Official Tour Blog

Happy January!  Our first show in Kempten, Germany was a success!  Below is my perspective during mic check on the Big Box Theater stage.  We had approximately 500 tickets sold before the house opened, and the audience was clapping and stomping in all the right places!

My Big Box Theater Perspective

We had a lot of MJ fans who were wearing the “Beat It” jacket, and really dressing up for the show, which meant a lot to us.

Big Box 2

Here I am spanning time with Mic Thompson, the choreographer for The Ultimate Thriller.  He was one of Michael Jackson’s first dancers and choreographers.  You can find him all over YouTube, my favorite clip of him being one of the high energy dancers in the song, “Cuz I’m A Blonde” with Julie Brown in “Earth Girls Are Easy”!  He upstages Jim Carrey at least twice!

Rodney and I are the two backup singers for the show.  Rodney is such a blessing to this tour because he’s the man I go to to pray for everything!  We pray over Tejai before he starts singing, we kneeled and prayed over the debut show in the theater before we started mic check, he prayed for us all in a circle before the show started.  And I’m pretty sure he’s always got gospel music playing in his earphones on the bus, praisin’ Jesus!  Thanks Rodney, for being a strong  beacon of light for Christ!

After the show and our much-anticipated showers, our New Year’s Eve celebration was quite fabulous in Kempten, Germany.  There were huge fireworks right over our heads, and lots of them!  Most people had champagne, but I was totin’ my Diet Coke (Coke Lite) bottle around, just as happy as can be:)  I took some fireworks video that I’ll try to share later.  I turned in around 2AM, but the party next door was hoppin’ till about 5AM, and many of us didn’t get in until then.  The bus drove off at 6AM to our next show town, Stadt Balingen, Germany.

I think because the German towns are so small, they don’t really have to come up with many creative names for their hotels, since there aren’t many nice ones per town…so…our hotel in Stadt Balingen is called, Hotel Stadt Balingen.  There ya go!  When we arrived New Year’s Day early morning, the ground was snowless, but by the next day (this morning), snow had fallen and we finally got our first cliche wintry German photo opportunities!

Here I am with my matching royal blue earmuffs (they match the streaks in my hair at least), at our first floor hallway window beholding the new-fallen snow.  Me, two dancers (Shannon/Travis) and our sweet director (Doug) took a nice long walk around town.

Here’s a basic view of the long main road of town.  The cathedral has a working bell that rang as I was taking this picture!  The town still has their Santas, Christmas trees, and Christmas stars up all around.  It was very comforting!

There were a few strange artistic pieces displayed on the main road, my favorite of which is below…All these people crossing their arms and looking up, almost frowning at whatever they see…maybe they’re disgruntled because they have no legs!!!…or Carl says maybe they’re just cold:)

Speaking of strange art, here’s a shop window advertising…cold weather clothing?  The polar bear looks jealous of the over-joyous dancer showing off in the easy-to-move-in winter wear.  Don’t worry polar bear…you’re pretty too:)

Before we headed back to the hotel, Director Doug treated us to a moccacino at a little cafe.  Below is my commercial shot, enjoying the warm beverage.

Ah, so happy and moccacino-ish!

Now we’ve packed up our stuff and driven from the hotel, pretty much around the corner to tonight’s venue.  More mic check pix from there in the next venue.  Have a glorious January 2nd and God Bless you all!

~PYT Jenn-Jenn

Hey folks! I’m writing from Kempten, Germany, our first stop on the European Tour! We have some major down time today as the crew sets up the stage, so I am very happy to chill on the bus and write Newsletter 1. Enjoy:)

To begin, many of you asked how I got my hair the way it is. Well, the process of making my hair purple was quite arduous, but my good pal and lifelong Orlando hair dresser did a fabulous job…we were sweatin’ but we survived with no tears! (until I had to say goodbye) First, Heather had to bleach the top half blonde, which I joked made me look like a skunk. Honestly, I’d wear my hair this way, too…it’s all very fun and adventurous!

After washing out the bleach, she put on a protein pack to remoisturize all those sad little bleached hairs, washed it out, painted on the purple and blue streaks, washed that out, another protein pack, washed that out, cut my hair, styled my hair, and BAM! 6 hours later I’m done!!! But it was all worth it to be done by not only a professional, but awesome Heather who has such patience for rock stars like myself

Thank you Heather for an awesome afternoon! It totally paid off because the goodbye party peeps were all pleasantly shocked at how crazy my hair was. It looks blue in lots of the pix we took, but no matter what, I smile every time I look in the mirror because I FINALLY did what I’ve been dreaming to do for a decade. Purple hair with blue streaks…not for the faint-hearted!

By the way, if anyone from the party has pix, please forward them because I never got any group pix and I’m so sorry we didn’t do that:(

OK, now off to Germany! We flew from Orlando to Dallas, then Dallas to Frankfurt. The 2nd flight was about 9 hours, and though I hadn’t slept much the night before, I don’t think I got that much quality sleep on the plane that I was hoping for. But I did catch up on some episodes of CSI and NCSI. Thanks American Airlines!

We stopped at our hotel in GieBen (pronounced “gee-zen”-the English keyboard doesn’t have the double S symbol, so I used a B because that looks REALLY close, believe it or not!) to drop off our luggage, shower, etc., then headed to Dortmond to begin our final rehearsals. By the end of the day, we were all pretty delirious due to lack of sleep, so that night at the hotel was very brief before I hit the pillow.

Rehearsal-Dortmund

My point of view

1st Lunch

Here’s me and our MJ tribute artist, Tejai, enjoying our first lunch at rehearsal. We have a great cook, Zapp, who provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner on show days, as well as these first two days in Dortmund. It’s nice to eat healthy, happy, warm food, since, as most of you know, I hate cooking, but I LOVE eating cooked food!!! McSkillz Heaven:)

Last night our buses arrived to take us to Kempten overnight. Here is our lower common area. We watched Angels & Demons last night…twice I think! This morning, Wall-E was on. I love TV and movies, so it’s very comforting to have English films playing in the background.

Community room

Though I enjoyed sleeping on the cruise ship a few years ago, because the waves actually rock you as you sleep mostly, the bus bunks are a bit more…constricting. Below is the upper level with the narrow hallway of bunks. I’m the last bottom bunk on the left. When the choreographer leaves, I’m taking his top bunk!

Bunks

Here’s my little home sweet home for now…it has a little window, drink holder, reading light, catch-all net, and even a power outlet if I wanna play on the computer. I’m so glad I took on the burden of lugging my bed and body pillows on the plane because it feels a little more like home with them here…to make up for the jostling of the bus in the middle of the night! As a funny aside, I chose the old blue pillow case so that my hair wouldn’t turn any other pillow cases purple and blue!

My Bed: notice the January bedtime read: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows! (Thanks Sandra)

And here’s my bedroom from the outside! Woo-hoo!

So that’s the beginning of our tour prep. I’ll try to follow up with a New Year’s Eve newsletter soon, I already have one funny venue story to share…two words…Communal Showers!!!

Stay tuned and Happy New Year!!!

In Christ,
~Jennifer

http://tinyurl.com/ultimatethriller

P.S. If you are ever online or on your iPhone for a while, sign on to Skype (for those who don’t have an account yet, it’s free to join!) and look for me online, too! My username is McSkillz2010. I always sign in when I’m hangin’ online like right now. Dial me when you see me cuz I’d love to talk during down time on the bus…it’s fun!!! My first tour Skyper was Ali Kroger this morning…thanks for calling!!! Love you:)