The Plan is Coming Together

I may have mentioned this before. I can’t always remember what topics I’ve discussed and which ones I’ve kept to myself. Anyway, the Famous Franchise loves to give out things at Showcase. Everyone gets some kind of swag for just participating and they sometimes have other awards. They give one for doing multiple routines in a given Showcase and I’ve got plenty of those.

The big one though is for doing nine routines at the same level. A year ago, I saw a student get one of these and something inside me said “I want one of those”. I’ve certainly done far more than nine routines over my dance life but with all the instructor switches I’ve gone through, there has never been enough stability to get to nine at a given level.

So I mentioned that to PJ and we put a plan in place. The good news was that I was four short. We planned it out with two new routines back in June and then one more at the last Showcase in October and the final one at our Showcase in November. Seemed reasonable.

Now, I’m typically not motivated by stuff like this. I’m very driven by intrinsic things that I can never explain to anyone. I can’t really say why this became important to me except that I think it is an acknowledgment of the amount of work required to do that many routines. And, trust me, it takes a lot of effort to learn the choreography and going out there and performing it takes a certain amount of something. I mean a lot of people never try. And, yes, if you made me say it, I’m proud of a lot of those routines.

Well the first three are in the books and life is looking good. Except I sort of forgot that there was only about a month between the last Showcase and the one coming up. With most of the other routines, we had significantly more time to get it done. We did start on this last one but decided to leave the last half of the choreography to the coach who was coming in after the last Showcase.

And this brings up another good news/bad news scenario. When I work with someone who has seen me dance, they seem to want to design something that is challenging. Not totally out of reach but something that will stretch what I can do. This was certainly true of the Argentine Tango which turned out beautifully. But this means it takes a little longer for things to click. It is a good news thing because it means these coaches see something in me but the bad news is that it becomes a little ambitious to learn in a short period of time.

So we’ve been working overtime to get ready. Did a run in front of the other instructors on Tuesday and one of them remarked about how much choreography is actually in the routine. I mean it is all kind of go, go, go. Granted it is only a minute and a half but there’s a boatload of stuff packed into that minute and a half.

I don’t fully get the learning process, I just know there is eventually a moment where something just clicks and your body figures out what it needs to do. We got there last night because we ran it a couple of times with music and it went really smoothly. That isn’t to say that there won’t be some backsliding the next time we try but I do now have evidence that I can do this up to speed so that takes a lot of the anxiety away.

And, of course, I’m my own worst enemy. I mean if we had a couple of bobbles, nobody would really care or notice. I could coast through it and collect the major award. They aren’t going to deny me because we screw something up. It is just the inner perfectionist that says we can’t do that. It needs to be as close to perfect as it can be so just getting through isn’t good enough. I know this isn’t always the best attitude because stuff doesn’t always go well on lessons but I am what I am.

On the other hand, it will certainly make the award that much sweeter if we do a good run. After all, people will only see the minute and a half of the routine – they will have no idea of the hours spent trying to make it look good.