Hi Everyone,

Well, I can tell you right away that I am a lot happier than a month ago when I wrote my most recent diary. This is largely to do with the fact that I’ve just had the most amazing 2 weeks workshopping my new Richard Rodgers project.  I spent 3 days working with my Musical Supervisor and Arranger, Richard Balcombe, on structure and musical structure and then 7 days with 4 dancers, Rebecca Sutherland, Pia Driver, Tom Dwyer and Isaac James, along with my beloved wife Sarah Wildor as my assistant, working on all of the different dance styles for the show.

It is always great to be working on a show that is my conception, but this time it felt even better after the hellish year I’ve had (except for Side by Side which was a joy) and I just loved every minute of it and didn’t want it to end.  It was also great to be working with such talented and inspiring dancers as well as feeling great dancing again for myself.  I feel slightly guilty saying this but it has been 2 years really since I did any “proper” dancing.  It is just one of those things really, when you are acting or choreographing you just don’t have the time to put in the physical work that you would like to do and that you are used to when dancing all day.  So, my body is still in recovery now but I’m glad to say that I wasn’t the only one suffering and anyway it’s worth it every time!

At the end of the workshop on Friday we had to do a small presentation for producers and people involved in the project.  This is always quite nerve wracking because you never know what they are expecting or whether they’ll like what you have done, and to make it all worse we had Mary Rodgers (Richard Rodger’s daughter and herself a Musical Theatre Composer) and her husband along with rights holders from The States and two producers from TBS in Tokyo (whom I know well and have worked with before).  It was especially nerve wracking for me because I was demonstrating nearly all of the dances, plus had to talk and explain what we were doing in between each dance whilst still trying to get my breath back.  Luckily they all seemed to enjoy what we showed and liked the idea for the show so it is all looking very positive for the future. It seems as if early 2009 will be the most likely time for it to start so unfortunately that’s a bit of a wait but hopefully it will be worth it.

I have some news regarding Sarah now. She has just started rehearsals for a play today called You Can’t Take It With You. She plays the part of Essie in this great comedy written by Moss Hart and George Kaufman and will be performing at The Southwark Playhouse from 24th October to 17th November and is directed by Gavin McAlinden.  Please support her if you can as I know she will be brilliant in it.

No more firm news regarding me, just working on a number of ideas and talking to various people about projects, but I’m really hoping to be back performing very soon, don’t care what it is,  I just yearn to be in front of an audience again.

Take care all,