We are back from the Hotlanta Dance Challenge/Rising Star Newcomers’ Ball after dancing 18 heats on Friday, 18 on Saturday, and 28 today–by far the most we have danced at any competition we’ve participated in. I expected to have fun but it was even MORE fun than I imagined. So much positive energy and excitement. And it was great to see Carson, Elaine, John, Jorge, and Suzanne, who all came up from Macon at various times and stopped in to see us. Props also to Bill & Grace for letting us stay at their condo. All in all it was an amazing weekend.
We danced well (most of the time!) and placed pretty well–a lot of 1st places thanks to being uncontested in our category, but some “real” 1sts too. The great thing about dancing so many events is that you have room to make some mistakes without feeling like you’ve blown all your chances. Eddie said he just wanted us to get comfortable on the floor and by the end of today, we definitely were. I knew we’d get better at managing our nerves and cooperating on the floor, and we did. What I didn’t expect was to also learn how to keep our energy up when the dances just keep coming. It’s one thing to go all-out in practice but having to be “on” and give a performance multiple times over a period of hours. . . well, we found reserves of charisma we didn’t know we had!
I will post results in a couple of days when I’ve had a chance to compare our heat list with the program. We did not get any videos, unfortunately: personal video was not allowed and the “official” video service was just too expensive. Elaine took some pictures for us that I need to look at and get posted, and DecaDance Photography was there taking professional pictures, so I should be able to link to their gallery. Stay tuned!