Studying at sea

This is my 6^th contract at sea as a production cast dancer. I consider myself very lucky to do what I love for a living whilst travelling around the world. As a performer onboard a cruise ship we get labeled with having an easy life by other crewmembers. We perform our shows at night when we are sailing and are able to get off at all the exotic places we dock. However I wouldn’t say we have an easy life. I trained very hard from the age of 2, which cost my parents a lot of money to be where I am today. We rehearse for 2 months on land before getting on the ship. The hours we put into rehearsals to get the shows up and running are physically and mentally challenging.  When we finally get onboard the ship we go through an install period, which includes costume fittings, blocking, sound checks, tech runs, costume runs and the actual shows. On top of that we have a number of safety inductions and trainings to prepare us for being onboard.

After the install period is finished we do get a considerable amount of time off between performing shows during the cruise.

Which brings me to the reason I decided to start my studies whilst at sea, I want to make use of the time off I get which you don’t necessarily get in other jobs. This isn’t proving the easiest way to study but I know it isn’t impossible and I’m already learning so much about my practice and about myself.

The Skype sessions have proven difficult as the internet connection at sea can be hit and miss. On the 3^rd October I managed to make 15 minutes of a group Skype session before the connection started to play up and I couldn’t reconnect to the group. On the 9^th October I missed a group session due to rehearsals.

However all is not at a loss as I’ve spent my time reading through Adesolas blogs and other people from the courses blog including blogs of those on different modules. This is a huge help.