3 days to showtime!!!

Well, we've 3 days left till the competition. This evening, we had an impromptu audience, a pre-preview, so to speak, hehe. We = me + Chin Lai, Eric + Peggy. My sis and Aisha were the audience... hehe... So anyway, we tried to do a mock of the General Dancing part of the competition. Oh maaaaannnn!! Disaster!! At least, for me it was. I think I was too used to dancing our routine that I'd forgotten to how to follow and poor poor Chin Lai, had to get black looks and hisses from me during the dance! Gawd, how mortifying! Points to self:

1. Just follow the blurdy leads and dun think so much!
2. Even if i dunno wat the lead is, just FAKE IT!
3. Look at my partner, and as always... smile, smile, SMILE!!!!!

Next, we performed our routine. We added 1 more member of the audience here : Erin. I think we were ok during the routine but maybe coz we were anxious, we sped up a bit and went ahead of the music in a few parts. Points to self:

1. Look at the audience, get them 'involved' in the dance.
2. Look at my partner (yes yes, I've been neglecting the poor guy)
3. And for gawd's sake, look like I'm enjoying the blurdy dance! lol! I really gotta work on this bit... coz i feel like i'm smiling, but unfortunately, the audience says otherwise so... i think i really gotta fake that smile! Ugh!

The comments from the 'audience' on stuff that we (particularly I) need to work on are as above. Positive comments were that we're fine, technically. Sis even said we were too clean! Is there such a thing ah??? I think that means too choreographed, which i dun think is a good thing though... hhmmm... Technically ok, but no feeling... damn, if there's one thing i suck at is putting the 'feel' into the dance. I think u could get me to do almost any move and i'd probably get it technically correct but when it comes to the 'feel', that's where i struggle the most... sigh... so, loads of stuff to work on with only 3 days to go! *GASP!*

Also, I've observed that competitions bring out the best and worst in ppl. Aisha says during a competition, a person's personality is magnified 10x! So, if i'm an anal person in normal situations, my anal-ness is 10x more during a competition! SHITE! And I think it's true... i'm such a stickler for detail!! Not only in competitions but also when I have performances. I need to get everything absolutely correct on the dot! My poor partner... am so glad that he has the patience of a saint. Other guys would've told me to take a hike by now! lol!

Another thing I've observed is that sometimes, the normal camaraderie between friends gets lost somewhere in the process of preparing for a competition, due to the competitiveness or for whatever reason. I dunno abt others but for me, I just wanna do a clean routine and I dun really care abt wat other competitors are doing. It's more important to me to put on a good, clean show rather than be as canggih or more canggih than the other competitors. So I think I'm competing more with myself rather than other ppl i.e. pushing myself to see how 'perfect' a show I can put on (of course, we all know there's no such thing as a PERFECT show. It's how well we recover and cover up the mistakes. lol!). Of course, it'll be great to win a title and prize (if any) but at the end of the day, these things are just short-term anyway. The most important thing, to me, are the learnings (good and bad) that we get from the entire experience. And it'd be really cool if all competitors could be friendly with each other and feed off each other's positive vibes rather than putting on the 'i'm-holier-than-thou', 'no-friends-between-competitors' or similar attitude. It makes the situation so much less tense and there's good feeling all around. It's really quite apparent when suddenly some of them are so friendly to everyone around you except to you and ur partner...hhmm... But that said, everyone has their own way of dealing with the stress of competing and all, so to each his/her own, i guess. Some would argue that it IS a competition, after all. Or maybe, it's just me being too sensitive to my surroundings. I'd initially thought maybe it was me who's putting on my 'dun-mess-with-me' face coz u know how ppl seem to reciprocate wat u display to them? But have gotten feedback that I'm no more friendlier than I normally am i.e. I'm like how I usually am la, nothing more, nothing less so nothing I can fix on my side. Ah well, I think I'm getting on ok with most of my competitors (those that I know la) so it's not too bad really... and I'd like to think we give each other constructive feedback on wat we each can improve on, like today, during the pre-preview, hehe.

To all the competitors of the Conlay Salsa Competition, ALL THE BEST! :o)

And most of all, to my dear, patient partner (i'm sure he's dying to strangle me by now! lol!), u know wat u stand to get if we win BUT only if i call the shots!! lol! JUST KIDDING LA!!! I really dun care if we win or not... it's been really fun working with u on this, let's do it again next yr?? Haha, i can see u running for ur life! lol! Kidding again la... this is for ur viewing pleasure... sorry, i cannot afford the real thing, copy+paste is all i can do, or perhaps u'd rather go test-drive one, which I'm sure u've already done but hey, can go do it again, rite? ;o)

(courtesy of the BMW website)

I think i need to go work on my smile in my sleep now... zzzzzzz...