Due to this, the other captains and I spend a lot of our time on the weekends choreographing new dances for upcoming performances. This past weekend in particular, the task on hand was to create one of our varsity dances that we would be competing with at upcoming competitions in the winter.
We knew going into our choreography session that we would have a long and tiring journey before we were finally able to complete a dance that would be acceptable to us, our coach, and eventually the judges. There's always so much to think about - visuals, formations, tricks, the storyline - it all has to be perfect. Of course, there's no way of knowing beforehand what the judges want, which is why there are multiple competitions before the final state competition in February, but still, the entire choreography process is like a guessing game. Do we have enough tricks in our dance? Do we have too many? Are the judges going to understand this part? Does this look stupid?
Of course, these sessions can sometimes be fun, especially considering the friendships I share with my fellow choreographers, but unfortunately, there are times when I become tempted to fall on the ground and give up. That's dramatic, but really, the entire process is a headache.
We decided that Friday night was the night we were going to get a major chunk of the dance done. After school, we drove straight to my house, went down to the basement (my sisters and I have a mini dance studio there), and got down to business. We worked and worked, constantly questioning our moves and ideas, wondering if there was anyway we could possibly make them better.
It wasn't until 7:00 pm when we hit a road block with our ideas and decided that we needed a break. We had been going at it for too long without stopping, so focused to the point that we didn't realize we were hungry. Not hungry, but hangry. We all started to get mad and fight over what should get put in the dance, so we decided that we needed time to breath and get some food.
After grabbing a quick dinner, we were refreshed and ready to keep pushing. As the night went on, our minds and bodies grew more and more tired. At about 10:30 pm, we hit that slap happy phase of tiredness. We couldn't be serious and get anything done because at that point, everything was funny to us. At 11:00 pm, we called it quits and decided to meet up again on Sunday.
We decided on 7:00 am on Sunday. Why so early? Who knows, but the point is that we wanted to get as much of the dance done as possible before we had to teach it to the team the following week.
It was a long morning, but we finished a lot of the dance. Not all, but a large chunk, which is good progress. All in all, we ended up spending 10 hours choreographing last weekend, and of course the dance still isn't finished.
Yeah, we spent hours on a dance that definitely isn't perfect, but thats why we go to multiple regional competitions. If the judges' comments come back saying that we look like trash, our team moves on and fixes what needs to be fixed. Some people ask us why the heck we do this to ourselves.
We do it because it's what we are used to, it's our lives. We are okay with missing a fun night out with friends to work hard on something we love. Even though we are definitely a little crazy, we are dedicated to our team, and we do not ever want to let them down.
The many times I have gone through this process for each and every dance we perform has taught me one thing: nothing comes easy, and even if you give 100% of your effort, nothing will be perfect; someone will always be there to criticize you and knock you down. The important thing is that you get right back up and try even harder next time.
 |
| This past year at STATE! |
No comments:
Post a Comment