Dance Like You Mean It!

I spent part of my Thursday afternoon at the Chiles Center at the Thunderbird Dance Camp watching the final recital of all of Oregon's dancers under the age of 25! Why? Trisha was there, that's why! She started texting me on Monday to come watch her dance, so I had x'd out one hour of my afternoon from work to be there.

I should have x'd out the entire afternoon because it was mayhem and an extravaganza of sweating dancing girls! I got there and found a seat up high in the nosebleed section. The parents were pretty competitive about the seats - groups from different places were holding seats and I was clearly an outsider, somebody who hadn't been ensconced in these seats all week, and the stares were fierce. "These seats are saved," they hissed at me until I finally reached some top section where one lone small broken seat remained for me.

The back biting and competitive nature of these parents was awesome to witness. It was worse than Little League dads - these dance mothers are fierce! I kept wondering, why don't they have jobs like everybody else? Evidently there exists moms who have nothing better to do than follow their kids around and bad-mouth the competition while munching on barbecue-flavored pringles. One nasty dancing daughter came up to her mealy-mouthed mom to exclaim: "Watch the girl next to me...she's awful! And she has spent the week trying to talk to me! Ick!" The mother replied, "just dance and forget her, don't talk to her, you don't want the judges to think you have anything to do with her!"

So, with baited breath, I waited for Trisha to dance. I could barely see her down below. But when her group of dancers emerged, I recognized her immediately. She was in the front row and she was smiling! She knew her stuff and she danced really well. She twirled and tumbled and kicked and gyrated her arms like she knew what she was doing! It was AWESOME!

My pictures (taken with my iphone because I have no other recording device currently) are pathetic and don't show much except attest to the fact that I, and I alone, watched Trisha in her finest moment shining at the Thunderbird Camp. I also noticed that she had lots of friends around her that she was enjoying. I hope that she had a great camp experience, that she always dances with girls who aren't very good, and that she just had fun.