After rehearsal, we had a little break (where I had the best cafe con leche of my life) and then it was back to the theater. Most of us performed last night, but not our principal roles. I was in the “Burguesía” scene, dancing as a wealthy lady with Antonio as my parter. Right before this scene, there was a massive set change with lots of changing backdrops. Just before lights were about to come up, a heavy rod that was part of a backdrop fell and landed on one of the ProDanza dancer’s head. It was horrifying. He was bleeding severely and was escorted offstage to go to a hospital.
Everyone onstage was super shaken, but once he was taken offstage everyone switched into problem solving mode. We had about 15 more seconds of darkness to communicate amongst ourselves about how we were going to adjust the dance to fit 5 couples as opposed to 6. Of course all of this panicked whispering was in Spanish, so Antonio and I had no hope of being able to keep up, but we stayed as professional and calm as possible and did our best to readjust as the piece was happening. Everything went as well as it could have given the last minute craziness. You never know what is going to happen with live theater…
All of the Verb Dancers felt terrible for our fellow dancer and are sending him our best. Luckily we found out he was released from the hospital last night, and is beginning to recover.
