Today was one of those days at Dell’Arte. . .

by Joe Krienke, Director of Admissions

Two weeks ago was the deadline for application to our MFA program and the first round deadline for application to the Professional Training Program. It turns out that we have a record number of applications for this time of the year. Today, February 1, was my deadline for sending out acceptance packets, so for the last two weeks I have been jammed reviewing audition portfolios, conducting interviews, and doing my best to get the right people in the right program.

I arrive at the office this morning with two days of work to do in less than six hours. I begin organizing piles of applicants to accept, waitlist, decline… it seems like every file has at least three actions steps before I can send letters. My list is getting longer and longer and I realize that I need my laptop which is sitting in another office, so I dash out of the door through the hallway… and I am arrested by a vibration.

I’m still for a moment and I realize it is a song, and it sounds so good that it has to be a recording… but the vibration is so resonant that it doesn’t seem possible that a recording could sizzle the air like that. I am pulled back down the hallway and up the stairs a few steps… it’s clear now that this song is being sung in the building and my skin stands up.

I’m sucked up the stairwell toward the studio and the sound is breathtaking… it stops me at the studio door- I question whether I should open it. I want to be a part of it, to witness it, but I’m afraid my selfish interruption will ruin the thing.

I dive in and there they are, the first year students in Daily Practice with our Director of Training, Ronlin Foreman. They are all standing solidly on shared ground reaching out of their backs past the walls of the studio into the world around them singing:

…wings that will take me,
where I want to go.
I’d fly from the utmost,
way out into space-
no, no, no, no, no,
there is no hiding place.

Indeed there is no place to hide and it is glorious. If only the applicants I was writing acceptance letters to could see this… they would understand.

My hand reaches for my cell phone and I am able to catch the end of the song, the tangible silence that follows, and the joyous acknowledgment of the people in the room that they have just touched something larger than any one of them and yet so basely human.

When you’re at Dell’Arte there is always potential bubbling under the surface and somehow you never know what is going to happen on any given day… when you’re going to witness something simply remarkable… when it’s going to be one of those days.

copyright 2010 Dell'Arte International

www.dellarte.com