Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance:)

So, (have you noticed that I start every blog like that?) we had a dance compeition on Sunday in Iowa City at the Marriot. This is the local dance compeition "Statewide" that we always take almost our whole studio to. Donna, the owner, took over 100 students by herself. Not to mention, my three dance instructors, Joise, Kyanne, and Rachel took almost every dance they teach (if not every one). Every single one of my dances went (including my duet with Jenna).
In the morning, I woke up at 6:00, to leave at 7:00, so my sister could be there at 7:30. Her first dance was at 9:30, and my first one was at 9:45. Since I was the first one to roll out of bed, I just decided to do all my make up and get dressed, so I could just chill when we got there. But, mine and Jenna's duet had a conflict, because we were supposed to compete with that at the same time were supposed to compete with our tap dance in the other room. So, Jenna and I got there early and danced at 8:30. It was the best we've ever performed it. Our song is "Mad World" and we're supposed to be tormented by each other. We do two completely different styles, and wear two different costumes, do our hair differently, and wear different shoes. I do ballet, and she does a more modern-type style. At our last compeition, in Davenport, when we performed, the judges were confused by why we were wearing two different shoes. We did completely different things throughout the whole dance, and the one thing they commented on was our different shoes. We weren;t sure whether or not we should keep everything completely different, but that was the reason behind the whole dance, so we kept it different, and if they didn't get it at this one, we'd think about changing it for our last compeition...We haven't gotten back the comments yet, so I don't know if we're changing it for the last one or not.

Our next dance we did was modern. This was our least-beast dance (? I don't know how to quite word it right). We haven't had everyone there to really work on it and clean it as well as we could, so we took a risk and did it. In this one part of the dance, I actually fell, and my friend fell on my ankle, and now it's a wonderful shade of blue. It hurt really bad, but all the people watching said that it looked intentional, so we don't think it was as bad as it could've been.
After modern, we had a while to rest, and then we had jazz. This as with troupe. We were all really nervous going into it, because we had STIFF compeition, but we were all pumped to go out there and blow wake up the judges. Our jazz dance is the most physically demanding dance I've ever done, and at 10:30 in the morning, that dance will take a lot out of you. After we performed, we walked off feeling like we left everything we had on the stage. We had nailed almost everything in that dance, and everyone felt completely happy with their performance.
Then, after jazz, we had lyrical, which is by far, our best dance. Our goal is to move everyone, and make our mothers cry. As terrible as it sounds, it's the point of the dance. It's about growing up, and how we don't have childhood anymore. Sarah, our only senoir, almost always cries at the end with her solo. It's so sad, and great that we got a diamond (which is like a platinum...a first FIRST place) for it at our last competition, so we felt very solid about it.

Then we had a quick change and did our pointe dance. It's to the song "Ramalama Bang Bang." And if you know that song, you can picture how tight this dance is. We wear black and white lacey, tool and ribbion tutus, with lace gloves and black tights. We try to be as creepy as we can, and apparently it worked! Jenna's TA class watched it, and said they were kinda freaked out.

Then we had tap, which went really well, for those of us who aren't very good at tap *cough cough* myself *cough* And we hadn't done that dance in two weeks!

Then we had five and a half hours of nothing before we did our production number. So I currled up in the corner of the dressing room that I had taken over with all my crap, and took an hour nap. It was wonderful!:)

A lot of the girls went to the mall, between the break, so there wasn't a lot of us around. But we all met up again in the dressing room at 5:00, so we could warm up. We practiced our dance outside, on the bricks, because there was no room anywhere else to practice! That was probably the weirdest thing we did all day.

Then we went and performed our production, and did the best we've ever done on it! It was really successful, and Kyanne (who cleaned it) was really proud of us. For half of us, we had ballet a little bit after it, and this was the one I had been dreading all day. I was so nervous for it, because my dance teacher had me do 12 flags (turns with your leg out) and a double in these little foot paws (they cover half your foot, and aren't really good for doing a lot of turns in them) I was actually really upset she wouldn't let me do the dance in my ballet shoes, but I had no choice. I couldn't think of anything else during the performance, but when it came time for me to do the flags, I nailed them. But, I actually did too many turns. I did 13 flags and a triple (I didn't find that our until after the performance, when Rachel said she counted how many I did). I literally fell over off stage because I was SOOOOO happy! Everyone said they were worried for me to, and knew that I nailed them, because everyone cheered afterwards. I WAS SO HAPPY!

And here's the awards we got:
Duet (with me and Jenna): High Gold

Modern: Gold
Jazz: High Gold
Lyrical: Gold (we're still confused about why this one didn't do really well...)
Pointe: High Gold
Tap: High Gold
Production Lyrical: High Gold
Ballet: High Gold

But, sadly, no Platinums. Last year, we got all Platinums...they basically handed them out like they were free water. But this compeition was three times as big as it was last time, and the competition was phenominal. The judges were tough, and actually gave out Platinums to the deserving dances. There actually weren't that many Platinums handed out, so we felt really good about our performances!

:)