A Weekend of Dancing

This weekend was both a three day weekend and the weekend of my dance program. Thank God they overlapped, because it has been an incredibly busy and tiring weekend. The name of the event was Dance Over, and it was the studio recital for Mika Dance Produce. It was scheduled for Sunday evening but also took up several hours Saturday night and Sunday morning. But to get the full effect, I think I'll have to tell this one in chronological order.

In addition to the dance recital, there was another event going on at Dahlia this weekend. Julie, Sasha and I had been wanting to have a girls' night out for quite some time, and we figured that would be a good night for it. The event was called Springroove and was set for 10 pm Saturday night. The plan was for Julie and Sasha to drive into town for the event and stay at my place Saturday night. I knew it would make for a busy weekend, but I figured I'd have time to recover since the recital wasn't until 7 pm Sunday. Oh, was I wrong. But more on that later.

I spent Saturday afternoon cleaning a few last things and getting my stuff put together for what I believed was the final dress rehearsal that evening. Around 5:30 pm I left for practice. It was a fairly standard run-through like the others had been, and it took slightly longer than usual. I was getting antsy because Sasha and Julie would be coming into town around 9:00 and the rehearsal went overtime. At the end of the rehearsal, I got some surprising news: there would be another practice Sunday morning at 9:30 am. Damn. I wasn't willing to skip out on the event at Dahlia, but I figured I'd have to call it a night earlier than usual. Julie and Sasha would understand.

After rehearsal, I scrambled to get home and get dressed to go out. Sasha and Julie met me at the apartment and brought their stuff in while I got ready. A little after 10 pm, we headed out. When we got to Dahlia, it was dead. Hardly anyone was there and the music was pretty terrible. After having a drink and hanging around a bit, we decided to skip out for a while to check out the other bar that was part of the Springroove event. I think it was called Bar Salvador. When we walked in, we discovered that it was absolutely tiny and fairly packed. There were hardly any other women there and we were getting a lot of stares from the guys; it felt like being in a zoo. There was also a weird guy who touched Julie's hair. We stayed just long enough to use our drink tickets and went back to Dahlia.

As the evening went on, more and more people came to Dahlia. We had figured the crowd would be largely made up of foreigners (that happens at Dahlia events sometimes) but there were actually a lot of Japanese people there that night. Although the music wasn't great, we still managed to dance to it for a while. As on the previous night out, we played Sasha's game of coming up with challenges for each other. For one of our challenges, Julie and I had to ask some Japanese guys to dance with us. And we did. They were painfully shy, which made the whole thing kind of awkward at first, but Julie has a way of bringing people out of their shells. Though they just stood there at first, eventually she got them to imitate some of the stuff she did, and it became sort of a game. It was pretty fun.

The music improved later when another JET named Ben came on as the DJ. We got some good dancing in then. I don't remember how it happened exactly, but around that time we ended up talking with a group of guys. There were three of them, and it worked out perfectly in that two of them spoke English pretty well. Julie sat and talked with Taka, who doesn't know much English, but that wasn't a problem because Julie's Japanese is very good. Sasha and I talked with Chihiro and Mao, and our whole conversation was in English. That was pretty unusual. The three guys were originally from Kochi but currently lived in Tokyo. They were temporarily evacuating to Kochi while things are being sorted out up north.

While Julie and Taka sat on the benches along the wall and talked, the rest of us had a conversation at the bar. Chihiro and Mao were pretty lively and very entertaining. I can't even remember half of what we talked about, but they made Sasha and I laugh a good deal. They were flirting with us pretty heavily, as well. I was wearing a rhinestone headband at the time, and Mao decided it was a tiara and started calling me his American princess. That cracked me up. Eventually, though, we had to go home. I had thought that I'd call it a night around 1 am, but ended up staying out until a little after 4:00.

We finally got to bed around 5 am, which meant that I had about about three and a half hours to sleep before I had to get up and get ready for the morning rehearsal. It was basically like taking a nap. I did make it to rehearsal in the morning, though I was yawning quite a lot. I had a moment of panic when one of the dancers told me that after rehearsal we were all going to the studio to do our makeup and hair. Did that mean I had to stay with them all day? When she began to suspect that I didn't understand all of what she was telling me, she got Sawaki to come over and translate. Fortunately, Sawaki also intended to go home between morning rehearsal and the performance, and told me that I could do the same.

