Yup, that’s right, I’m in the paper! My dance studio is in Langley, BC, and as it turns out there are a total of three groups from Langley attending the Master’s Dance Competition by Raise the Barre Productions. There’s a belly dance group, a Polynesian dance group and us, ballet dancers. One of the local news papers, The Langley Advance, decided to write an article about the groups going to the competition and featured the photo that our teacher took of us in our dance’s final pose last week. How awesome is that!
The competition is open to non-pro dancers 18 & up, with every dance discipline split into solo, duo & trio and group division for 18-40 and “still dancing” age groups. We’re in the 18-40 ballet group category, performing a grand waltz choreographed to a piece from Swan Lake.
(Photo © 2012 by Elizabeth Lisa)
In the front row we have Kelsey (stripes) and Stephanie (blonde). In the middle row(s) we have Rachael (brunette in purple), me (centre) and Kim (black leo). In the back centre we have Jac (blue leo) and Kourtney (burgundy leo).
We range in age from 23 to 40-something and represent a mixed bag of experience levels. Kim, Stephanie and I all danced as kids, with Stephanie and Kim having childhood exam-level experience to boot, while Kelsey, Rachael, Jac and Kourtney started dancing as adults, ranging in experience from 1-5 years.
And no, these are not our complete costumes! We’ve been mostly diligent about practising in our tutus, but pretty lax about whatever else we wear to class. Photos in full costume to come, I promise!
In other news (pun intended), we came to dance early tonight for our final pre-competition practice and joined in with our teacher’s grade 5 girls technique class. I must say, I’m jealous of the flexibility on those 10 year olds! If only I could make my grande jeté en tournant look like some of those little girls can, but alas, my hips just don’t let my toes go quite that high. We recovered our honour when everyone was asked to do it again to the left, though. There’s something to be said for understanding the move and asking our bodies to do it rather than relying on muscle memory and a child’s body to get things done. We can reverse things well without practice. That being said, there are a couple of girls in that class who are going to do very far with their dancing. Simply beautiful!
