Christmas? Where did it go?

This has not been a very good start to my winter break.  It started off with me desperately searching for music for my soloist and going to what felt like the ends of the internet to find a costume for Ophelia.  Think I found one.  Maybe.  

Then I got incredibly lazy and did pretty much nothing for about a week except watch season one of HBO's True Blood and choreograph.  If you like vampires, sex, and vampires having sex then you'd like True Blood.  If there isn't sex at least every ten minutes then HBO wasn't doing there job.  This show is ridiculous.  First, I watched it because I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen and then I actually got interested in the plot.  I love anything with vampires and I thought that since it was a Alan Ball creation that it would be amazing.  The writing is pretty darn bad but once I got into it I could easily look over the horrible dialogue.  Pretty sure I saw every woman's breasts except for Grandma and every guy's ass.  Which I didn't mind in the least.  Great  show.  Check it out.

I got a wonderful kidney infection due to my polycystic kidney disease right before all the Christmas festivities.  Lovely timing.  Lots of sleepless nights until I was able to get to the doctor and get antibiotics.  Other than that Christmas was pretty uneventful which was a good thing.  I had absolutely no energy and spent Christmas trying to catch up on two nights of missing sleep.  

I also just started watched Showtime's The Tudors.  It's not bad.  Another one of those show's all about sex.  I'm for some reason attracted to those haha.  I'll probably finish season one of that in the coming week.

Lots of relatives over this weekend.  I gotta get more motivated and do some serious choreographing, costume purchasing, and music shopping but I just can't seem to bring myself to do it.  I'm incredibly lazy when I'm on break.  I think it's because I bust my ass so much during the semester with school work, rehearsals, and concerts.  Oh, well.  I'll get to it....tomorrow.

Anything but Finals

I have a HUGE final Friday afternoon of which I should probably be studying for at his exact moment but I feel so drained and done with this semester that I can't even bring myself to open my notes.  

I have done everything this week but study.  I've been writing like crazy.  Choreographing.  Editing music.  Filling out submission forms for the Undergraduate Women's Conference and sleeping...LOTS of sleeping.  Maybe I have mono?  I have no energy at all.  Notice all the things I've done this week can be done within the confines of my bedroom.  But I guess you can't have mono twice, can you?  Oh, well I guess I can't make excuses for pure laziness.  I keep trying to justify it and say was a busy and stressful semester I've had but it wasn't any worse than any other semester.  Must by the senioritis.  There I go...making excuses again.  

We had our first cast meeting tonight for Leader of the Pack.  We did a read through which was kinda pointless for us mere dancers who have no lines or singing and therefore did not receive a script.  So we basically just sat and listened to everyone else.  Still no other men save the lead.  Clair keeps saying that he is assembling the other men.  As long as I don't have to dress up as a guy, I'm cool with it.  

I suppose I ought to begin to be productive and study.  

Oh, but before I go...I want to wish a very VERY happy birthday to my good friend, Superman 

A Part of the Pack

Oooooh what a weekend.

Friday we gave a sneak peak performance of our Christmas concert, "Here We Come a Caroling!" The music ensembles sang/played for forty minutes and our dance ensemble only got to dance for 10 minutes!!!  We had to get in full hair and makeup for that!  And that's not even the best part.  When this little performance was advertised to the school, they said to "bring your lunch!" since the show was from 12-1, our communal lunch time on campus.  So, as I'm onstage and I can hear bags rustling and the smell of pizza and all I could think was, "Gosh, I'm hungry."  I know it was an informal performance and that it was over  lunch hour and that I should be thankful to have an audience at all, but how rude is it to eat during a performance?!  Ugh.  Oh, well.  

Later Friday afternoon I finally received the email I had been waiting for since Tuesday night.  I was cast in Leader of the Pack!!!!  They selected 10 dancers, all girls.  Who or where the male dancers are coming from, I have no idea.  We have a cast meeting on Tuesday night.  I'm really excited to start but I know once we get rolling I'm going to grow rather tired of the 60s music.  Next semester will be particularly busy and I'm not so sure how I'm going to handle it all but I'm thankful for this month long break to rest and prepare myself.  

