Auditions

I woke up this morning full of excitement. I was ready to have a lot of fun. I was all for having fun and not being nervous. Auditions. They always get me so I did not want to blow it by getting nervous and making dumb mistakes. Nerves are not something that I enjoy when I am trying to have fun. So today was good news since they didn't get to me.

I auditioned for PAC today. The top touring Folk Dance team. PAC is going to Nauvoo next year as well as Southern California on tour. I would love to be on this performing group because of the people who are on it. The love that everyone expresses, the amazing talent that everyone has, the light of Christ is so bright in every single one of them. They have been such good role models to me, and I would love to be that for someone else.

The audition had us doing many different styles today. We started off with Ballet. We did a center Adage Tondu. It was super chill for a good number of people, mainly the girls. However, there was a good amount that had never ever done more than just a simple tondu and/or plie routine during warm up. It was interesting to say the least. Not bad, but interesting to see where people were.

After Ballet we did some Irish basics across the floor. I had never done them before but I think I caught on pretty well considering it was totally new to me. We did skips, leaps, and side sevens. They are fun. It felt like I was just flying across the floor at times. Cool!

We put our character shoes on next. They wanted to see if we could turn. I got it in the bag. I don't know if I did anything else right in this audition but I do know that I rocked all of the turns we did. I am glad I am a turner because it comes in handy for Folk Dancing. Definitely comes in handy a lot more than being a good leaper. I like this trade off for the first time ever. I am going to run with it. haha ;)

We moved on to Volyn after turns so we kept our character shoes on. I grabbed my friend Jason Allen to be my partner. We were partners all of last semester. We were on the same back up team and were both taking Dance 270 together. We were almost always partners. If we weren't it was kind of weird. Because of this, Jason and I know how to partner with each other. I know how he pulls and how to react because of it. We are good partners, so we partnered up for Volyn. Volyn is a style of dance that has a lot of character. The girls are being cute and the boys... well they are being boys. It is playful. Volyn is a Ukrainian style of dance so it is very difficult. For some reason Russian and Ukrainian dancing is pretty challenging, but a complete blast to do. So worth the hard work. We did a part of the choreography that they did this year so they made sure that no one on PAC was dancing with another person on PAC. I only danced with Jason and I was more than okay with that because we had fun being partners again after this semester.

Clogging was next on the list. We had to come up with 32 counts of our own freestyle. I came up with mine last night. We did it twice. The first time I did it I messed up but just made up the rest and had fun when it threw me off my game. The second time though was pretty darn awesome. There are some really good cloggers. Two of them were right after me. Whitney and Jaymie have been clogging their whole lives just like I have been dancing my whole life. Ballet was easy for me and clogging was easy for them. They mentioned that they didn't want people to feel bad about their own clogging because everyone was doing really well. I let them know that I very highly doubted that anyone felt that way. We knew that they have put so much time and effort into clogging. We all have strengths and for them that would be clogging hands down. I didn't want them to feel uncomfortable about going out there and doing the best that they could so I let them know that they shouldn't feel bad. I don't know if it helped any but they sure were fantastic.

The group split up for a Texas Fandago (like a hoedown) for the guys and Chinese for the girls. The boys all rocked it. They were so fun to watch. A lot of great personalities in this bunch that is for sure. The Chinese dance that we performed exposed a lot about us. You could see who really was not afraid to use their body to express something. It was pretty technical but in a different way than most folk dances. It was technical in a modern dance type way. It was super fun and very pretty.

We had a little break while the other group (boy and girl) showed their pieces in groups of four two times each. We showed everything twice. It was awesome because we could show consistency or improvement instead of just having a first impression. 

The last style we did was a style from Hungary. It was so new to me because I have never done Hungarian but MAN! it was fun. It was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I had a great partner too. His name is Sam Alva. He is on PAC right now and auditioned for his second year today. It was fun to be his partner. He is one of those guys that you just love to talk to because they are kind to you, all of the time. I love it. That is why I love this program because everyone is like that.

I won't find out about PAC until the end of May. They want to wait until tours are over which both of our tours end about the third week of May. I am excited for this semester to be over so all I really have to worry about it dancing for a month. After that I will be working and going to school in the Summer term. I am excited to see where I am going in this program. I got some great feedback from the director today afterwards and I asked for some advice from my clogging teacher yesterday which helped me a lot. My nerves definitely did not get to me today. Fun was what I wanted to have, and fun was achieved. 

I sure hope that everyone has a wonderful Easter! I love you all.