Meredith's Tour Blog #11 - Salt Spring

After a couple days off in Vancity we were back en route for the island leg of the tour. As nice as it was to sleep in my own bed for a couple nights it was also hard to be back home in the middle of tour. I had endless amounts of emails that wanted responses but I just wanted to hibernate at home as in my head I wasn't in the mind set to get back to Vancouver life. Not too surprisingly I wasn't the only one on the tour who felt this way, Amber found time to rehearse her own company and work on a film project (she's amazing), but felt the quick stop off at home a bit surreal.

En route to Salt Spring Island Amber and Maria took the opportunity to nap on the ferry as you can see from the photos. The amazing thing that happens on tour is that you find every opportunity you can to sleep and anywhere that you can, ferries, dressing room floors, stairwells. Dancers are incredibly inventive at finding cozy places to sleep.

Once in Salt Spring Tara and Day taught workshops, the rest of us went shopping and we all met up for a fantastic dinner at the Salt Spring Inn where Marc performed his rendition of Surge in the middle of the restaurant. Yes, it was just as amazing as it sounds. Soon after dinner we were off to bed in preparation for the long theater day ahead.

Our Salt Spring show was a little different this time around as we had a performance group from the island called the Lobby Dancers open the show for us. It was a treat to meet some local dancers and share the stage. Salt Spring was our most responsive audience on the tour! They hooted and hollered and gave both Banger and Surge standing ovations!!!!! Anna the outreach work is a true gem, we literally saw our posters all over town and people knew about the show when we went into stores because of the work she did getting the word out about the show. George the presenter is incredible at what he does and took great care of us at the theater. Sonja a teacher at the high school in Salt Spring bought 30 tickets to the show and sold them to her students herself. Its these kind of people that make all the difference, talk about a strong sense of community and support for the arts, Salt Spring sure has it! After the show we had the chance to go out for a drink with the Lobby Dancers, Anna, Sonja and some other people. We had a fantastic time! We love Salt Spring!

Throughout all these blogs I forgot to mention the fantastic tour binders that the New Works team put together for us. They have been our lifesavers and helped us get through this tour and through BC, literally. Thank you Bev, Andrea, Bonnie, Diana and Barb! We love our tour binders!