It’s been more than a week since the show and I’m just now getting around to writing about it. I got sick immediately after the show, which isn’t surprising, since I was incredibly run down from the worry and extra practices. Then I had to quickly shift into last-minute Christmas shopping and wrapping mode. Now that I’m done with that, I can share a few thoughts.
I think it’s probably good that I didn’t have time to blog right after our performances or I might have over shared. Now that I’ve had time to think about it before putting my thoughts into print, I’m going to take a different approach to the post-show review.
The conductor of the chorale with which I sing tells us never to show our “learning curve” or reveal our mistakes to the audience after a performance; it’s not professional, and we’re supposed to be a professional group. So I generally don’t. But then, it’s more difficult to recognize mistakes in a chorale performance, unless maybe you’ve got a highly trained ear. In a student dance recital, that’s not quite the case. If one dancer in the group is off or if a soloist stumbles a bit, the audience will surely notice.
Still, there are probably things I/we did that the audience did not notice. So I’m going to leave those things alone. Why draw attention to things that the audience might not have been aware of?
One of my compañeras says she has a knack for forgetting her mistakes. I think this is a gift. On the flip side, what I have learned about myself in this process of learning and performing is that I have a knack for remembering EVERY misstep in EVERY choreography I EVER performed. EVER. This, I’m certain, is a curse.
So what I’ll say is, I made mistakes. Some big, some small, some really stupid that left me thinking, “WTF happened?!” and were hard to shake off. But I’m not going into detail here.
One of my New Year’s resolutions is get out of my head and quit obsessing over mistakes made in the past, both with the dance and in other areas of my life. If I don’t, I’ll never be able to move on and up. I just have to recognize them, learn from them and then let them go. Having years worth of crumpled up mistakes cluttering up my brain is not helping my progress. It’s time to take out the trash.
I’m looking forward to putting on my shoes and starting fresh in January. Happy New Year, everyone.
Married to the Dance 