3/23/2006

Light It Up!

song du jour: You Wara Youm, Samira Said & Cheb Mami

mood: Jazzed!

This is NOT your munchkins in sequins jazz, tap, and ballet recital.

This ain't your bad high school talent show or cheesy bellydance workshop performance.

18 and up, hotter than MTV, more up close and personal than ABT, this is the REAL deal!

I mentioned a few posts back that I was in rehearsal for Dance 101's benefit performance Light It Up! What I didn't tell you, or even know then was that the piece originally set for the spring performance has been put on hold until summer since a few of the dancers needed more time with the choreography, and yours truly got pushed to the front of the line. Bellydance is but part of an absolutely stellar line up of dancers and choreography for which Dance 101 has become quickly known in just about every style of jazz, modern, ballet, hip hop, and salsa you can imagine.

Today I had a run through with Nalan, David Norwood, the director of artistic development, and Ofelia Stromquist, the director and owner, aka The Diva of Dance for the official word on whether I made the cut doing the much expanded 2.0 version of Nalan's choreography that I performed last year. So, there I was with 3 days of basically only keeping down water, several revisions, which, needless to explain if you read the previous post, have been difficult to rehearse with consistency this week, and accompanied today by a sweet, but eager to dance also, 6 year old, who was armed with chicken nuggets and art supplies, then boom the music was on 1 count in already after a yell from David, "Take me to The Sudan!", yet stage-fright chick must have forgotten to show up, because nothing was shaking except my shimmies. ;-)

Perhaps most performers don't have so much to report after a rehearsal, but I've always believed if there are people watching, it's a performance, and you dance your heart out whether there are 1000 people or 1 (and whether you're still trying to keep down that 2 T of rice for breakfast...ugh). David came up to me as soon as I was finished, put his hand on my arm, and said, "It's perfect."

30+ years of baggage from the voices of various artistic directors, choreographers, and ballet mistresses of my past saying, workalittleharderloose5poundsloose5moreyou'realmostthere
butyou'renotthereyetwhyhaven'tyoulost5pounds you'renottryinghardenough
whycan'tyoubeliketheotherdancersdoitAGAIN!
melted about as far into the background as they can ever probably go. As if that didn't send me over the top, Ofelia said (I'm uncharacteristically embodying my masculine brag on self mode.) "When you move across the stage, the energy is explosive!" and then as I congratulated her on the plans to go forward with the dancewear boutique they're opening, she told me that mine is the only jewelry they are going to carry. I'm still glowing! Perhaps, despite the recent food poisoning, my karma ain't so bad after all!

April 15th, 6pm and 9pm
Get your tickets online here.
They're known for selling out before the day of the show.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The original explosion, glimpsed again.

Unknown said...

;-)