MANGO IS MODA

The fool who thought she could dance

I was looking through my Twitter account to find that most of my tweets consist of hilarious stories that are hard to tell in under 140 characters, so today I'll share one from two years ago. 

Wednesday Oct. 10, 2012. The day of the auditions for the student choreographed show at WWCC.

I had only known my roommates for a month and a half. Danielle, super serious, quiet, chemistry major; and Kiley, an elementary education major.. also super quiet and focused. Even though I had barely learned to interact with my bunk-mates, I invited them to join me for dance auditions. Neither had any experience in modern dance or auditions in general, but as a tech major I did not want to attend auditions alone facing all of the theatre and dance majors who had been performing since the start of the semester. Both Dani and Kiley were horrified by the idea of the auditions, and neither wanted to accompany me; however, after 30 minutes of begging, brave  Danielle agreed to attend and Kiley (intelligent enough) bailed out of the operation.

Here's the series of events accurately told through Danielle's eyes:

I don't know how or why I ever did because the events that followed were humiliating. We went to the sign in table then walked in to the studio.  There are a bunch of dance majors going all out, being focused on their warm ups and stretches. I felt out of place from the start because I didn’t have any dance shoes. I was sporting basketball shorts, a tee and some tennies.

I strategically placed myself toward the back of the room in hopes that I wouldn’t stick out more than I already was. We went through the motions. 5, 6, 7, 8. Lots of counting nonsense. Rolling on the ground, kicks, leaps that i couldn't do; awkward stuff. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to make the cut anyway. I was only there for Isabel. That’s it. After this we were getting out of there never to come back.

But wait. They split us up into groups of 4 and said each group would perform by themselves in front of the judges so they could get a better look at everyone to pick out who they wanted for their pieces. Mine and Isabel’s eyes got wide and we wanted to get out of there so quick. Isabel went to the lady in charge and told her that we had a class to get to so we wouldn’t be able to stay any longer. What a great plan! However, it backfired. The lady practically begged us to stay. She even said she would call her teacher to tell them that Isabel would be late because she was doing a dance try out. We were stuck. Darn. So I watched the groups as I waited for our group’s turn.

When our group walked out to the middle of the room facing the judges I felt I felt like all eyes were on me, and probably most were. I was so out of my element and looked nothing like a dancer. All of a sudden, I catch one of the judge’s eyes staring right at me. She turns to another judge and says “Do you think we should ask her to take off her tennis shoes?” Then the other lady turns to look at me, thinks for a couple seconds and says, “Nah, I think it’s alright.” In my mind I was thinking, “Are you kidding me? Take my shoes off?! Look at me. I look like I lost my way to basketball practice and ended up at a dance tryout! I’m pretty sure that even if I took my shoes off it wouldn’t make much difference. I would still be the worst one here.”

So anyway, the music starts and so do the dancers. Since I hadn’t put much effort into memorizing any of the moves before, I decided I better just watch the others in my group. And then as the music went on my group members got off from each other in timing. I didn’t know who to watch because I didn’t know who was right. I’m pretty sure I just kept switching who I was following, so if you had just been watching me it would look like a jerky dance where the moves didn’t flow well at all.

Finally our group was done. Isabel’s group was next. They went and did pretty well. Even if they were off a little bit you could tell that they all had previous dancing experience. As soon as her group was finished, we grabbed our belongings and hustled out of there never to return. After that whenever I saw someone in the hallway who also was at the tryouts I felt embarrassed. Did they remember me? The fool who thought she could dance. Did they think I was being serious about it? Some questions will never be answered. But regardless, it makes a great story to tell. And that’s what I’m all about. Giving the people something to laugh about. I learned something that day: Never let someone who barely knows you drag you into something you know you can’t do… but if you must, at least try to remember it and share the funny experience with your kids.

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So in conclusion, take this story and Danielle's advice to avoid being dragged your friends to awful auditions unless you're prepared to be best friends forever.

xx isabel