My Olympic Experience - The Rehearsals

Week two of our Olympic rehearsals and we were back at 3 Mills studios in Bromley-By-Bow.  This week we started to learn our actual choreography (the week before had just been to get us used to the style of the hip hop moves we would be learning, as this is something that was new to a lot of us – me included). I was nervous about how my body would cope as I was still recovering from my operation and visiting the nurse daily, but this week was a lot easier on me. In fact I think the rehearsals helped my body kick start getting back to normal. I was in a bit of pain and stiff for a few days afterwards but slowly but surely I was getting my groove back!

This was also the week that we got to meet our dance captain, the amazing Skytilz! I remember for weeks afterwards the first thing the volunteers would say to each other was ‘how awesome is Skytilz?!’ Everyone loved her, she made every rehearsal a lot of fun, broke every move down so we all understood and made a lot of jokes! I have to say the dance captains have really made the experience for me. All of them are incredible talented but so down to earth and approachable. I don’t think we could have been taught by better people. (Shout out to all our dance captains especially Nads, Nathaniel, Duwane, Theo and Rhimes!!)

My section was the 80’s and 90’s. I remember we didn’t know which songs we would be dancing to. Only after we had learnt some moves and eventually tried them to music did we find out what tracks they were to. This made our time at 3 Mills always exciting because you never knew what was coming next! It took about three weeks before we knew all the songs we would be dancing too and I loved the choices.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning a completely new dance style – and loved that most of the moves had names (this was a godsend when trying to remember routines!). With names like the Roger Rabbit and Steve Martin they were impossible to forget. Every Sunday was a five hour solid rehearsal of dancing and although tiring I always left with a smile on my face and counting down the time till the next rehearsal.

At our first rehearsal at 3 Mills we got to meet the main man, Kenrick 'H2O' Sandy, who was choreographing the whole Thanks Tim section. Kenrick is a huge name in the hip hop dance scene. He helped choreograph the ‘Streetdance’ films, he co-owns an Olivier award winning dance company called Boy Blue Entertainment and has been a judge on the dance show ‘Street Dance Stars’. We were working with the best of the best. Plus all of our dance captains are members of Boy Blue Entertainment. (Check them out in the video below)

Kenrick told us that our section was going to be the most hardcore and energetic out of the whole piece. He wasn’t lying! As he said ‘you can’t be two-stepping to no Firestarter’! Even though our rehearsals were early on Sundays morning we needed to bring energy. I can’t think of anything better to give you a rush on a Sunday morning than dancing, especially in preparation for the opening ceremony.

During our second week we also got taken to try our costumes on. I couldn’t believe we got to try them on so soon and it was awesome seeing everyone in their neon clothes and smiley face t-shirts! It really was a flashback and I can clearly remember people wearing my costume to raves in the 90’s.

I was pleasantly surprised that Danny Boyle attended every rehearsal. He was always there with an encouraging speech, a handheld camera and a look of excitement. Whenever we were waiting he would always make a point of speaking to us individually.

The thing that has always stood out to me is Danny Boyle’s enthusiasm for the volunteers. Realistically it is a huge risk to take 10,000 people, some of whom have plenty of experience and some who have never performed in their life, and use them to create a show, not just any show but one that is presented on the global stage. His reputation would be on the line. But not once did I ever get the impression Danny Boyle was worried about this. In fact I don’t think he even thought of any other option. He seemed to have his heart set on normal people representing their country. What a wonderful attitude. I have never seen such enthusiasm for a project or the people involved. We all came into this being overwhelmed that we would be part of Danny Boyle’s show. But Danny repeated told us this was our show. 

The 3 Mills rehearsals were purely about learning the choreography. Once we graduated from there we would start to transform what we had learnt into a show. After five weeks at 3 Mills we moved onto the old Ford plant car park in Dagenham, officially known as 1:1. This meant a two hour commute for me, from one side of London to the other. Although this meant waking at 5.30am on Sunday mornings I always woke up excited and bounded along to rehearsals like an excitable puppy.

This outdoor space had two full scale replicas of the Olympic stadium, both fields of play separated by a giant circus tent.  This would be when we would learn our coordinates and the transitions we would make around the stage during our performance.

The most exciting element about Dagenham was that each week our rehearsals got bigger and bigger as we were joined by more and more groups from our section. We started out week one as all 400 of the 80’s and 90’s dancer. We were then joined by the Now’s, making it 700 people. A few weeks after that all 1400 dancers came together. It was our first glimpse at the other sections and it finally felt like we were working towards a show rather than having a lot of fun in a massive outdoor dance class.

As well as cleaning choreography we also needed to learn funnelling (something I found difficult not to turn into a race as I am naturally competitive but would come hugely in handy when trying to get 1400 people into a tube station after rehearsals) and huge amounts of blocking. Although very time consuming the mass team, lead by the amazing Gina Chan Martinez,who were responsible in getting all 1400 of us into the correct places, always completely their tasks speedily. It is incredible what they do when you think about the scale of it. And this wasn’t just getting people into lines. This involved getting people into complex shape, like our awesome 90’s smiley face, which would be the formation my section started in.

Dagenham was also the place where we got to see more of the man who was choreographing the whole 'Thanks Tim' section, Kenrick Sandy.  Kenrick would often start and end the day with motivational, and hilarious, speeches that equally made us passionate about our performance but eager to get it right. Kenrick made sure we were under no illusion that we could just roll up and give a half ass performance. Although we would be working our usual jobs in the week at the weekend at rehearsals we would be expected to act like professional dancers, which meant paying attention and pushing ourselves to make the moves look as best as we possibly could.

What really help was having the awesome dance captains and Kenrick walking through us and if we looked to be having trouble they would always help us in a way that motivated us instead of making us stand out as ‘the one who is getting it wrong’. There was a definite sense of we are all in this together and working for the same goal. There was no ‘them’ and ‘us’. This gave us an environment where we all felt comfortable and didn’t need to feel like we would look silly if we needed to ask for help.  And if you were too nervous to ask the dance captains were always there watching and giving friendly tips when needed.

The first ten weeks of rehearsal were all about getting us ready to move into the stadium. By then we had learnt our choreography, learnt our transitions and learnt our coordinates of where to stand on stage. Now it was time to take things to the next level. Now it was time to graduate to the Olympic stadium...