My dance troupe is down to just three of us right now: myself, Ashley, and Melanie. Although it was hard losing so many dancers, and it’s been weird adjusting to being in a small troupe, it’s actually working out really well for us. The three of us have a similar vision for the troupe and we all put a lot of work into it, bringing our different talents and dance backgrounds to the group.
We’ve been working really hard since the troupe became a self-governing collective in the wake of our teacher moving away. Ashley and I took over Open Stage, without any event organizing experience, and that has certainly been a learning experience. As a group, we’ve had to make constant small changes to our old choreography to work with the changing size of our troupe. Ashley and Melanie have each developed and taught a new choreography to the group, which we all had to throw ourselves into learning. We’ve had to negotiate various kinds of gigs, develop set lists, deal with rain and wind and flying cotton candy at outdoor events, and so much more.
So with all of this behind us, and no major performances until September, it should come as no surprise that we got a little silly at last night’s troupe practice. Oh, we still put in some hard work, but there were also some skirt fights, some good-natured teasing, and a whole lot of laughter and chatter. It feels like we’ve reached the point where we realize that this can work, it will work, and the troupe will continue on. So now we don’t have to stress as much. We can relax a bit, confident in the knowledge that because we’re able to work hard when we need to, we can occasionally start practice with a few minutes of goofing off, and end with a big squishy group hug.
I’m really excited to continue dancing and organizing events with this amazing pair of ladies.