand Valley State University.

To give you all a snapshot of our quick tour to Michigan, here’s a day-by-day recap:

Saturday, November 5: All twelve members of our touring group arrived at Union Station by 5:30pm. We boarded the train, ready, excited, laughing, and the largest group on board for sure. Grand Rapids, Michigan – we were coming for you! Upon arrival at 11:30pm, all of us got on a shuttle to our hotel in downtown Grand Rapids. Straight to bed for all of us!

Sunday, November 6: A morning of breakfast on your own and a call time of 10am in the hotel lobby. We took a giant van over to the GVSU campus and were welcomed into their dance department’s beautiful studios. The largest one that we were able to be in was absolutely beautiful – high ceilings, a large sprung Marley floor – we were in heaven! All of us took a 90-minute ballet class given by our rehearsal director, Jessica Miller Tomlinson, and were quickly escorted to our dressing rooms where we prepared for tech rehearsal. Each dance got 60-minutes on stage to rehearse, space, and try out the dance with it’s corresponding lighting (shout out to our favorite lighting designer EVER, Julie E. Ballard!). It was a LONG day on stage and afterwards we all couldn’t wait to enjoy a big family dinner out together. Directly after dinner, we all rested and went to bed for the big day ahead!

Monday, November 7: A morning off!! All of us chose to do separate things. I’m an early riser, so I was up by 7am and got my body moving. Others rested, walked around the city, grabbed lunch together, explored downtown Grand Rapids, hit up the hotel hot tub, and so forth. By 4pm, we all met up and ventured back to Grand Valley State University. Company class on stage for an hour, followed by hair and makeup, and we were all in costume ready to roll by 7pm! The show went by so quickly and was thrilling as always. We love sharing our company and our repertoire and felt so welcomed and well-received by our new audience. We are all very thankful to have worked with GVSU! Post-show, all of us dancers and artistic team went over to Main St. Pub for a late night dinner. We were delirious, tired, silly, loud…everything we always are. To be honest, I think my legs are STILL recovering from the show…it’s a tough one!

Tuesday, November 8: Happy Election Day and happy 5am call time to the hotel lobby! Our train left at 6am, we all slept the whole way home and returned to Chicago by 9am. What a wonderful trip!

A big shout-out and THANK YOU to everyone at GVSU for having us – it was a privilege to share our art with you and we hope to see you again soon!