So I'm in a social dance class with my roommate Morgan and on Saturday we had our final dance competition and performance. I love dance and miss my ballet/tap/jazz etc. days growing up. I had been wanting to sign up for social dance for a while and when I found out Morgan was in a class I decided to join her. We learned fox trot, triple swing, cha cha, and the waltz. My teacher was pretty young and cool and used to be in the ballroom dance group on campus here and the funny thing is we I actually saw that group perform like 5 years ago at the D.C. temple visitors center, and after talking to her for a bit after class we realized that she was one of the dancers that I saw all those years ago! Such a small world. Anyways, I was sure that this class would be full of socially awkward people that my mom likes to call "treasures" but surprisingly there were some awesome people in the class and I LOVED going. There is nothing better than dancing with a cute boy. Especially if they are taller than you. haha. So on Saturday me and Morgan arrived at the Hart gymnasium/auditorium for the dance competition at 10am. Every couple gets a number (mine was 333 and Morgan's was 444) to pin the the guys back and all the couples competing have to line up and dance for like a minute while judges walk around and determine weather you could make it to the next round. They look mostly to see if you are keeping correct time, and have a good dance position. There were alot of different dances to compete in and different class levels. Our class could compete in either waltz or cha cha. I was planning to compete in waltz and me an my partner Doug had practiced it and thought we had a pretty good chance of doing well. That morning however, Doug had to take a chemistry test before hand and it ran late. We were expecting he would be a little late but a little turned into an hour, and we completely missed the waltz competition! I was a bit heartbroken because I was REALLY excited to waltz it up, and also nervous because I was not very good at cha cha and we hadn't practiced at all! Doug made it just in time for cha cha so we practiced for literally 5 minutes before we had to line up. Our expectations were not high and I was hoping to just make it to the 2nd round. There were 120 couples competing cha cha and they would eliminate about half each round. After you dance for a bit, you walk off stage and a lady comes and reads off the numbers that get to advance to the next round. The anticipation was intense but when we heard the number "333" we were surprised and pretty proud of ourselves! The same process happened for about 5 rounds. Every time we would advance I would jump into my partners arms in a big hug of excitement haha (which was awesome cause I had a pretty attractive partner hahaha). Then we made it to the final round of 12 but alas we got eliminated. If we had made it past just one more round we would have been ranked and got a ribbon or something. But, I was still pretty pleased with our performance and getting into the top 12 out of 120 couples 'aint bad at all (especially for not having had hardly any practice cha cha-ing.) I was also way proud of my buddy Matt and Morgan who got 5th place in the waltz (out of 80)!! It was awesome to watch them and cheer for them. They even got an ugly green 5th place ribbon!
That night was the big dance with a live band and performances from all the dance students as well as some of the pros from the BYU-I dance team. From 7 to 10 there is a live jazz band that plays and every half our one style of dance will perform. It was crazy chaotic because there are like 8 or more groups all on the floor at once each doing a different routine to the same song. Some groups took it pretty seriously but really, it was just more of a fun thing. You didn't get judged or anything, just credit in your class for participating. For this one Morgan did the waltz and I was in the swing group. For this one I had another awesome partner named Matt (who danced in the competition with Morgan) and our routine was pretty good because someone's friend who is a really good dancer choreographed it for us. I messed up cause I was so distracted with so many groups going at once but it was still way fun! In between performances when the band just plays and you get to do whatever I got to dance the waltz with Doug that we missed out on. It was an awesome "day of dance" and I definitely plan on signing up for more dance classes here next semester!
me and my cha cha partner Doug
me and my swing partner Matt
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