Friday, October 23, 2009

Dancing King

I already wrote a little while ago and said I didn't have anything to say, then proceeded to talk about germs and the flu. Well, since then, I have thought of something to write about!
I have a radio on my desk at work and it plays quietly all day long. I enjoy the variety of music and listen to a station that is work friendly, but stills plays current songs. Well, there is this one song that has been on for a while that I love. It's called..."Say Hey (I love you)" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. The song has a reggae beat to it and I love it. I find myself swaying and yes, even sometimes rolling my head, shaking my shoulders and even doing a bit of dancing in my chair. Now, my boss is in the next office and there is a door that separates us so he can't see me. I know one day I'm going to be caught in the full act of dancing! I can't help it, the beat is so great and I just can't seem to stop my body from moving. I've always been this way. I love music and love to dance. I'm not much into formal dancing but love to just move rapidly and with no inhibitions. While I was in college I took a ballroom dance class for one semester. I wasn't too thrilled with it. The moves were explicit and you had to hold your body tightly sometimes and the whole thing was rather stuffy to me. I enjoy dancing but that was not my particular forte. The next semester, wanting to continue experimenting, I signed up for a jazz dance class. I had found my niche! I loved it. I had so much fun learning the many moves and expression that go along with dancing like that. I had always wanted to be on Broadway and these were many of the moves I imagined were in the productions of "Cats", "A Chorus Line" and many others. It was exactly up my alley. Well, my instructor also owned a private dance studio in Orem and she was putting together a company to work on a cruise ship the upcoming Summer. Believe it or not, I tried out and made it. I think I made it because they needed men, but it was thrilled to me nonetheless. I rehearsed with them for several weeks and we were getting rather good but then I decided to "chicken" out and quit. I think I was afraid of not having or making enough money and there were a lot of individual costs that went into it. That has always been my biggest shortcoming - fear. I have always "feared" things - I think that's why I've never done anything with my life, but I digress.
Dancing was so much fun for me. The next Fall, the music theater program at school was auditioning for "Oklahoma". I had been taking vocal lessons along with my dance lessons and figured this might be a good chance to try my hand at musical theater. I made it to the final and was cut. To this day I think I was cut because I was blonde. Believe it or not, I had my hair frosted a week or two before the auditions and I was blonde - I mean Billy Idol blonde. It looked good but I think it made me stand out too much and I was going for the chorus. You have to blend in to be in the chorus. I was really disappointed after making it so far in the audition process. One of the directors warned us that we could be cut for something as minute as hair color, height or presence because they had a good cast to choose from. I was also preparing at that time to audition for the Young Ambassadors - that is a singing and dancing group from BYU. They were traveling to Europe for their yearly tour and I wanted to be a part of that so badly. I didn't make that either. What a time in my life. I was auditioning, singing and dancing right and left. No pun intended! I wanted to make sure I took advantage of what college had to offer so I would be a well-rounded actor/dancer/singer. I grew up watching old movies where it seemed that everyone sang and danced as well as acted. It seemed important to me to be, at the very least, acquainted with these various skills.
To look at me today you would never think I used to do all of those things but I was in rather good shape back then and did many other things to keep myself in shape. Aerobics was big with me, too. I loved moving around to the music in that work out genre. It was basically dancing to get in shape. BYU used to have these massive aerobics classes in the evenings in the Smith Fieldhouse. There had to be hundreds of people there moving to the music. I had so much fun doing those things. I think I should have just gone to an artists school rather than a four year college sometimes. ha.
So, dancing has been a big part of my life. Sometimes to this day I just cut loose and will dance to whatever is playing - Christmas music, rock, country - you name it. If it has a good beat, I'm there...'see that boy, watch that scene, dig in the dancing king!'

1 comment:

Cherie and Jeff said...

Wahoo, Woohoo!!! Wolf whistle and all!!! I remember when you were the dancing King!!!! You still are my dancing king!
Moochies Love
Cherie