Theme Song: "Gone" - Jessica Riddle
Powerwalk, James, Powerwalk! *panting, swiveling the hips* Must. Get. To. Dance Ensemble! Meeting. These thoughts rush through my head once Marching Band practice runs overtime and I'm already 15 minutes late to the Dance Ensemble Fall Sign-Up Meeting. Of course I get there just as people are leaving, which leaves me enough time to pick up a listing of the available classes, but too late to hear the choreographer's descriptions. D'oh!
The next day, during one of Sara and my QAF nights, Dance Ensemble comes up. Sara tells me that she's signed up for Broadway. *hiss!* At first, I'm adamant about joining that, but THEN, she tells me that it's to "We Both Reached For The Gun" from Chicago. HELL YEAH! I'm not much of a Showtune guy, but I do love that song, or more specifically, the acrobatic ventriloquist dance from the movie version. So, come Thursday evening, Sara and I give it a shot.
Surprise of surprises when Jen (our choreographer) turns on the stereo and I hear some guy singin' Vaudeville-style. "Humma-wha?" It seems that we're not dancing to the song from Chicago but to another song from The Producers. Although the first thought in my head is, "Hmmmm... I'm out," combined with the fact I haven't really associated with Theatre people, Wonda' Woman encourages me to give it a shot and Lo & Behold, after a few weeks, the "Old Lady Dance" to Along Came Bialy actually grows on me and becomes a lot of fun.
Of course, a couple weeks before the show, it's revealed that the BOMB Squad will make a guest appearance at the Fall Recital, at which we'll perform 2 numbers: the Hip Hop routine we unveiled at Pep Rally and a brand spankin' new African Dance some of us'll learn over a course of 5 days. The night of the show rolls around and I distinctly remember rolling up that hideous semi-slutted-up shirt I'm wearing for the African dance and stuffing it into a plastic bag. I don't know, maybe it's a Freudian thing, but everything after that point is an absolute blank, up until the point when I'm backstage rummaging through the bag only to find that the shirt's missing, the faint smell of kerosene on my hands. *shifty eyes* Weird.
As with every performance, right before we go on, the feeling of absolute nausea (accompanied by "the Shakes") comes over me and remains until about 10 seconds into the routine, then IT'S GO-TIME! :-D BOMB Squad goes on, we do a good job (always improving), and later in the show, our "rivals," D.O.D. (Doin' Our Dance), also performs a Hip Hop number at the Recital. Gotta say, honestly, I'm still not impressed. Really, "Sunshine" & Jermarco are the only two who look like they could hold their own as technical dancers--bundles of energy and clean movements, I love it! However, I will admit that the group, as a whole, is steadily getting better with each performance; plus, they've got a stellar hype crew in the audience. Mmm'hmm.
My favorite performances of the night are GWATECKY's Modern Tribal Bellydance, Brian & Lauren's Candyman Swing, Marilyn's Hip Hop (set to Scream, one my absolute favorite dance songs of yesteryear), Marilyn & Victoria's Contemporary Duet... Come to think of it, Marilyn was doin' the damn thing, as usual! Kyle even brought her in to help us out with the African dance--ironic how the white girl is the best African dancer (besides Kyle) of our group. Respect.
Once the dancing stops, I start having fun with the footage I recorded during the Sunday performance. Even though I'm not the videographer for the event, I still love to play around with dancing footage; plus, I'm ALWAYS looking for projects that I can add to my video portfolio. ;-D Anywho, after releasing a series of JiMBO-fied web vids on FaceBook, this catches the eye of the club president, Marilyn (yet again). Since the video they originally intended to release was botched, she asked if I could help out, so of course, I just leap at the chance to design another DVD. HELL YEAH!!
After days of hard work on iMovieHD & iDVD and getting to experiment more deeply with sound properties, the recital is finally finished. AND luckily, I've gotten nothing but compliments on the DVD design, which couldn't make me happier. FANTASTIC JOB in the show, everybody!
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