Much has happened within a week or so since I’d last blogged.
Firstly, my director has left, mostly likely due to conflicts with the church. Now 3 of us are left to run the centre and fight for its survival. After she left, some politics surfaced. They are basically comparisons between the church’s support for the other branch being greater than the support for our branch because the person running the other branch is from the church itself. The 3 of us are outsiders and therefore receive less support and commitment. I don’t want to believe that but yet I find it hard to deny that observation. The church allows its members to just walk into our rooms and use them without our permission. It kind of shows how little we are in their eyes.
Recently, my patience was stretched very far, first at my workplace and then my student. There’s been more stress added in work now that we have to steer the boat on our own. People have irritated me quite a fair bit but I try to be a peace promoter. One of my students is incredibly slow at learning and his family don’t seem to be bothered by it. How should I help him I don’t know.
The next thing is I’ve been accepted into Lasalle College of the Arts BA (Hons) of the Arts in Theatre Arts Level 1. I have to admit I’m thrilled at the offer. However, as I’ve applied for dance as well, I would hold to the offer first.
Speaking of dance, I just did the audition this morning with 5 other candidates. All of us except one are non-ballerinas. We’re trained in other forms of dance. The exception was a girl who has completed grade 8 in ballet and have scholarships to dance schools. There was a guy who is part of a crew and break-dances really well.
Now the audition; it was one hilarious disaster. We went through a class, which was ballet and contemporary. It went pretty well at first other than the fact that we didn’t reach high enough and stoop low enough. And we landed like elephants, although at this point I would declare that I wasn’t an elephant. I was trained and drilled in my younger days to land lightly on the ball of my feet, so that wasn’t too much of a problem. Then she started including difficult postures for us to end the exercises with, like standing straight and lifting one leg to the back at 90 degrees and then arching the back backwards. After doing some other set of routines which involved prancing and leaping, we were told to end with a cartwheel. So we did cartwheels, not the impressive straight kind but decent enough. Then came the next instruction that made all our faces change, that is to do a set of prancing and leaping and then a cartwheel and then end with a split. So after some failed attempts, we did it with some grace and I can safely say we did pretty well. So that summed up the class. The instructor then gave a piece of music and asked us to do our own routine. Guess what? She gave a classical piece. Fantastic isn't it? We were quite horrified. And then when we each did our own improvised routines, the hip-hop, jazz, latin and whatever cultural dance inclination started kicking in. It was really funny to see someone break-dancing in slow mo to classical. It just looked so wrong although it was impressive. It reminded me of a scene in Step Up 2 where Andie did hip-hop to classical music in her dance class. It was really funny although the instructor didn't look amused at all. At the end of it, my legs felt like they were about to break. It’s worse than the time I completed a 10km run.
I’m quite glad I found it more hilarious than demoralising. The instructor wasn’t particularly kind in her comments and didn’t even want to interview us except the ballerina. It is my first experience of failure in dance. I’ve had always tasted success in this until today. I actually doubt pretty much I’ll be offered a place in Level 1 at all. If I’m fortunate, they might offer to let me take foundation. But to be honest, I’m thinking thrice about this. I still love dance to bits, it is after all my God-given talent. So even if I don’t do dance in Lasalle, I’ll be actively looking for other places to further it and hopefully get some certification.
