Is This What YOU Guys Saw?!

I received something in the mail a while back, something I didn't really care about in the first place but the fact that it arrived when I was hoping for/expecting something else didn't help the matter. So this something has sat ignored on my desk for the past few weeks. But now that I am in a happier place and my no school/no work/happy fun time is slowly starting to reach its expiration date, I thought I'd go ahead and punish everyone by posting it. What is this mystery piece of crap, you ask? My recital videos. [Waits for applause to subside...] Yay.

I know that I say the same things every year: that my recitals are terrible, the people in my class are terrible, the music and/or choreography is terrible but this year something else is terrible, too. Me. Now, I'm not trying to make it sound like I think I'm usually Gene Kelly and Ann Miller's love child of dance or anything like that - far from it! It's just that I at least know the steps and have the sense of rhythm and good memory to perform adequately. But this year... Woof. I don't know. It's like the dancing dead. I look dreadful! Awful. I'm sloppy. I look bored. Or sleepy. Or, at the very least, uninterested. It's terrible!!! I never enjoy watching myself on film but I can honestly say that this year's recital is the worst I've seen myself in a while. I am disappointed. And I am sorry that so many of you - especially you new people who hadn't ever seen me dance before! - saw this in person. Once I start working again, I'll give you all a dollar* for your trouble. For those of you that haven't seen it yet but are willing to watch right now, I apologize in advance. (But no money for you. Sorry. You were warned.)

This is 'Beat It.' We are warring gangs, see? We're pink and blue. Scary! I am a blue gangsta; you can find me in the 2nd blue row, the third in line. Once we get out to center stage, I'm pretty much right smack in the middle. You can't really miss me. Unfortunately.

Beat It

And this is 'Takin' Care of Business.' I am the first one out in the front row on the right-hand side. And I stay in the front row for the entire dance. The one nice thing I can say for myself, though, is that I am right on it at the end, when we're "workin' over time." I point to my watch right when I'm supposed to. Yeah!

Takin' Care of Business

* Or maybe discounted veterinary services in 3-5 years.

This Year's Recital Stuff

It's been many moon now since I've had my recital photos and video in my possession but with the wedding and Hawaii and blah blah blah I just haven't had time to actually sit down and get it all uploaded to the blog. But this past weekend I finally buckled down and did it so for your enjoyment, I offer up this year's tap humiliation. :o)

The first dance we did was set to 'Burning Love' as sung by Wynonna. Let me just tell you - you do not know true torture by music until you have to listen to Wynonna's growling and grumbling week in and week out! The dance itself is... okay I guess. It's hard to tell, though, because there are just SO many frickin' people in the class! Apparently, this is because all the older ladies that would normally have signed up for the senior class didn't the like the time and/or day on which it was offered this year, so they signed up for my class. My class was positively packed with Red Hatters!!! I'll be honest - it was annoying. It's always annoying when there are too many people in a class because there's just no room to do steps properly. And with so many, ahem, less... agile people in the class, the steps were noticeably lighter this time around. I mean, it's not like I take tap lessons to be a hard core team dancer or anything - but I would like to at least sort of, maybe, kind of be close to being almost a little challenged. Just once in while. Then again, I don't break off and take classes at a studio because I know the people and I like the people and I'm comfortable so... it's a vicious cycle. :o) Oh well. It IS exercise at least! And this year I noticed there aren't the usual two but three senior tap classes this year so hopefully some of the ladies will opt out of my class next month. We'll see.

(Oh, and in this routine I start out in the back row. As we enter the stage, I'm the 3rd one out in the back line.)

And the 2nd dance we did was to a mishmosh of, like, the theme song to I Love Lucy and "I Go to Rio." That actually might have been a worse song choice than the Wynonna song because I'd wind up leaving class with "I Go to Rio" in my head for at least an hour! :oP And this dance was just ridiculous. The audience thought we were cute in our Lucy costumes and whatnot but the dance was just sooooo easy. Everyone - and I mean everyone - in the class thought it was too simple of a routine so you know it was too easy! (This, however, I should point out does not mean that everyone could perform the steps properly. Ahem.) The amount of arm-rolling was just too much. We all joked that if anyone got lost, they should just start rolling their arms; there was an 80% chance no one would notice! It's true. Plus, red hair is just not a good look for me... ;o)

(In this one I start out in the front row - I wind up 3rd from the left. [I had to latch on to Spazzy Man as he entered the conga line... ick.])

Recital Videos

Now, I know everyone has been waiting, waiting, waiting for my recital video uploads so you'll be ecstatic to know that your wait is finally over!! I'll wait for you to calm yourself and quit shrieking and jumping up and down excitedly...

In keeping with the grand Ohlone College Television tradition, the quality of said videos is spotty at best. But, if you like your videos out of focus then you're in luck!! I swear - isn't Ohlone's broadcasting program supposed to be at least sort of good? 'Cause you can't prove it by this video! (Then again, it is better than the first year's DVD - the one that focused entirely on our faces. I mean, it was only a dance recital - why would anyone want to see our feet?) Since it's hard to pick me out of the blurry mass, I spent oodles of time adding in a few highlighting boxes to point out where my genius can be found on the stage... too bad when I embedded them in the blog post, the annotations didn't show up. So, below are the videos in their original form. If you want to check them out with the helpful little highlight boxes, click on the link after each video. :o) Enjoy! [UPDATE: Since posting this my original YouTube account was deleted; as a result, you can't view the videos with the highlight boxes. Sorry!!]

This is (der) Hound Dog - it was the second number in the first act. I am in the middle of the second row to start (about 5th from the left... I'm the only blond-headed ponytail in the second line), though I do move up to the front line for a bit. It's sort of hard to follow me... like one of those 'follow the ball' shell games, y'know?

This was the the final number of the show - it's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's 'Spamalot.' I am in the front row, third from the right, throughout most of the routine.