Summer Dance Party

Our annual summer haffla was Sunday. I was so nervous about our new dance. They've played around with if for years, but never officially learned and performed it due to the difficulty level. Well, we learned it and performed it in two months! I practiced it quite a bit and right before we left for the performance, I finally performed it without any major misses. I was so excited!


Hairdresser bridesmaid's beginner troupe went first. She looked amazing. Her outfit fit her beautifully. She looked confident, and as my mom said, "she moved great." Yeah she does! I did the third and sixth dances. The hard one was first. I nailed it! I even had a big cheesy grin when I passed the part that had given me the most trouble! I was giddy! Then suddenly massively thirsty. Then hot. And not breathing well. My next dance queued up. I've done it a million times, so I didn't worry. Wow....total failure! In the middle of the performance, my mind went totally blank. I couldn't remember the next steps. I never quite regained composure and mis-stepped a few more times before the end. I just laughed and jumped back on step. Really, that's the best thing to do. Just smiled like a fool, and people don't seem to react quite as much as opposed to standing there nearly in tears. Then you tend to garner far more attention. To add insult to injury, my hip scarf fell off one hip, dangling from the other hip. I kept having to try not to trip myself while getting back on step. Never really happened. Once I was off kilter, the wheels came off!

I'm a bit upset at myself because I focused all my energy on the new dance and thought I could rely on memory and past repetition for the dance I'd done a million times. But really, I'm not all that upset about the whole thing. It's a performance whose audience is mostly family and friends, so a little meltdown is definitely not the end of the world. After that dance, I sort of went downhill as far as how I felt. We left early, opting out of the final audience participation dance. I fell asleep once we were home, and spent the better part of the afternoon that way. Seems my allergy troubles got the better of me, and my body decided to take charge and shut down with or without my permission. Such is life.