And dance they did.....

After all their hard work this year, our dance club made the trek to Dauphin for competition. While the drive was utterly boring, we did see a palm tree in the middle of a field in Manitoba. What's that you say? There are no palm trees in Manitoba? Okay, maybe it was just a dead tree in a field. But it made us laugh. There is nothing more that my students look forward to than competition. They get to stay in a hotel, go swimming, and of course Dance. And dance they did.

My first group danced Friday night and walked away with a bronze and a silver medal. I could tell by the looks on their faces after adjudication that they were a little disappointed. I remedied this by asking them is A: they were happy with the way that they danced and B: did they have fun. If the answer to the above questions were yes, then who cares what the adjudicator thought. I assured them that they did awesome and that I was very proud of them.

Saturday morning. It must be Murphy's Law, Dance competition style but it never fails that I ALWAYS have a group performing in the first session of the day. This means being at the competition sight by 8 o'clock in the morning. I swear, in 22 years of dance I have always been one of the first people there in the mornings. The first session would bring another silver medal for my older girls. Again, they did awesome. And I don't think the adjudicators even noticed that one of the girls only has 7 months of dance experience. They rocked it.

My next group to go on was Jr. Hopak which me and hubby taught together. Yeah, they were awesome, wowed the crowd and us. I'll admit it, at the end of the dance I had a tear or two. I would like to say that these kids who are between the ages of 9 and 13 could rival any senior group Hopak. And they were well rewarded for their hard work. GOLD MEDAL.

Unfortuneately due to scheduling conflicts beyond my control; the competition and my S/SGTs retirement party were on the same weekend; and I had to leave Dauphin before half of my groups got to dance. But I did leave hubby in charge. I even had a chance to run through 3 of the 4 dances I would miss with the groups before I left. Which I think made me and the kids feel better. I gave them my famous last words of advice, "Just go out there and have fun!" and left Dauphin with a pang of guilt. I was most concerned about my girls Trans dance and my other girl's Hutzul dance. These two dances had never been performed in public before. But I really should have known better than to doubt my dancers. I got a text message from my bud Kirsten, saying that two of the dances (one being the trans) got gold medals. And then later I sent a text asking if the hutzul had gone yet and I get this message back: "they just finished....Rocked it!" I later found out that they got a gold medal for this dance too. I was so excited for them, but sad that I couldn't be there to tell them in person how very proud I was of them.

And that bring us to my last group of the competition. The one I was most worried about. Teenage girls, drama, and laziness are all factors that can make a dance instructor want to pull out her hair. Hubby later told me that they started off strong but kinda fizzled out towards the end. But they ended up with a Bronze medal, which made me happy.

So at next practice we will spend the class time listening to exactly what the adjudicators had to say about the dances and work from there.