Dancing in hot & dusty parking lots: weekend adventures...

Happy Monday everyone! I'm happily recuperating from my weekend outings, which involved taking both kids to a movie theater for the very first time (well, for Anne that is. Henry has been before, and knows how to not have temper tantrums in public, which is what I was worried about with Anne. It went shockingly well), and our troupe dancing gig yesterday. Settle in, let's chronicle! Have a cup of coffee, on me:

My real coffee/tea mug at it's home base: my desk at work. *heart*

Ok, so, the dancing thing... I love dancing, and I even love performing, which is a bit of a shock even to me. It's a challenge for me, in the best possible way. It keeps me wanting to improve what I do and how I present it. It's wonderful, truly. I learn so much from being a part of my troupe. And we always have fun together. Sometimes the performances go really well, and sometimes they don't, but the enjoyment is still always there. And so yesterday was one of those days in which things went, well, how to say?...

AWKWARD. :0

Notice the lack of dancing pictures in this post? There's a reason for that. Nobody wanted to remember this one in posterity, that's for sure. It was a confluence of events, really, leading to the awkwardness. Let's see, there was:

(1) The Heat - It was hot and muggy yesterday. The instant we arrived and piled out of Katelyn's car (she conveniently has a mini van that we have dubbed "the belly van") we started to sweat. Before long, standing around outside waiting for the show to begin with our coverups on over top of our costumes, we were completely gross. Everybody was feeling uncomfortable and edgy, so not a great way to get started, right? But then...

(2) The Dust. And The Stones. -  We were standing in the middle of a parking lot. And that's where we were going to dance. :0 I wasn't expecting a silk carpet or anything, but the dusty asphalt complete with loose stones wasn't exactly appealing. There was no outdoor seating, so people were just going to have to stand to watch us dance, not the most comfortable thing in the world. But people? Oh yeah...

(3) There Was Nobody There - I thought the ice cream place was closer to the main street in the village we were in. It wasn't. The entrance/parking lot was on a small side street perpendicular to the main street, and on a Sunday evening, there weren't too many people happening by.

Ugh. So, the show hasn't even started yet, and we're all sweaty and yucky and feeling ill at ease. Who's ready to get started?!

"All right. Let's get this over with."

Nothing like some rocketing enthusiasm to get the performance high going.

:0

The Tango dancers went first. They were lovely, but all I kept thinking was how hot it must be to dance so closely, lol. By this point, the sun was positively BEATING down on us and my hair was starting to feel stringy. Mike, Henry and Anne were amongst the onlookers (all 12 of them) and Anne had become fascinated by the loose gravel. As the Bollywood dancer started her routine, I could see Anne loading her pockets up with stones. Then I could see Mike hiking her pants up because the stones were weighing them down. :)

We progressed through more numbers, but my troupe hadn't even danced yet and I was already feeling like a wilted flower. We almost axed the tray balancing/wings number because there were so few people there and we just wanted to get the whole thing done as quickly as possible, but then some people driving by did stop to watch, so we were feeling emboldened. We may have been nearing 20 whole onlookers. Party time! We swept out with our wings.

That number actually went really well. As I was balancing my tray, I hear:

"HI MOMMY!!!!!!"

Anne was in the "crowd," enthusiastically dancing along with us. At least somebody was happy. :)

Our final number was an Arabic pop song, followed by our new drum piece. I love the new drum piece, and as the sole "girl 2" in the formation for this performance (since there were so few of us), I had my own special role. *beams* At first, I was worried that it would look like I had forgotten the choreography since I'd be doing something different than everyone else, but we modified things a bit to prevent this. As we lined up though, I noticed a kerfluffle in the back. This was a completely different formation than usual, since there were 5 us doing a number built for trios of either 3, 6 or 9, and since we have to change things up from performance to performance, it's easy for the old human mind to forget things. One of my troupemates was in the wrong spot, and the girl next to her was trying to signal her discreetly. But before they could get this squared away, the music started.

I whirled around on my count with the biggest smile on my face that I could manage, hoping to distract. I could still see movement out of the corner of my eye that shouldn't have been happening, so I was hoping for the best. I remembered my new girl 2 arm positions like a champ and was feeling pretty happy when I executed a circling hip drop to the back of the formation. Uh oh. Someone was missing.

I was worried that the girl who had forgotten her spacing had felt bad and had left the piece, but no rest for the weary, I kept dancing. The next time I spun around, she was back, like one of those disappearing/reappearing holographic images. :0 I thought maybe I just hadn't seen her before. Granted, given the crappy, tiny space we were dancing in, this wasn't very likely, but I didn't exactly stop to analyze the veracity of this statement right in the moment. Especially when I glanced back again and - she was gone. Had I imagined her?! Our carefully constructed formation with specific parts for each person was now all lopsided, but there was nothing to be done. We kept dancing.

When we finished, I found our poor girl 3 in the back, having her costume top frantically pinned up by the Bollywood dancer. Apparently, she had a nearly terrifying costume malfunction, and attempt #1 at fixing it hadn't worked, hence why she kept disappearing and reappearing. We all felt badly for her, and soothed as best we could. But, seriously. Oy. Bad mojo goin' on in the performance, it just wasn't a night destined to end well. I was dying to get home and have a glass of wine with Mike.

And so there you have it. We all agreed that we're glad that one is behind us. Onward to autumn performances!