I woke up this morning, totally exhausted!  My alarm went off at 8am, I am not sure why I set it for that time, except to maybe work a little before my first dance class since AADA.  I hit the snooze button until 9:20, and then woke up in a hurry thinking I had to meet my friend DH to leave for dance, but we were not meeting till 10:30, so I was good.  I got out of bed anyways and started to get dressed and eat some breakfast.  I made a phone call to my dad to wish him a Happy Father’s Day (wish I was going with him to the Mariner’s game today), one to McKinley and then one to my grandpa (although he was out fishing), so I talked to my mom instead and filled her in on what has happened over this last week, including last nights shenanigans in Santa Barbara.

10:30 came sooner than I had wanted, I didn’t even get my coffee yet.  I headed out to DH’s place (luckily he lives a few blocks away) and I followed him to dance class.  We got there about ten minutes early so we sat and relaxed and I peeked through the window to watch the girl dancing in the other room.  Ms. Hayes arrived a few minutes before class started, it was great to see her again- she was my dance teacher at AADA.   She set up the dance room for us, and we all went in to get our shoes on, pay (great price, btw – you will never find a dance class this cheap, but with such an amazing teacher) and take our spots on the floor for our warm-up.

In the first part of our warm-up we were doing really fun things, running around, skipping, stretching and doing push-ups on the bar, etc. Then came the tough stuff that I totally forgot about from dance at AADA.  We started to do a major crunch routine, I remembered it being difficult while in school at AADA, but our class was so awesome that we would always push each other while counting the sets out loud.  I was actually glad that DH was in class, because he was shouting the counts out, when I had forgotten what number we were on, and he reminded me of my class, which kept me pushing forward and not stopping even though the pain was intense.  The crunches (if I remember correctly) were the last part of our workout, and it got us all sweating pretty good.  DH had to take off for his matinee show, which made the rest of the class just girls… four to be exact, five if you count Ms. Hayes- perfect size.

We started out with some across the floor routines, WOW; it has been a long time.  I remember having a blast dancing in class, but also getting embarrassed because I would mess up, I just wanted to be the perfect dancer, but I wasn’t, I’m still not.  The four of us did our across the floors with the help of Ms. Hayes, and then we went on to an actual routine.  I watch So You Think You Can Dance, and it so badly makes me want to dance, so I was excited to learn a dance routine, imagining what it must be like to have to learn a routine and fast for the show.  Our routine was to a Christina Aguilera song and I was actually getting it and it was fun, but once you put the music on (which speeds the pace up), it threw me off a bit, and if you were to take away my safety (Ms. Hayes), it through me off even more.  I was getting mad at myself because when we started, I was having a blast learning the routine and just letting go and dancing, but then all of a sudden I caught myself getting mad and frustrated, and then I started to mess up, instead of having the routine down.

I had to stop for a second, take a deep breath, and then continue on learning the steps.  I so badly want to get all the steps down and perfect, and I get mad at myself, when I do not really know the step, but I fake it, because I know if someone was watching, they can tell I am faking it, which then reminded me of my dance audition with Norway for Disney Hong Kong in Burbank several years back.  Neither Norway or myself were or are dancers and we were competing against dancers for Disney, although they said that they did not want dancers, they wanted actors to play the roles of the princesses.  I had made it through the second round, but not to the final round (my acting is what pushed me through to the second, not my dancing).

Note to self – relax and have fun, the steps will come naturally.  Dance like nobody is watching.