Primetime & stuff

Last weekend was Miss Angela's first dance competition of the season!  I think they did pretty well, seeing as how out of the 6 studios at this competition, only 1 had fewer dances than ours.  Yes - one studio sent ***ONE*** lonely dancer and the poor baby was 7 years old!!!  Why would someone do that???  I'm so glad that our girls invited her to sit with them during awards, or else she would have been out there alone.  

Anyhoo.....  I can't believe I didn't get pics of her in her hiphop costume with full hair & makeup!  That's OK - there are 2 (maybe 3!) more comps & a recital.  Pics will happen. 

Her teachers didn't think the octo-bun was a good look.

I still think the small group tap outfit looks like something a waiter on a cruise liner would wear.

But the judges apparently liked it!

Small Group tap got 2nd place, 3rd place for small group hiphop and 7th for small group jazz.  I'm still miffed that she didn't place in her duet.  More on that later.  Grr.

Scoring is really weird and confusing for comps.  First they compete by age group - petites, juniors, teens, seniors. Then they're put in levels based on the points they earned from the 3 judges and are awarded pins for each dancer.  Then each level is broken down into the top ten and awarded plaques for the studio this time.

And then there are the finals - they take the top 3 highest scoring dances from each age group and level without duplicating studios (or hiphop would have gone, too).  The first score is erased, and they dance again - to get a new score AND a judges critique on the spot. Their tap number above went on to finals, hence the trophy.

How awesome is this shot from jazz???

So I'm thinking the judges must have been feeding their seeing-eye dogs during Heart Cry, since I only saw one tiny mistake and a tiny wobble and really don't think they should have gotten scored as low as they did.   Bull crap I tell you!  Miss Meghan, her teacher, watched the video twice and listened to the recorded judge's comments twice and still could not figure out why they were so low.  Vague comments like "ankles are too soft" - WTF???  Other piddly things they could work on, like sharpening their arm & head movements &"enunciating" their tapping so it's not muffled.  But other than that - they were together so nicely.  Meghan even commented about how they both even hesitated at the same place in the dance, instead of moving smoothly - but they were still in sync!!   So hopefully soon, Meghan will see the actual score sheet to see what the issue was.  The judges did however, say they looked beautiful.

There were 2 other dances I question the judges vision.  Little Jaden did her solo - she's adorable, her costume was cute & appropriate & fit well and she did her dance awesomely.  She didn't place.  But Bethany goes out for her solo looking like a lost child in an ugly costume that didn't fit well and even forgot what she was doing and stood there smack in front of the judges with a deer-in-the-headlights stare for a good 5 seconds.  And she got 4th place.   WTF people???   Angel thinks Bethany's dad paid off the judges.  He's an arrogant ass and he probably did!

I'm still proud even if the judges were putzes. 

 And one of them looked like RuPaul.

And he moved really fast, so it was tough to get a decent pic of him.

Angel & her mini-me, Sam.

One of the girls put a brilliant post on Facebook Monday morning.  She said "I think everyone from my studio has a case of "Post Competition Stress Disorder" today.  Word.

Miss Angela has something else to look forward to now!  There was a career expo for all 4 high schools in the district last week. There were like 200 tables set up so kids could talk to people in whatever field they could ever dream of.  Anyway, I also took BFF Brittney with us and they stopped and talked to the ladies at the make-up artist table.  One of the girls - a student at the Paul Mitchell school noticed Angel's hair up in her sloppy bun and asked if that was her natural color. She's got some grown-out highlights but it's all hers. So the older lady there, who I found out is an administrator at the school, asked if they would be interested in modelling at an upcoming hair show for charity!  Info was emailed to them Monday, so I took them over last night.  This lady was so nice!  I was expecting snobby witch.  They had a form that the girls needed to read & sign along with a parent.  (Sorry Britt - unofficial adopted parent doesn't count!) and then they needed to write a color on the form.  Green means the stylist has free rein on what they can do with the model's hair.  Yellow means maybe cut, maybe color and style.  Red means style only.  They both had sort of freaked out, since the first student they saw there had bright blue hair.  So we chatted with Monica and I asked her about coloring.  Angel can't have funky colors - she's got comps coming up!  So Monica wrote yellow on the form - and noted NO crazy bright colors due to dance. So next they have to go back Saturday and meet their stylists and go over the plan of what's gonna happen and what to expect at the show in April.   So exciting!   Angel thinks this is actually better than the last opportunity she had, since she WILL be walking the runway in this show - and not just auditioning.  I never knew she was even interested in modelling until that first phone call. I really shouldn't be surprised.  The photog who took her newborn pics said she should be in modelling!  Dude!  She wasn't even a week old!!  But she always looks stunning in front of a camera.  Brat.

I made sure Randy knows to be around this weekend so he could take her/them if necessary.  Brittney's parents can be flaky and I wouldn't it put it past them to come up with some asinine reason why they can't go.  Normally I would be home, but I'm going up north with Mom & the sisters.  Mom is finally going to sell the 100+ year old house & 120 acres that Dad bought in 1973.  She's only been up there a couple times since Dad passed away in 2009.  We used to spend almost every weekend & most of the summers up there as kids.  So we're going to collect any knick-knacks or whatever she wants to keep before selling it.  I'm hoping to get this painting from the living room that is a grove of birch trees in the fall.   My brother has been living up there for the past several years, but he's not working and doesn't have a car, so he's about to be screwed!  But he also hasn't made any effort to DO anything for himself, either.  He's one of those people who just goes with the flow.  He'll do whatever work you tell him & won't do anything if it requires thought or planning on his part.  He's almost 50 and has nothing to show for it.  Sad.

Woo, are we excited for the A-Z Challenge???  It's lurking in the shadows!!!

(I'm at work and guess I really should do some WORK, ya know!)  Later!