Of Europe, the audition, and dancing on the conference table

I have gotten sooooo many messages, comments, and all types of inquiries regarding things going on with me from the past month and a half. It has been absolutely amazing to me to realize how many people I have in my life who care about me and are genuinely interested. You all have no idea how much that means. And I'm sorry I have not been more responsive....I'll get to why in a minute.

Warning...this is probably gonna be a long one.

For anyone out of the loop, let me back up for a sec: my youngest sister Sarah is studying in China for the year & during her break from school, did some traveling around Europe. So for Christmas, my parents got our whole family (mom, dad, brother, sister, brother-in-law & myself) plane tickets to meet up with Sarah in London. (And as a side note, Sarah didn't think that my dad & brother were going to be able to come, so we were able to surprise her with that, which was really really great...she totally freaked out.)
Let me just say that I LOVED London! I think it's somewhere I would really like to live at some point for a year or two. The city is just really beautiful & has so much history and culture (as I'm sure is obvious from the pictures). And we haven't taken a big family vacation in a very long time, so, while it was definitely a little stressful at times, all in all it was really good to be able to spend the time together. I could probably go on for quite a while about London, but for once I think I'll just leave it at that ....it was awesome & I had a great time.

So about the audition….for those of you who didn't know, while in Europe, I had an audition with the contemporary ballet company Centro de Danza Víctor Ullate in Madrid. I think I've been avoiding the subject (i.e. not responding to anyone's inquiries) because…well, it didn't go as well as I had hoped. I know there were a number of factors to blame (I was sick, extremely jet-lagged, the class was in a weird cross between Spanish & French w/ a few English words thrown in, etc.), but the short version is that I'm pretty sure it was the worst class I've ever done. I've been trying to look at the bright side, which is that no matter how it went, I had the amazing opportunity of going to audition for a big company in a totally different country. But it's also brought up some old insecurities, as well as some new, and definitely hard to swallow, possibilities. Something that I've always struggled with is that while I'm decently good at a variety of things, I've never had a true specialty in any one thing. For example, I'm fairly sure I'm a better modern dancer than people in most ballet companies, & I'm a more experienced ballet dancer than the other girls in my modern company….but I'm not good enough at ballet to be in a big professional ballet company, & I'm not a good enough modern dancer to be in a big professional modern company either. So maybe that's it for me. Maybe I'm past the time in my life when I could have really danced professionally. And this is not to insult anything that I've been part of in the past or what I'm doing now, but I kind of think there is part of me that will always feel I never really "made" it. I've always wanted that experience of been part of a big, really successful company…with a real salary & real costumes & an actual budget & a big stage & dressing rooms with "bulb-ed" lights…you know, the simplicity of being able to call dancing my "real job". And I've always known that that would not be something I would want on a long term basis, but I did (and still do) want to, just for a couple years, be part of someone else's thing….and then take that experience & start my own thing.
ANYways...there it is. That's what I've been thinking about and dealing with (or rather trying not to deal with) pretty much since I got back (which has been about a month ago at this point). And again, I could probably go into more detail & ramble on for much longer (and I know, I usually do), but at this point I'm simply out of the energy for it.

Moving on to happier things....a couple of weeks ago, Perpetual Motion (the company I am currently dancing with) participated in the New Genre Festival in Tulsa, OK (which, surprisingly, is supposedly a fairly well known event in the art world). We were part of an experimental dance project called the Crazy Quilt Drive-In Dance Performance. We, along with 2 other companies (one from OKC & another from Tulsa) performed inside an office building, while the audience watched from outside in their cars (hence the drive-in). The front of the building is made up of about 12 windows (on 2 floors) & each window has a shade that raises & lowers. Each company had 4 windows, scattered throughout the building, & 3 ten-minute segments in which we could do WHATEVER we wanted. In our first segment, we did a lot of site specific choreography...we hung 3 sets of fabric from the top of the 2nd story, hung over the edges of the stairwell, and climbed up into the windows (very Spiderman-like)....it was SO much fun. We kind of made the building our own personal jungle-gym. Our second segment was title "Office Daydream". We wore stereotypical office attire & the music was an assortment of soundbites & theme songs (50s office music, Charlie's Angels, Cops, Speedracer, Kill Bill, Dance Dance Revolution, Pacman, etc.) which were each acted out in their own level of ridiculousness & hilarity. I believe the highlight was when all of the dancers were doing our own versions of DDR while Pacman & the Ghosts (yes, we had people dressed in cardboard cutouts of Pacman & the Ghosts) chased each other all throughout the building and in & out of the various windows. In our third section the music was Scissor Sisters & the Presets....we all wore pink wigs & hideously sparkly disco/club outfits. We had mini-trampolines that we used in the upper windows and, as an unexpected fun thing, apparently from the ground you couldn't see the tramps, so it just looked like we were exceptionally bouncy . Unfortunately we kept forgetting to take pictures in the process of the show, but I do have several from right after we were finished (check out my photos on my profile). We had a VERY short amount of time to prepare for this show, so a large portions of it was stuctured improv, but I still think it turned out quite well. I would really love to explore the concept again when we can devote more time to development & spend more time rehearsing in the performance space. I have no idea if any of that made a bit of sense to anyone, but there you go.

Again, thank you all so much for the interest & love & support (if anyone wants more details about anything, just message me & let me know).