June 21: Dress Rehearsal

For those of you not familiar with dance recitals, which was me prior to this year, the studio typically holds an in-studio rehearsal, which I already shared with all of you, and a dress rehearsal at the location of the recital shows. Tonight was my daughter's dress rehearsal - full costume, full make-up, full routine in front of a smaller audience. And, I thought the in-studio rehearsal was chaotic. For this one, we had to sit in the theater audience and wait until they called her scene. During this waiting period, we watched all of the other numbers from the scene prior to hers. When that neared its conclusion, the studio owner called out the numbers for the next scene, my daughter's included, at which point my wife had to run her backstage where she was forced to turn her over to the crew running that show, complete strangers to us of course. Needless to say, I was completely stressed out by this whole experience, and this is well before my daughter's group even hit the stage, Naturally, I assumed my daughter would feel the same level of stress. Boy, I was wrong. When she came out on stage, it was on! She looked as comfortable as ever and her performance was flawless; well, I'm no dance expert, but it was flawless in my eyes. I was so proud of her, and this wasn't even the show! Thus, I'm thinking it may be a good idea to bring some tissues to tomorrow's opening night...unfortunately, my pride tends to turn emotional rather quickly in these types of situations.