Dance Practice Disappointment

This is the week of the dance show, so a certain amount of mental unrest is fairly typical for me.

Alas, aside from the usual excitement and tummy flutters I experience before I dance in front of people, this time I'm feeling an unsettling mix of frustration and disappointment.

The dance group has had very few nights where everyone has shown up for practice. Two members have perhaps shown up three times total out of perhaps ten practices. As a consequence, dance number one (with the swords) is mostly ready for the stage.....but dance number two is sadly unpolished.

The two dancers who have been absent constantly apparently emailed the rest of us last week saying they'd be unable to participate in the second dance, but none of us got the message. Unfortunately, this leaves big holes in the dance where their parts were (we've been practicing pretending we were dancing with them as part of the number). Actually sometimes there were three of us dancers pretending the other four dancers were there! It's been rather disheartening, not to mention difficult.

We tried to show it to another dance teacher (3 of us) and she smiled and nodded kindly and said: "You have some good ideas there...but there are some holes..." Yes, several dancers missing for starters!

Frustration! Aaargh! I'm ready to throw my hands up and say: Let's just do ONE dance and do it FABULOUSLY...instead of doing a second one in a half-assed fashion. In fact, I DID say it today. Other dancers did too. The sword dance may be a slow piece, but it's intense and interesting at least.

But one of the troupe, Bee, has invited eleven guests and is very upset at the idea of us giving up the drum dance. She is going to experience intense disappointment if we do. "I am going to be very hurt and very angry if we do that", she said, and she fixed us all with a determined steely gaze.

I understand her point of view: she is one of the dancers who has put a LOT of time in.

The thing is: there is only ONE more opportuniy for the entire group to practice together before the show. If people don't show up for tomorrow's practice, the second dance simply won't happen.

But if they DO, even then, it's going to be a scramble getting it together. I am so not in my happy place about dancing right now.

I've been thinking about my reasons for not blogging as much lately, and I'll have to partially attribute it to this dance show. Last week: Sunday morning practice, Monday evening, Tuesday evening, Wednesday evening, Thursday evening dance class, and Sunday morning again. And the other part of the time I'm in too black a mood to write.

Well, er, I've been out in the garden a lot too, so I suppose it's not all doom and gloom.....

You'd think with something taking up so much time and energy, this performance could have been an amazing piece of art. But you can't make a team effort with half the team missing.

Thank you, readers, for listening to my rant.

Normal blogging without dance-related emotional angst scheduled to resume starting sometime around Friday night.

I still can't publish pictures...hmmm....