I love dancing

Alright last week was my last audition for a while, since I'll be going down to Florida soon to do BARNUM. In this bizness you're always trying to work, and have consistent work, which means setting yourself up to have back to back gigs or shows, hince why I have still been audtioning for stuff. Just trying to make sure I have work next year. So Last week I auditioned for the tour of DORA DORA. Nothin special to report. The only thing that really happened was when I was called to dance the casting Lady had to also add the fact that I had a job already to my name, pretty much putting me on blast in front of everybody. She is the same casting company that cast BARNUM, so she knew me from that. So I felt bad that she did that in front of everybody. With my mind on all of that it made me totally mess up my audition, but I still made it thru, and sang my song. Oh yeah and the pianist is a friend from school who was actually in my choir at Penn State, who is now a piano sub for THE LITTLE MERMAID

The more important thing that happened last week was my dancing gig for this Bahtmitzpha. My friend contacted me ealier this summer to dance for her for this gig. I also found out that the man who was her, and our boss, was also another Penn State graduate that I had known. Go STATE! Any way the theme for the party was old Hollywood Glamour, so Katrina came up with the idea of the IT girl thru the ages, and to have the birthday girl come out at the end to be the it girl of 2000. We had 3 rehearsals during the week, and then performed at the party saturday night, though we had to be there all day. Let me just say that I knew this was a big deal when I found out how much I was getting paid for this, and then times that by 10 for all the dancers, and realized wow if they're planning on spending that much just for our part of the entertainment. Then I found out that they didn't like they carpeting in the country club of the ball room, so they had it taken out and white tile put in. Yeah it was like that. They even had little California Pizza Kitchen, KFC, and McDonalds stands for the kids, and to top it off, at the end on the way out they had a whole mock Dunkin Dounuts stand set up. No joke. I heard the whole thing was around....$250,000. And that's all I have to say about that.

The other really amazing thing that happened last week happened on Monday. I gave myself the goal this year that by the end of the year I would be tumbling. I've found that with my body size, and look people assume I tumble, and everything has tumbling in it these days, especially Disney shows. I thought I wouldn't be able to uphold that goal cause all summer I was in Ok city, and the only place I knew gave classes here in the city was expensive. That is until I found out that the dance studio where I have been taking most of my classes has an acro class, Great!! So I took last monday to try it out, Lets just say that after the class was over I was doing standing back handsprings, and roundoff back handsprings!!!!!!!!!!!

UMM YEAH TOTALLY AWESOME!!

This week in class he moved me into the power tumbling group with him, and made me perfect my roundoff backhandsprings so that I could start doing more handsprings. I also started working on my back tucks, which is just standing and jumping up and doing a back flip, they usually come after you do a tumbling pass to end it off. It's all very exciting, And everyone is pretty amazed that I am learning so quickly without ever having tumbled before. I just give all Glory to GOD. As Albert Einstein said, "dancers are the atheletes of God." So maybe He gives extra grace and strength to us. I'm just sayin.

So the other cool thing that happened Monday of this week was I got a call from Pilobolus to see if I could go to SPAIN for a gig for them, and if I could leave Wednesday(today). Umm, YEAH!!

Monkeying, for Jesus

So, as of right now this will be the first week since I got off the plane from Ok city on july 29, that I will not audition! Can you believe that. Actually the funny thing is on monday I was slated to go to 2 auditions for a new semi/broadway show(which means it is at the Lincoln Center), and GYPSY, which is currently running on Broadway right now. But I was just tired of it, so I planned on staying home and chillin out. That is until my friend Kenneth texts me, and says I should be there, so I grab my stuff and go, only to just miss the last group to go in, cause they decided to rocket thru all of the groups, and then when I got to the GYPSY call, I just really didn't feel like being there. there was alot of people, and You know they're not really looking for guys, and all the guys in the show are only on stage for a hot min, and look young, oh and are all white, so I left and went to work out. Oh well.

So last week I also Auditioned for TARZAN, and also had my callback for JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. TARZAN was a really fun combination very atheletic and of course all about being a monkey so it was very low to the ground, rolling, jumping, like an animal, and I looked really good(people told me). I felt really good doing it, I think one of the pluses I have for myself is I can portray different characters well in dance. Praise God for that. I made it all the way thru, but when the guy came out to read off who they wanted to sing, it was only one guy, which we were all totally shocked at. whatever, then they started lining the people up to sing, and then we got yelled at by the monitor saying if we're not singing to leave, (sometimes these equity monitors act like there job at that moment in time is the most important thing in life, and take it way to seriously!) So what ever I grab my stuff kiss my friends and leave. So I get a block away from the Chelsea Studios and get a call from a number I don't know, now I usually don't answer unknown numbers, but lately they have all been about some kind of work, so I did. It turns out it's my friend Will, who is at the audition still cause he got asked to sing. He proceeds to tell me that I am in the group for people they wanted to stay and sing!

"WHAT"! Yeah apparently the guy was walking around with a group of headshots of people they wanted to keep from my group, and I just happened to be on the outside, they asked to look at my pic, to call me to tell me to come back. It was absolutely crazy. Praise God I had not almost turned to get into the subway. So I run back get back upstairs in the studio, and am like whats going on. Well, the guy hadn't finished reading off the list of people they wanted to hear sing, just started moving on. It was such a disorganized audition. And then when we had to line up, I had to save someone else from not getting the info that they called his name. It was crazy. After I sang one of the artistic team asked me about being in Pilobolus, so we talked and I told him How I went to Germany, and then he's like you know Holly! and I like yeah, I love her!! It was great to connect with the team like that. Then of course the old man had to shove me out, saying I'm sorry Alfie, we're on a tight schedule. Man I swear.

Again to prove how disorganized they were, when I finally get home at 930pm I get a random call from an unknown number, asking me to come to a callback almost 12 hrs later, 10 am the next day. Gee wiz I thought.

The Callback consisted of all the same stuff, made it thru again, sang my song, saw great friends made new friends, yadda yada,

Off to my JCSUPERSTAR. It was a much smaller callback, of 13 guys, so we were really the last guys they were lookin at which felt totally cool. Now what was hard about this was the woman who choreographed it was kind of crazy in her mind, so you felt like you weren't getting the same information out of her all the time. and since she was older and her assistant was an older non dancer guy, you couldn't figure out what the full extended shapes of the movement was suppossed to be. But after learning 2 combinations, we turned to face the table of onlookers, which totally sucks I might add, especially when a combination is a traveling one to have to shorten everything, and maintian spacial awareness. We went in groups of 3. Now we had been doing the 2 dance for a while, so remembering the first dance was hard, and lets just say when I went I didn't remember all that well, and had not 1 but 2 brainfarts. Oh well I thought, I have a job, hahaha. But low and behold, I made it thru and got asked to sing! Wow, God must be all over me today! The only thing that made me feel even more sunk was hearing Her assistant from the hall way singing my song, and really singing my song. The only thing that is really cool about this musical, is that this version is being done all gospel, and they got the rights from mr weber himself to do it, so its a big deal.

So we'll see what happens.