Dance isn’t always fun and games. It’s a pretty serious art form and anyone who doesn’t treat it as such usually doesn’t last long. We still always try to enjoy ourselves, because what’s the point of doing something so difficult and time consuming if you aren’t having fun doing it? However, we do occasionally get a wake-up call to reconsider how we’ve been approaching things.

Last night, we had rehearsal for the Shadows in Firebird. Between the snow days and various other things, we haven’t really had a chance to go over the older stuff recently, so our teacher decided that it would be a good time to do so. We all got into position and he started the music.

‘Catastrophe’ would be an understatement. It was a complete and utter disaster. Almost no one knew where they were going. Several people looked like they couldn’t even remember the steps. I personally felt like it was the worst run through of my life. By the end of it, our director wasn’t even looking at us- he just had his head in his hands.

“Go over it, now,” was all he would say. “Then I’ll help you.”

We spent the rest of the hour-and-a-half rehearsal going over things slowly, trying to figure out how things had worked when we had learned it. At the end of rehearsal, it was finally starting to feel better, but our director held us over in order to give us the speech we were all dreading.

“You guys aren’t taking this seriously enough,” he said. “You can’t keep saying that the show is really far away, because it isn’t. We have 14 rehearsals until the show, and at the rate we’re going with this, you’re still going to be learning it when we hit the stage.”

Considering how our director is normally extremely supportive and calm, seeing him this upset was a bit of a shock. However, we definitely had it coming and I’m pretty sure that it was a call to action for everyone. I know for a fact that I’m going to start practicing the steps religiously to the music at home now, instead of just worrying about it at dance. While we always try to have fun, we do need the occasional reminder that this does take a lot of work. Even so, we’ve all stuck around because we agree that it’s worth it, so these reminders will only serve to make us stronger.