Final Dress

My team of swing dancers performed their new number last night for the first time before a crowd gathered for the local Lions dinner. Despite the fact that they are the Performance Team, this marks their second-- count it-- second performance this year. Over the past few weeks, they have been preparing for one of their biggest performances of the year: a local community version of Dancing with the Stars. Last night was a good warm-up, allowing the team to perform in front of an audience. Now, the space was totally different from where we've been practicing, so they had to improvise on their feet (literally). The floor was carpeted, so rather than sliding for one move, they had to...hop. And the space was smaller, so rather than full double somersaults they limited them to singles for fear of somersaulting into some one's lap.
The dancers have been practicing before school and in the evenings until 8 or so. I'm tired, and I spend that time watching. They are getting drained. Two of the leads just joined in the past week and learned the entire routine inside of a day. But to see it all come together last night was pretty surreal. We did a sailor theme, with the boys in liberty whites and cracker jacks, the girls in simple dresses to hint at fleet week in the forties. And they looked SOO good!
As their coach, I'm crazy about detail. We have run through this routine, and pieces of it, so many times. Every time I call out "again!" I see the sighs. And yet..last night we caught sight of the pay off and I'm really excited for them to see that focus on the details and an endless pursuit of awesomeness actually makes a huge difference.
I'm really proud of my team.