Concert Shenanigans

After my last post, I realised I have an entire gold mine of stories from my 15 dance concerts that I hope are a guarantee to make anyone laugh. I'm a bit of a klutz, and that sometimes leads to hilarity on the TWO nights of my life where I need to pull it together.

I don't remember my earlier years, but a good one that I have a vivid memory of was the year I did a penguin tap dance. I was 4 years old, and had the cutest little penguin costume, and a little penguin beak hat, with my little black tap shoes....

As I was doing a shuffle about a minute in, my tap shoe flew off. No joke. Sailed right through the air like a gliding bird. Being 4, my natural instinct was to run forward, pick it up, sit down RIGHT THERE ON THE STAGE, and put my shoe back on.

Dear god.

After that, everything's mostly splotchy. Until the last few years. And I tell you...from the age of about 16, I've had at least one absolutely hilarious mishap per year.

2012

In 2012, I had a grand total of three mishaps in one night. The first came in my jazz dance. I had two friends watching that night, and they were fairly close to the stage. So what happened when I came out on stage and inadvertently made eye contact?

I started laughing.

And then I couldn't stop.

And then they realised I was laughing uncontrollably and they started laughing.

It was bad.

Luckily I managed to pull myself together before Sharon realised what I was doing.

Later on, during the acro number, I actually hit my headstand (which I had fallen out of on both previous nights), and I exclaimed on stage 'I did it!'. The girls within hearing distance started laughing and we all nearly toppled over.

Then not 30 seconds later, I was coming out of a three person balance, stepped on the girl below me's ankle, lost my footing, and fell flat on my ass. I sat there for a second, slightly stunned, and laughed, because I wished it had been caught on video.

2013

In 2013, I only did two items - hip-hop and acro.

In hip-hop, we had to use basketballs.

Yep. Basketballs. What a recipe for disaster.

Of all the times it could've gone wrong, it was the night of the concert when we filmed the video.

As we were all coming out on stage, someone dropped their basketball. It bounced off of someone else's, sending both of them ricocheting off in another direction. One girl cut across me when she was supposed to go behind me, and accidentally kicked mine away. I had to run after it. We had been told if we dropped them, to run after them.

We finally got into position, and then another girl's basketball went rolling down the middle of the stage. It was hilarious.

Then later in the dance, we did this trick where we threw the ball up in the air, did a full turn, and caught it again. I panicked a bit, threw it a bit wildly, and had to lunge for it to stop it bouncing into the audience.

Next was acro. A mammoth 12 minute long dance composed of five songs and three acrobatics classes. The only time me and both of my sisters have been in the same routine.

During the last song, us seniors had to lift up two of the smaller seniors above our heads and carry them out like you would carry those ancient style carriages for royal people. I was carrying Mel with two other people, and I was positioned under her left shoulder.

Now Mel is tiny. Like, she's 24 and about 5'2. For the first time since we started doing that trick, I was having trouble supporting her. My hand almost slipped from under her just seconds before we put her down. It was actually more scary than anything.

2014

The year of the dunce.

Basically, at the dress rehearsal, I stood up during my first jazz routine and nearly stacked it, and then punched myself in the face, how I have no idea. Then in tap, I nearly rolled my ankle. Then in hip-hop, I had to walk backwards at one point, misjudged where the line ended, and walked into one of the other girls. In acro, I fell out of my handstand way too early (I'm the only person in the class who can do a nice stag handstand, and as there was an odd number, I got to be centre front to do my handstand while everyone else did a partner trick). Then in my last jazz number, my bracelet got stuck to my tights and ripped a massive hole in them! That literally makes one incident PER DANCE!

Luckily everything went well for the actual performance.

The concert this year is in December. I hope I don't have as many problems as last year! I'll be sure to post if I do!

Xo.