Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been kinda busy because our first dance competition was last Saturday. But first the big catastrophe before that. A girl on Senior Company (the "big girls") had a semi-formal dance at her school on the day of the competition (Saturday). Now my dance teacher had called the competition and asked which day we would be on. They said on Sunday. So this girl had made dinner plans, had a date, bought a dress and all the works assuming the competition was on Sunday. Then the competition called and told us that, oops, we're on Saturday, not Sunday. So this girl was upset, but decided to go to the dance instead. My dance teacher was so mad. Competition is serious business, and she chose to go to a dance that her school has four of each year. Ugh. I can see that she was in a tough situation, but you don't miss a competition unless you're sick or have broken bones, a major family problem or some other emergency.
Anyway, the Senior Company are doing three dances - a jazz dance, a tap dance, and a modern dance. So last week my dance teacher called me and told me all about that conflict. She said that the jazz and tap numbers will be okay without her, but the modern is choreographed specifically for eight people, so they were one person short without that girl. So my dance teacher asked me (I'm in Junior Company, a level below the Seniors) to step in and take the place in the modern dance!!! I was so excited when she told me that!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But we learned the unfortunate news about the girl's conflict on the Monday before the competition. So I learned the dance on Monday in two hours, then spent a couple of hours on Wednesday and Thursday cleaning it up. It was quick, but I felt pretty confident with the routine by Saturday.
The competition was in Massachusetts, about an hour and a half away from us. It was the Fire and Ice competition. For those who aren't familiar with the scoring, I'll try to make sense here. There are three judges, and each judge has 100 points total. And they deduct points for things like not pointing your feet, not being together, and for other technique issues, or anything the judge saw fault in. So at the end of each dance, the judges combine each of their points and decide what you get. This competition had a Diamond award, and most competitions don't have that, usually Platimum is the highest. Anyways here it goes : Diamond - 290-300 points
Platinum - 275-285 points
Gold - 260-274 points
Sterling Silver - 240-259 points
Silver - 220-239 points
Bronze - 219 points and below
The Junior Company dance got a Sterling Silver, the modern dance I filled in for got a Gold (Thank God, I was afraid that we might get a Bronze), an our production number (Pirates of the Caribbean) got a Gold. And every single number gets at least a Bronze. It's not like ice skating, where only one person gets Gold, Silver and Bronze. So if we all did a perfect job, every dance would get a Diamond!
The competition was so much fun. It was long (9 am to 6:30 pm), but it was fun. I actually had a blast performing. I thought I would be wicked nervous, but it was great. And we found our nemesis studio - with the acronym of JAWS. They were amazing. And they had guy dancers! It was so cool. They won all the special awards and overall awards of course. I wouldn't mind so much, except most of them had smug little faces when they accepted their awards as if they were used to it. This one studio got the "Politeness Award", and a girl from my studio pointed out someone from the "Polite" studio who had shoved her out of the way. Yea, really polite. I saw one of the most ridiculous costumes, it wasn't even funny - actually it was. This was a JAWS student who did a lyrical (lyrical is a kind of dance that's really slow and dramatic and you take yourself so seriously-not my favorite style) solo to "Nature Boy". Okay, he came out with garlands of ivy on his body, he was topless, and had these pants that were made out of white poofy fur. He came on, and I wanted to laugh, but I realized "Ew, this guy is serious!" He looked like Mr. Tumnus from Narnia. But we referred to him as "Goat Boy". I don't even remeber if he was a good dancer or not, just the pants. But besides JAWS smugly eating all awards up and Goat Boy, it was a good competition. And note: Sometimes lyrical can be really pretty and almost ballet-ish, but Mr. Tumnus was not.
Anyway, the Senior Company are doing three dances - a jazz dance, a tap dance, and a modern dance. So last week my dance teacher called me and told me all about that conflict. She said that the jazz and tap numbers will be okay without her, but the modern is choreographed specifically for eight people, so they were one person short without that girl. So my dance teacher asked me (I'm in Junior Company, a level below the Seniors) to step in and take the place in the modern dance!!! I was so excited when she told me that!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But we learned the unfortunate news about the girl's conflict on the Monday before the competition. So I learned the dance on Monday in two hours, then spent a couple of hours on Wednesday and Thursday cleaning it up. It was quick, but I felt pretty confident with the routine by Saturday.
The competition was in Massachusetts, about an hour and a half away from us. It was the Fire and Ice competition. For those who aren't familiar with the scoring, I'll try to make sense here. There are three judges, and each judge has 100 points total. And they deduct points for things like not pointing your feet, not being together, and for other technique issues, or anything the judge saw fault in. So at the end of each dance, the judges combine each of their points and decide what you get. This competition had a Diamond award, and most competitions don't have that, usually Platimum is the highest. Anyways here it goes : Diamond - 290-300 points
Platinum - 275-285 points
Gold - 260-274 points
Sterling Silver - 240-259 points
Silver - 220-239 points
Bronze - 219 points and below
The Junior Company dance got a Sterling Silver, the modern dance I filled in for got a Gold (Thank God, I was afraid that we might get a Bronze), an our production number (Pirates of the Caribbean) got a Gold. And every single number gets at least a Bronze. It's not like ice skating, where only one person gets Gold, Silver and Bronze. So if we all did a perfect job, every dance would get a Diamond!
The competition was so much fun. It was long (9 am to 6:30 pm), but it was fun. I actually had a blast performing. I thought I would be wicked nervous, but it was great. And we found our nemesis studio - with the acronym of JAWS. They were amazing. And they had guy dancers! It was so cool. They won all the special awards and overall awards of course. I wouldn't mind so much, except most of them had smug little faces when they accepted their awards as if they were used to it. This one studio got the "Politeness Award", and a girl from my studio pointed out someone from the "Polite" studio who had shoved her out of the way. Yea, really polite. I saw one of the most ridiculous costumes, it wasn't even funny - actually it was. This was a JAWS student who did a lyrical (lyrical is a kind of dance that's really slow and dramatic and you take yourself so seriously-not my favorite style) solo to "Nature Boy". Okay, he came out with garlands of ivy on his body, he was topless, and had these pants that were made out of white poofy fur. He came on, and I wanted to laugh, but I realized "Ew, this guy is serious!" He looked like Mr. Tumnus from Narnia. But we referred to him as "Goat Boy". I don't even remeber if he was a good dancer or not, just the pants. But besides JAWS smugly eating all awards up and Goat Boy, it was a good competition. And note: Sometimes lyrical can be really pretty and almost ballet-ish, but Mr. Tumnus was not.
Comments:
This is just freaky. I have a friend who was in this competion on Saturday for band. One of my other friends whos a year younger than us quit her quartet to go to a trip for this club shes in so our band teacher recruited Kyle to play in the quartet he wouldn't normally be in on top of a duet and a solo he was already doing. 2 of his events got a really high rating and his duet got a lower but still pretty good rating. Notice the coincidences?
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