After rehearsal, I went back home. Julie and Sasha were just getting up. As thanks for letting them stay with me, they treated me to lunch at Mos Burger. Once we'd had lunch, it was time for me to take a nap. Sasha and Julie went out to do some shopping while I slept. I woke up just a bit before they returned. At that point, Julie had to head back home since she had a date scheduled for that evening. Sasha was going to stay with me again so that she could come to my performance. After chatting a bit, I did my makeup and packed up all my costumes, and we headed to the stage. I hadn't thought about what to do for dinner, but since I was so paranoid as to leave about an hour before I needed to be backstage, we had enough time to grab a hamburger at McDonald's.

Once we had finished eating, we went up to the performance space. Sasha hung around in the audience area and I went backstage to get my costume on. There was a good chunk of sitting around time before the performance actually started, since Mika had told us all to be backstage and ready to go half an hour before the show would start. But eventually things did start.

The program began with an opening number where we all basically went on stage, did a short bit of dancing, and presented the guest performers. This was the number where we were told to wear black pants and given a yard of gold fabric to make some sort of shirt out of. Once that was done with, we all ran back to the dressing rooms to change into our next costumes. I had plenty of time to spare; the show would be performed in three chunks with intermissions in between, and I didn't have to go on until the second part. But some of the others really had to scramble. For most of the performance, I was just hanging around in the dressing room waiting, but they gave me a few tasks that made the time pass more quickly. A few of the dances were performed barefoot, and for those they needed people to move everyone's slippers from the side of the stage where they entered to the side of the stage where they exited. It was a pretty easy job, but at least it gave me something to do.

During the first intermission, I went out from the dressing room to use the bathroom. Along the way I spotted my friends who had come to watch the show. Ashley, Philip, Hollie, Kathy, and Sasha were all there. I was really excited that they had come. We chatted a bit before I had to go backstage again. A few performances after the break ended, it was my turn to dance. The hip hop class was on after Sawaki's pole dance, so we were hanging around in the wings while she was on stage. Once her song ended, we were up.

The second I stepped onto the stage, I could her my friends shouting and cheering from the audience. I almost started laughing, but managed to limit it to a smile. The dance went by quickly. I remembered all the steps, though I did some of them a bit awkwardly. Still, I was happy with how I performed. It felt like hardly any time before I was off stage again, and from there I just had to wait for the closing number.

I hung around in the dressing room again and watched as everyone ran in and out to change their costumes. It was a pretty efficient process, actually. Everyone was very organized. Eventually all the dances had been performed, and it was time for us all to go out for our final bows. The final number was to "4 Minutes to Save the World" by Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Basically, we were split into a few groups. Each group had 2 eight-counts to get on stage, 1 eight-count to dance however they liked, and another eight-count to bow. It went as smoothly as usual. After everyone was on stage, we all bowed together, then left the stage. Of course, there was an encore, where we all went on stage with no organization whatsoever, danced for a while, and then took more bows.

After the show was over, I went out to talk to my friends. They had really enjoyed the show. All of them said it was worth the 3,000 yen for the ticket, which was a relief to me. I was hesitant to ask people to come because it would be so expensive. Can you imagine if everyone in our family had had to pay $30 for each dance recital I was in as a child? It would be ridiculous. But this was definitely a large scale production, so I can kind of see why it cost so much.

Once we had all decided to go out for drinks, I went back to the dressing room and changed into my regular clothes. We headed out but didn't make it very far before Sawaki called to tell me that I had forgotten my black pants. Oops. So I went back to fetch them while the others got a late dinner at McDonald's. It was probably a good thing that I had to go back since I hadn't really said goodbye to the others as I left. That was rather bad manners of me. But I got a chance to say goodbye the second time around, and headed out again.

The rest of the evening was spent at the Boston Cafe. We had a few rounds of drinks, but I was fading fast, so I didn't go on to karaoke with the others. Sasha and I headed home and crashed around 1 am. We slept in and I've spent most of the day just lying on the floor, doing nothing. Sasha got in contact with Chihiro and went on a date with him this afternoon. I got a call from Mao and may be meeting up with him on Wednesday, depending on what his schedule is. While I have to admit that I still like Takashi a lot better than Mao (from what little I know of him), it seems stupid to pass up on a date with a rather cute, very friendly guy who speaks English. At this point Takashi and I aren't much more than pen pals. I'm hoping to see him again, but in the meantime I'm not going to sit around waiting.

All in all, this was a very busy, eventful and tiring weekend. I'm extremely lucky to have had Monday off to recuperate. This week shouldn't be too challenging in that I'll be at the office for most of it. I have still more things to look forward to, though; possibly a date Wednesday, an enkai Thursday night, and heading out to Kyoto with Hollie and Amy next Monday. Don't worry, it's safe to travel in that direction. I'll keep you posted on how everything goes.