I’m resting up today because tomorrow night my breakdance group performs at the PMT Spring Showcase. I haven’t been blogging (or doing much of anything else) lately because every free moment for the past couple of weeks has been spent on breakdance practice. It’s been a lot of last-second choreographing and adjustments to get to this point, which is both annoying and somewhat inevitable given the busy-ness of all the people involved.
At midnight last night, I and the five other breakers were squatting on the floor of the PMT dance studio, despairing of finishing our routine in time for tomorrow’s show. Pavan our teacher had not finished the music for our performance, we had barely rehearsed the parts that we did know, and there were several key elements that weren’t choreographed or blocked out yet. It just didn’t seem possible.
Pavan walked in, clapped his hands loudly, and then yelled, "Alright, breakers, let’s go!"
And then miraculously, it just all came together. Pavan threw together
some quick formations and sequences with various combinations of
dancers, had us run through them quickly, re-configured and adjusted,
and then had us run through them again. But 1AM, we had a complete
routine, with several music, formation, and mood changes throughout.
I realized that the six of us have gotten to a point in our dancing where we have enough of the basic vocabulary of moves, know each other well enough, and trust Pavan enough that we can throw out moves on the fly with minimal direction. After months of seemingly little progress, it’s a great feeling knowing that all that work is starting to pay off.
At one point last night, four of us were practicing a sequence where we all hit a freeze at the same time.
One of the other dancers Eli says to me, "Wait, Rik, when did you learn Pavan’s freeze?"
"What do you mean?" I replied, confused.
"You’ve never done that before. That’s Pavan’s freeze."
Apparently in the heat of the moment I had hit Pavan’s signature move, pictured above. I was beaming all night about that.
Now if only I can do that in during the performance tomorrow! I can’t wait.