Letters from the Sky - Aura Fitzgerald

Letters from the Sky

I first heard this song on a TV show and had to go looking for it on You Tube because it was so emotive.  The first time I heard it in full the images were just there, fully formed in my mind.  I knew this was a routine that had to be made.  How I was going to achieve this was another matter.

The swan dive from the cliff was a pivotal moment in the action but it was so close to the beginning there had to be other things going on to balance it out so it wasn't front heavy.  Once again the tip function came in very useful!

I used a 180 turn on the palette to position myself the right way for the backward fall.  There had to be a trade-off between how close to the edge I could dance and how far in I could be so that the tip back would look legitimate.

The moving background was a "leap of faith" (no pun intended) as I ended up with a 20 prim palette, which moved with ease to my surprise.  The Whole back section on the stage, with the cliff edge and the ground below moves upwards to create the illusion of me falling downwards.  The cloud generators move up as well to create a layer for the planes to move through later.

As I "landed",I then had to "jump" from the tipped back palette (a) to a grounded palette (b) using the sit-2-sit.  Timing was the issue here to have a soft landing.

I used various adorns and a negative adorn to wear and un-wear wings and the dove, but it ended up being more efficient to use the swap RLV folders which Yummy developed for SOS.

The real backbone of the routine was the movers which behaved very precisely even with lag in a live performance.  Apart from the background, I had two movers to seat me and one each for the planes and the flying dove.  Quite a lot of motion for so few movers, really.

I had thought to put the end title on a mover of its own, but I thought it was more economical to fasten it to the adorned "light beams" so that as I rose up, the words appeared on the screen.

Once again, there were lots of baby steps, building on the backbone of the dance itself and taking my cues from the song and the emotional vibe of the whole piece.

I think one of my favorite comments was from a male audience member in London audience who, when he saw me fall, said he got the urge to jump up and catch me.

That's what I call suspension of disbelief! 

Watch the video:   https://vimeo.com/143194445