Another successful weekend!

Let me start at the beginning.  

Last weekend was our annual trip to the Showbiz National Talent Competition.  This one is pretty neat that they also steam the dances online, so I could let both Randy and Angela's dad know when she was about to go on and they could watch, too!

Goofball had only her solo on Saturday, so she danced with her hair down and curled - which looked pretty cool when it wasn't in her face (she's got TONS of thick hair) but the judges said it was distracting and she admitted it was hard to do turns when you couldn't see to spot.  She also tweaked a muscle in her back doing her front walkover so half the dance looked a hot mess.  She wasn't able to do some things as well as I know she can.  She could dance thru a partially dislocated hip for 2 1/2 dances, but a tiny pulled muscle did her in!

Out of the top 10 senior solos, DOS took home 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th (Angel!), 9th & 10th.  

Still don't know how she managed to beat the 2 other girls. 

 However, for duet....Angel & Katie took home 1st place! 

 They ended up with a 1st for small group hiphop, 2nd for tap, 3rd for jazz, 4th for contemporary. 

Quite a respectable outcome! 

The main issue I had, besides the exceedingly chatty emcee, was they did the large groups and productions last. And of course we had 1 large group so we had to wait for awards for them.  2 studios did most of these so we, as spectators, had to wait a good 10 minutes between numbers for their entire teams to do costume changes.  Made for a crazy long day.   Production number can also last up to 6 minutes and both routines had elaborate sets they needed to build.  Grrr.

The requisite Good Luck Team Cookie

 This weekend was the annual trip to Dance Force.  This competition is slowly growing.  It used to just be one show on one day.  Now it's held at 5 different locations and it spilled over onto the second day.  But thankfully we were done by 3 so it didn't feel the whole weekend was shot. 

All 3 of Angel's small groups placed in the Platinum (highest) range of scoring and actually had the highest point for each category!  Hiphop took 1st again and jazz 3rd.  Contemporary also earned a platinum, but only 1st place was awarded in that category.  That was sort of weird.  Some categories they awarded the top 10, some the top 8, some the top 3 - all different numbers.  And they ran out of high gold ribbons on Saturday.  They must have either expected everyone to do better or suck more than they did!  

The cutest thugs in the OC (Oakland County)

They seriously kicked some booty, tho.  None of the other groups really did hiphop!  They did mostly jazz with some hiphop tossed in.  Not this bunch!  

Very happy for their 3rd in jazz!

  Wooo, the boy interest showed up to watch!  

She didn't place in her solo.  The stage was crazy slippery and she almost busted her ass landing her center leap and she her foot slipped so she couldn't make it over in her back walkover.  Other than that, I thought she looked pretty good!

And for the duet again - platinum / high point in jazz - 1st place!!

This pic was taken after their respective solos, hence the dramatic paint smear on Katie's face.

(Note the pulled back hair?  She learned!)

They also have a "Force" award for a dancer in each age group that does either 2 solos or a solo and a duet or trio.  The one with the highest combined score from their 2 dances won a big trophy - and Katie won that for the senior age group!!  One of our girls also took the junior Force award.   So very proud of them all!  Even the petite group (5-6 years old) competed for the first time this weekend!  The little ones are so stinkin' cute - all of them!  

This is just the dances that Angel was in, I didn't mention all the goodies that the juniors & teens won, too!  

So that wrapped up the last of the studio competitions for the year.  Even tho Angel has been recognized several times as a graduation senior, she's going to talk to the studio owner to see if she can do one more year.   She's going to community college in the fall so logistically she'll be OK and here in a few days she'll be taking her last drivers training class and then just needs to do her driving test and BAM!  I won't have to drive to the studio anymore!  

Ooops, sorry, I digress.  I just get happy when I think about not having to shuttle her around anymore!  

She does have one more competition this weekend with the Movement Project (one of her teacher's own team) but it's just on Sunday and she only has 3 dances with them.  He does a different circuit and their comps run very quickly and almost exactly per schedule. Love it! 

I'll be putting my A-Z Reflections post up tomorrow, still have some thoughts running thru my head about it and I need to sit still long enough to actually write the post!