Sights and Sounds of America |Dreams That Glitter

For the past few months my ballet classes have been spent preparing for a show that’s now all over for another two years when the next one will be. It was a lot of the girls’ last show as well as they’re all going off to uni etc, and if I’m still there in two years time I’ll be one of the oldest left. Does this mean I may get a part? Possibly, though it’s equally likely for the younger ones below me to get the proper parts and I’ll still just be in a group…

Although it was many people’s last show, it was also my friend Maisie’s first ballet show. 

 

The whole thing varied from stressful to a lot of fun but generally speaking I’ve always liked doing the shows. I did my first when I was 5 and always imagined what it would be like to be one of the older ones and ten years later here I am. I have to say I also hoped I would be in better costumes by now but I’m not really. The indian one was a dark green tunic type thing with trousers and they were a suede material, not the most fashionable, and of course the feather headbands. I was also in an evil mask dance where I had to wear a bright orange long sleeved leotard with this netted tabard thing over it, and a white mask which looked quite creepy… The best costume was probably the sun ones, a bright yellow leotard and various coloured long skirts, mine was gold. We also had a sequin waistband and gold tiara like headpiece. 

The ballet was called Silver Cloud and the story line was rather basic, there was an indian girl and boy about to get married, but then an evil snake comes and takes the boy and puts him under a trance. Various things happen and then everything ends happily and they kill the snake and the settlers and indians are united together. Make sense at all? Probably not. But it was fun to do and I spent quite a lot of time on stage which is quite unusual as in previous years I’ve had one 60 second dance in the entire ballet. 

So now ballet goes back to focusing on exam work! Here are some more pictures from the dressing room:

 

 

 

 

A Night At The Movies |Dreams That Glitter

It occurred to me that I only posted about my solo (how selfish) last week, so I wanted to do another post as a general summary of the whole show. I’m pretty sure I mentioned that it had a movie theme in previous posts, but some of the other numbers included The Matrix, Jai Ho, a medley of about 10 different movie soundtracks including Grease, Chicago, Mamma Mia etc. There was also a James Bond routine, West Side Story and a Dirty Dancing finale (yes, they did the lift).

All ready in our Jai Ho outfits

All in all I think the show was a big success and I really loved doing it, even with all the stress of trying to remember everything.. It was so much fun and I really don’t think two nights was enough, I’d have loved to do it all week! I’m glad we had more than one though like there’s been in the past, because then you at least have another chance to do better than the time before and there’s not as much pressure to do everything to absolute perfection on the one night. I think everyone is five times more nervous on the first night too, and after that you can relax ever so slightly because you know it will go ok. 

We also performed the Matrix number in assembly every day after lunch to each different year group and I still haven’t really decided whether it was fun or embarrassing. Considering we were wearing rather unflattering disco pants which caught the lights in all the wrong places and displayed even minimal VPL, it was quite enjoyable and I would be willing to do it again… The worst one was definitely doing it in front of my own year group because it was people I knew and although we were hidden behind dark sunglasses we were pretty distinguishable when we turned up to last lesson ten minutes late and with our hair all slicked back into french plaits (I did mine and Maisie’s every day at lunch, I got rather pro at it by the time Friday came along).

I think that’s just about all I’ve got to say about that! On Friday and Saturday I’m doing another dance show which contains mine and Maisie’s ‘Two Pieces’ choreography and we’re doing Jai Ho with only 5 of us (there was 15 in the show) which I’m looking forward to I suppose, but I have to say I’m a bit gutted I’m missing the last ballet classes before christmas to do it.

Flashdance Solo |Dreams That Glitter

Apologies for my rather lengthy absence on here recently… I’ve come to the conclusion that blogging is just not my thing. I don’t have the motivation to write regularly enough or write interestingly enough to attract even a nearly significant amount of readers that aren’t my friends that know everything I’m writing about anyway. This isn’t to say I’m going to completely give up with this blog because when things happen I do like to sum it all up in a post and share it with whoever is willing to listen to me ramble on halfheartedly, but I’m not going to stress out if I haven’t done a post for a whole week, I’m just gonna write whenever a) I have something interesting to talk about and/or b) I have the time and patience to write everything out. It doesn’t help that I have a temporary phone at the moment so I don’t have the wordpress app and I had to delete it from my iPod because the memory on it is still getting progressively worse I swear.

Anyway. Moving on.

This is my solo that I choreographed myself for the school dance show ‘A Night At The Movies’. My teacher asked me if I’d do a solo quite a while ago and I agreed slightly hesitantly after a few seconds consideration, assuming that there would be at least a couple of others in the year above that would also be doing one. I found out on Monday at the dress rehearsal that it was in fact just me on my own, and all the other numbers were group ones. That did panic me slightly because I think it put more pressure on me because I was now ‘that girl who danced on her own’.

If I had got to it quicker and choreographed it a little earlier so that I had more time to practice it and make sure I definitely knew every single step inside out (I finished it last Sunday – cutting it a bit fine) then I think it could have gone a bit better but overall I’m quite impressed with myself because I got up and did it in front of everyone even though it was pretty nerve wrecking. There’s probably no way I would’ve done that last year.

Anyway here’s the video from last night, feel free to comment and let me know what you think…

Dance Company Update |Dreams That Glitter

Look what my fabulous friend Amy made! Isn’t she clever?;)

I just got some rather exciting news…. I got into the school dance company! I’m so happy and can’t wait to start rehearsals on Tuesday! I don’t think my audition went quite as well as it could have to be honest but I guess that doesn’t matter because I got in as long as I keep working hard and put lots of effort in. I’m getting a copy of the video of my solo from the audition from my teacher, I forgot to take in my memory stick earlier in the week and then my teacher wasn’t in, so hopefully I’ll get hold of that on Tuesday and post it here if I can bare it. Hopefully there’s an improvement at least in the performance side of it from the other video I posted from Sunday. I’ve just realised this now means on Tuesdays I’m going to be in school over 9 hours from 7.15 – 4.30…. that’s not a nice thought. Trampolining at 7.15, I then have PE and Dance in the day and then dance company after… I shouldn’t complain though should I?! With the help of coffee and some kind of energy filled foods I’m sure I’ll get through it all. And then probably an early night. Anyway, we’re working towards a show in December called ‘Night at the Movies’ and we’re doing pieces from the Matrix and Slumdog Millionaire, so it should be good!

A bit of a ballet update here while I’m at it… Pointe is going really well, I can actually do things without clutching onto the barre for dear life, hooray! My friend Maisie (I’ve mentioned her a few times before) has started ballet and been coming to the Inter Foundation class I do before pointe, and she’s doing really well so yay for that too! And my teacher is clearly already considering her a favourite which is always a bonus. 😉

Ok I think that’s it for now… Happy Friday! Hope you all have a fabulous weekend. 🙂 xxx