Ready, set...

Today was my first rehearsal of flower waltz with all the girls. 13 people in all and it can get rather confusing with bodies moving around with no apparent destination in mind. We started at about 8:45am, which meant I got up at about 6 this morning, got ready and left the house at 7:30ish. We started to run it and didn't make it past the first 30 seconds for about 45min. Jose wasn't very happy with how it looked or the togetherness of the girls so he kept stopping and saying "Looks sloppy, go back." After we ran it ALL the way through Jose went and got Jimmy, the director of TDC, and he came in and watched it. Jimmy runs a lot of the competition rehearsals so he's used to speaking his mind and having the girls work for him, so he wasn't that pleased with the scatteredness(I just made up a word!) of the piece. After we ran it through for him, he leaned forward in his chair and said, point blank, "That looked like crap." We all perked up and listened after that I can tell you. He said we needed breathing in our bodies, that we all looked to stiff and robotic. "Jose and Dana should be running you guys again and again and again until you fall down exhausted or you're throwing up in a bucket." That's the kind of advise you as a dance get a lot. We all told him thank you for the advise, most of it was very positive and motivating, and he turned around and said, "Don't thank me, thank Dana and Jose for taking time out of their day to work with you. If you do a crapy job, it's insulting them not me. So take the time, dig deep within yourself and find that energy that is needed for this dance. And the fact that it's 7mins shouldn't be an excuse that it looks bad. I may be hard on you guys, but it's because I care." Inspiring words. We all felt the love coming from him and we all nodded our heads in agreement. Teachers may cuss at you or even throw some stuff at you, but deep down they do it because they care, not because they're mean. They do truly care about their students.