Yes – I did it. I performed in front of three people and I didn’t fall! No, seriously, there were more than three people there and I did lose my balance a bit at the beginning, on a completely easy step, though I didn’t fall. I think it was because of the lights – they were so bright. It always looks like performers are looking at you – how do they do that? Even though we had a dress rehearsal with the lights, I was still a bit disoriented, and I lost my footing on a step that required me to face toward the audience, rather than Pasha. Thankfully, he was holding on to me. And it was at the beginning, before all of our lifts and tricks, so hopefully people didn’t remember 🙂 After that, I just tried to focus on Pasha, even when I was to face front. Everything went okay; it wasn’t my best run-through of the routine, but wasn’t my worst. And I think my nerves about performing were overtaken with nerves about the dress working out. But very very cool thing: because the studio co-owner felt badly for me because of my costume fiasco, she ended up letting me wear one of her old costumes. So, I got to wear a dress formerly worn by the 1995 national Latin champion! Sweet end to a screwed-up ordeal!
Oh, and I realized the coach was right when he reminded me that the audience is largely comprised of regular people, not professional dancers. We got applause for all of our lifts – even the ones where I couldn’t hoist myself up as far as I wanted to or forgot to point my toe or didn’t get my back leg into a perfect attitude position – basically had a problem with each one, but still cheers… And, we got applause for my dip / spin / lift thingy that I worked so hard to do properly and wanted in the routine so badly – well, dancer Karina Smirnoff’s dip / spin / lift thingy. And many many many thanks to Pasha for letting me practice it over and over, seeing as how it’s hard not to knee the guy on your way toward him and into the trick. Anyway, this whole thing taught me that maybe I have a choreographic sense of what audiences like – even if said audience is just being nice to the dancer me by applauding my screw-ups. I wanna be a choreographer now! Although since I wasn’t a real dancer first, maybe that wouldn’t work too well… I’d be asking dancers to do things that were physically impossible or something…
