Theatre Week: Night One

Somehow it is December, even though it feels like early October. Yesterday was our first night of rehearsals in the theatre, leading up to our school shows (tomorrow) and our first weekend of full shows.

This year feels different for some reason, I’m not sure if it’s me, or the fact that it is indeed a different year, or if I just know more people this time, but I’m trying to just take it all as it comes and enjoy every moment.

I feel like I can gauge myself and my growth on a ballet season timeline. Specifically, I feel things more deeply in the winter, and Nutcracker is a prime target of this so it all tends to coincide. (I hope that makes sense. My brain is laggin’) It’s interesting to see which roles I look at one year thinking, “I don’t think I could ever do that,” only to find it as my role the next year and there I am, in fact, doing it.

This is my first year as snow. It’s my second year in Waltz of the Flowers, but as a different flower from the time before. (I love flowers. So much.)

Now I’ve known it to be common place for me to completely screw up my parts on the first stage run through. I still haven’t figured out why I do this, exactly, but it happens. My first year, I completely marked a turn instead of doing it. Like. What?!
This year has proven to be just the same (Though I don’t remember it being as bad last year or during Swan Lake. Or Oz for that matter. Regardless, I was a hot mess yesterday.

I wasn’t in the cast that got to do a formal marking, and maybe that had something to do with it, though I tried my best to pay attention to where my share was. I managed to somehow slip (which was actually completely unnoticeable) right before the circle-to-the-floor step that I’ve been working on to try to improve (and had finally mastered) which threw me off mentally and caused me to completely suck at the step I had been working on, as well as the next step after. It was terrible. I tried to play it off, but really it was embarrassing. Thankfully, one of the girls in my cast had a video of it, so I was able to watch it and see exactly what I did and where I really need to improve and push myself. (My jete’s are a joke, y’all.)

Now I can make excuses all day as to why I can’t do this, or why that is a struggle, but really, anyone could if they wanted to. And honestly, I was the worst in the video overall, which actually made me feel oddly good in some ways. Everyone else is really working hard and doing so well, it’s going to look great. It also makes me want to work harder to keep up. There’s tons of things I wish I could change about myself to be better, but I can’t control them so what I can do is work with what I have and push myself. Here’s what it all boils down to. It’s now or never.

I was much more confident going into Flowers. It’s my favorite role and as long as I go over my trouble spots before, I don’t have an issue.
Until, ya know, I had an issue.

If you want reasonings, surroundings were different, and people were marking, and it threw me off because things didn’t look the same and I was relying on that since my brain was already proving to be fried from the day, but really I should know better and be able to adapt even if things go weird. (Which I have before. So what was my deal yesterday? And I messed up my favorite part! How does that even happen?!) I ended up running offstage when I definitely wasn’t supposed to, and didn’t even realize it for a few moments. Then I see everyone else on stage, in their poses, and I’m like. Welp.
I waited until it was our time to move again into a bourree circle and just ran on like it was totally normal and joined back in. I didn’t mess up on the ending part I had been messing up lately, so that’s good. But seriously? What the heck?

I’m hoping now that all those mess ups are out of my system, the shows will be better. I still feel bad though, if we’re being honest. I’m not up to my own expectations and it makes me mad. I should be better. I should be able to keep up. It shouldn’t be this much of a struggle. So I’m going over and over the dance in my head, hoping it’ll become second nature and I can do the dance justice and also not let my fellow dancers down.

I have my follow up appointment to go over my bloodwork tomorrow, though I got my results in the mail yesterday. There’s abnormalities in one of the tests that shows an auto immune issue with leanings towards Lupus. I’m being referred to a Rheumatologist for further testings and to see about an actual diagnosis, but just to know that I’m not crazy and there’s something here to go off of makes me feel so good.I’m getting closer to having an actual reason for why I’ve been feeling so terribly and struggling so much in life.I’ll keep you updated on that.

Tonight is night two of Theatre Week. I don’t know how much dancing I’ll actually do in it, but I’ll be there for support nonetheless.

Soaking up all these moments while I have them.