Next semester I'll have 21 credits.  Cultural Dynamics of Movement, The Environment 101, Intermediate Modern, Senior Project Production Meetings, Student Dance Works Class, Directing for the Stage, Modern Company A, Kinesiology for Dancers, Fine Arts Seminar, Modern Company B, Rehearsals for my SDW piece, my senior project, Carrie's SDW piece, Cady's SDW piece, and Leader of the Pack rehearsals tucked in there somewhere.  I'm exhausted just listing it.  

I attempted to take things easy on Saturday.  I have a busy week of papers and studying ahead and I just wanted one day where I didn't have to do something school related.  Some of my former dance students from Encore who now perform for Allegro now that Encore closed, had a small performance Saturday afternoon and I decided to surprise them and come see it.  I was so happy to see everyone and it reminded me how much I missed teaching and not to brag, but how damn good I was at it too!  After the studio closed, I had parents calling me asking me where I was going to be teaching because they wanted their kids to go where I was going to go.  I got lots of hugs...some tears and a lot of smiles!  I miss my little girls so much!  They already look so much bigger!!!  I refuse to be one of those teachers who loses touch w/ people and who doesn't support their students.  I've sent all my former teachers the dates of my performances and they've never came and now I'm a senior.  

Today we had our full-length Christmas concert and boy did things start out badly.  We were told that the music ensemble would perform for 1 hour.  The program book listed three pages worth of music.  There was no way this was going to be done in one hour.  Of course as performers we were asked to arrive an hour before show time.  2 hours and 45 minutes later it was intermission.  That was the longest chorus concert of my life!  And then to go onstage and subject the audience to 40 minutes of Bach and modern dance!  UGH!  I love dancing to Bach, don't get me wrong but after rehearsing for three months and sitting through that, I was ready for a nap and mostly because I was bored not tired.  Afterwards we all went out to dinner which was nice because my best friend, Carrie is leaving campus tomorrow and I won't see her until January.  

Oh, well.  Not too much left this semester.  Papers due tomorrow.  Paper due Wednesday.  Final on Friday and sometime this week I have to videotape myself doing my Senior Project dance so I can put the videos on Facebook for my dancers.  Nothing will make me angrier than coming back in January and have to re-teach everything.  Well, and so I don't forget it too! :) 

Auditions & the End of the Semester

So much is going on these last couple of weeks.  My head is spinning just trying to keep all of it straight.

We had auditions this week for Leader of Pack.  I decided to audition as just a dancer, hoping (fingers crossed) that will require less rehearsals for my already extremely busy semester.  The audition was really easy, very generic 60s moves.  It seems like they are going for the more Mod look that was popular in the 60s which is great.  Only one guy showed up at the audition so I hope Clair (the man) has some men up his sleeve somewhere.  Callbacks are tonight but luckily none of the "just dancers" who auditioned are being called back.  That works really well for me because we have tech tonight for our dance concert on Sunday.  So, it would be really hard to be in two places at once.  Although I may prefer to be at callbacks.  It's a tough choice...60s rock-n-roll or Bach? Hmmm

I also had dance finals this week that were INCREDIBLY easy (thank God).  Our jazz final was a combination and anatomy questions.  My question:  "Where is your ulna?"  Pretty sure I got an A.  And my tap final was a combination called the Shim Sham.  Very easy.  I could have done that final the first month of school when we originally learned it.  Sometimes I wonder if I really am in college.

This morning was upsetting because it was my last English class.  I decided for some odd reason to take Contemporary British Literature (which I quite obviously don't need as a dance and theatre major).  I loved the class!  The books we read were amazing.  I could take that class all year if they offered it.  The last book we read that we finished for today was my favorite by far.  Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.  Amazing.  Anyone who likes detective novels (ahem Nick) should definitely read this book.  She has two other books that follow the detective from Case Histories so I will definitely be reading those over break.  The professor keeps trying to talk me into becoming an English Major (as if I need a third major my last year of college haha).  

Almost done.  I just keep telling myself that.  One more concert, one more paper and one more exam away from freedom.