Step up to the beat...

I haven't got anything really important to share with you all, but I thought I'd write anyway, because this blog is about me keeping you all updated on what's going on in my life, even if I don't think it's very exciting or blog-worthy!

So...

Yesterday we had our dance eisteddfod. We usually enter one eisteddfod a year, and it's always the CBAA (the association our dance studio belongs to) one, but this year we decided to enter others. Yesterday we went to the Step Up to the Beat eisteddfod at Castle Hill.

I was looking forward to a relaxing morning, because we didn't have to get there until 3. We have to have part of our hair braided for the competition, so I'd organised for my friend from church to do it on Friday night before Youth Group, since I am terrible at braiding.
So, I was all organised. My friend Claryse was going to come over at 1.30pm and we were going to drive in together.

And then, at 12.45pm, I get two messages on my phone. The first one, from Claryse saying she's coming over at 1.00 now instead, so we can leave early and get our hair done there.

What?!

The next message, from Sally, our dance teacher says after some reflection, they've decided to change our hair to another type of braid.


So, in the next 15 minutes, I hurriedly wash my hair (there was that much gel and hair spray in it, there's no way they'd be able to do it without me washing it first), blowdry it and straighten it.
Claryse arrives and I'm flying around the house, getting costumes out of the dryer, stockings off the washing line, shoes from my closet. And I'm still not dressed. Not an inch of makeup on, let alone any stage makeup.

Then we walk outside, and it's raining. Awesome. And how are we supposed to keep our hair straight when it's raining?! We run out huddled under our jackets, shove all our stuff into my car, and turn Tom Tom on. I type in Castle Hill and look for the street name that the High School the eisteddfod is at. We know it's Castle something. Well, it turns out there's Castle Street, Castle Road, Castle Place, Castle Hill Road... a million options. Which one is it?

I run back inside, check the note and find it's Castle Street. Sweet.


Half an hour later, it's raining a lot, and it's dark and I really have no idea where we are, but we somehow make it to the school and park where we see Sally's car because we figure that she'll park closest to the entrance. Wrong. We end up having to call her, because we're standing in the rain with our costumes and can't find the hall. After a serious tiki tour where we practically walk around the whole school, trying fruitlessly to avoid the huge puddles that have amassed on the paths, we find everyone.

Only to find no one is there yet to do our hair. And we only have a few sections until our section. A little bit of panic sets in, but we resolve to be efficient and go do our make-up. I take my hair straightener with me because I hope to be able to undo some of the damage that the rain afflicted on my now wavy hair. Well, I plug it in to the one power socket we could find. And nothing. The plug doesn't work. Fabulous. Oh well . We're rocking the messy hair look.

Our first dance is ballet. We manage to find one of the mums to do our hair (and then halfway through she realises she's braiding mine as an outside braid rather than an inside braid, but I tell her don't worry about it, at this point it really doesn't matter!) and we get in our costumes. Luckily I had the sense to grab that second pair of ballet stockings off the clothesline, because the first pair I brought with me have a massive hole in them.

Anyway, finally, finally we are all dressed and waiting. Our section is meant to start at 4.00pm, so we all start stretching while we wait for our section to be called. And then there is confusion about our music. And confusion about what number our section is (they put our jazz section right after our ballet section, which is ridiculous because there's no way we'd be able to get changed fast enough, so we organised with them to put our ballet section earlier, but apparently they forgot about that!) 4.00 comes and goes. 5.00 comes and goes. At about 5.40, we go backstage. All this, and did I mention we were the only group to dance in our section? We could have gone on stage and stood there for 3 minutes, and we still would've won.

After that first dance, the rest of the now night seems to go a bit faster. They are running way behind schedule. We start to wonder if we're ever going to get out of here in enough time to go see the movie we'd planned to go see together. We do our jazz/funk dance and then our contemporary. We don't place in either. The adjudicator only gives out 1st place. No 2nd or 3rd, thanks very much. I could go on about what kind of adjudicator we all really think he was (90 out of 100 only got Highly Commended! We apparently "overdanced" our contemporary! How do you do that at an eisteddfod! Our choreography for jazz/funk was "messy"! Let's not point out that the choreography of everyone else in that section could've been danced by 5 year olds!) but I won't.

Suffice it to say that some of us felt the day was a major waste of time. For us senior dancers at least. The intermediates kicked butt and showed us up with 2 first places.
All the rushing around, then the waiting around, then the confusion and the disappointment.
As I said to one of the new girls, "welcome to eisteddfods!"

Wait. Maybe that is a bit exciting after all!