Reminiscing

Listening to : Stand by Me – SHINee
Random Thought : My jacket’s here!! I can’t WAIT to get it

Yesterday was Orchesis’s annual production, and I attended as a proud alumni. Watching the dancers float across the stage, scrutinizing the angles of their arms and their facials, I could not help but think of this time last year, when I was the one on that stage, worrying whether the audience was scrutinizing my facials or my movements.

Coming back was a bittersweet experience for me; I never had as close of a relationship with any of the girls that they seemed to have with each other. Although we greeted each other enthusiastically before the show, and congratulated this year’s dancers effusively after the show, there was always a muted awkwardness. Faces that I dreaded seeing last year now wore plastered on smiles, and the excited hugs we gave each other were only formalities, because we had once occupied the same studio and shared the same passion.

Even so, I remembered the hours we spent in that studio, painstakingly refining our timing and our expression of the dances we loved so much. Even though we may have gotten on one another’s nerves, fueled the endless drama that seemed to perpetuate our encounters with one another, in the studio we cast aside our differences and danced together as a whole. In the end it was this unity, this common love of Orchesis that let us overcome our grudges against one another and helped us successfully produce our annual Spring show.

I’m sure this year’s Orchesis had no shortage of obstacles to overcome. Despite my lingering distaste for a few of this year’s members, I’m proud of what they have achieved. It took us a lot of sweat and tears, injuries, ice, tylenol, makeup remover wipes, nasty costumes, and bottles of hair spray to get us where we were this time last year – proud graduating seniors of Orchesis Dance Company 07/08.

It with a sweet fondness of the hours spent in the studio, and a bitterness that I no longer am able to dance the way I used to, that I watched the show last night. I hope the graduating members of Orchesis treasured every moment they had in the studio this year, and realize that Orchesis is not an experience to be taken for granted, because never again will we be able to dance 2 hours a day, and spend almost every day doing something we love as much as dance.