Dance Callbacks

Let me just say that the seven years of dance classes that I took as a kid were apparently completely and totally wasted on me. I drew a cartoon a while back that was making fun of Brent from this season's Apprentice that I believe works just as well for me, and so I will now repost it.

With that image in your minds, I will now proceed to describe dance auditions.

First off, I made sure to get a terrible night's sleep the night before so that I would be sure to be able to give my very best for the call backs, which were at noon on a Sunday. Also, in addition to sleeping poorly, I had to get up early to practice for singing and playing with the band at church of Sunday morning.

All practice and no sleep make A.C. a dull boy.

After church, I drove over to call-backs thinking that I can't imagine the thing would go on for any longer than an hour. I feel so confident in my assumption, that I, even though I am a half hour early, sit and wait in my car with my eyes shut in order to get a bit of rest for what I assumed would be a very difficult hour.

When I finally walk in, I get into what I think is the line, which is four or five people back from the table where they were signing people in, only to realize that the line started in a different room than the one I was in, and it was more likely that I was at least a hundred people back from the table. It turned out that the whole experience took about three hours.

But all of that was fine. I waited. No biggie.

We eventually got called into the theatre from the waiting area, and they asked us if we considered ourselves singers/movers or dancers. Because I really don't consider myself either, I went with the first because it sounded easier.

And it was. They taught us the first routine, which was mostly walking around and box-stepping, which was easy enough because I walk around every day, and the box-step is one of the handful of dance moves in my vast choreographic library. The routine was so easy in fact, that it lulled me into a false sense of security. I thought, "Man, I'm a dancer!", because I think in short excited thoughts like that that have no real substance. They then announced that there was going to be a second routine, and any hopes and dreams that I may have had of a dance career came crashing to the ground like the chandelier does at every performance of Phantom of the Opera: jerkily and not at all believable, which was how I danced the second routine.

Let's just say that when you are asked to perform the dance routine, and the choreographer is not smiling but laughing, it makes you think that maybe, just maybe, you're not the twinkle-toes that you thought that you were.

However, it was still an enjoyable experience. Yes, even though the second dance routine was less a dance routine and more my personal interpretation of the Hindenburg disaster, it was a lot of fun to be dancing and moving and being considered for a part in what I consider to be a pretty good theater company down here in San Diego.

And, even with it going as it went yesterday, I still have call-backs for specific roles in the shows, and so all is not lost. In fact, things are looking up.