Although classes have kept me busy (papers here, presentations there) ship activities have kept me and the entire shipboard community entertained, starting with the tri-annual Sea Olympics, followed by the SAS Talent Show!
SEA OLYMPICS
This is one of the most exciting and most anticipated events in an SAS voyage! Students, faculty, and lifelong learners are divided into different teams, or "seas", depending on where you live on the ship--which deck, and which side (port or starboard). A total of 10 seas now compete for the Olympic Gold. And what is the Olympic Gold, you ask? The Olympic Gold grants the victorious winners the choice on whether to disembark first or last once we get to Florida at the end of our voyage!
I've always bled blue when it came to school/team colors, but this time, I had to go GREEN! Gasp!! La Salle?! I had to. Kelly Green was my team's color, and our sea was called the Bering Sea! Our sea rivals were: Caribbean, Baltic, Red, Aegean, Adriatic, Mediterranean, Yellow, Dead (lol), and Diploma (get it? Diploma Sea. Har har. But that really was the faculty's sea name haha)
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| Bering Sea's lip sync routine! SAS Olympics Fall 2013 |
There were lots of Olympic events held like hula hoop, synchronized swimming, dodgeball, spoons, scrabble, volleyball, lip sync, and more! I participated in hula hoop and lip sync. Our sea didn't do so hot in the hula hoop game, but we definitely had fun with our lip sync routine! The lip sync event was basically coming up with a dance routine while lip syncing to the song(s). So it's pretty much all about dancing and singing without having to actually sing, which is PERFECTION for me since God and His angels know I can't sing to save my life. Maybe once I am able to connect to wifi again, I can upload a video of our debut! Lol
Sadly though, after all the olympic event scores were tallied, our sea ended up not emerging victorious. We didn't even place in the top three hahaha. Oh well, it was all for fun and laughter and that definitely was achieved! I had a blast!
Read more about it here:
SAS Talent Show
So I got the opportunity to dance for the shipboard community during the recently concluded SAS Fall 2013 Talent Show! When calls for auditions were announced, I was kind of hesitant at first because I felt it would be difficult to come up with a dance and find time to rehearse on a ship, when I had all these other things eating up my time as it is. But... I couldn't shake off the performer in me, just itching to dance. I just had to. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to share what I love to do!
I wanted to come up with something different. I didn't want it to just be a purely classical ballet number. I'm used to combining ballet steps with some hip hop moves because of the dances Abylay and I have made in the past, but this time, I wanted to see if I could incorporate some salsa moves into the mix! We had one Salsa session on the ship about a month ago, and I really liked the basic movements because it was so flowy and fun! So I worked on choreographing a ballet-slash-salsa piece, just experimenting with moves I can fuse from both types of dances.
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| SAS Talent Show Fall 2013: Ballet-Salsa Fusion |
I auditioned with a rough piece to show what I had so far. And when I say rough, I mean ROUGH. I didn't get to rehearse a lot because there was no where I could rehearse, so all the steps were just in my head. And if you're a dancer, you very well know that thinking the steps is WAY different than actually doing the steps. Add the fact that the ship was rocky the day of the audition, and you've got yourself a Laura messing up. Oh, and did I mention I tried to do this en pointe?! Slippery slippery! Ugh I hated my audition, but I am my worst critic.
But I guess the judges saw potential (thank God haha), because I got in!! This was right before we got to South Africa, so I had about 2 weeks to clean up my dance and get my act together. One of my closest friends on the ship, Kacey, helped me throughout this process. She happily agreed to be my "coach", making me practice even when I didn't want to. Which paid off! She gave me tips on how I could improve my dance, and recorded my rehearsals so I could watch myself afterwards and see what I did well and what I could do better.
For most of my rehearsal run throughs, I attempted to do it en pointe. I used soda to make my shoes sticky so that they won't be slippery on the stage floor, a technique we used to do back at my dance school whenever we would dance on theater floors that weren't dancer-shoe-friendly. Soda or hairspray usually works wonders, but I didn't have any hairspray, so soda it was! It worked for a few minutes, but then it would lose its stickiness again. I could have kept soda-fying it but the motion of the ocean was so unpredictable that I finally decided (a day before final rehearsal) to just do my dance on flats. That decision made a world of a difference with my dancing! I was more comfortable knowing I had solid footing supporting me underneath.
I had butterflies in my stomach all throughout the day of the show, which is what usually happens every time I have a performance scheduled for the day. As soon as I wake up, it's good morning butterflies, leave me alone! I was also worried because the seas were a bit rough, and I knew from experience (audition day) that dancing on stage on a rocky ship is no bueno! So I begged God to calm the waves, even for just that span of 3 minutes when I'd be dancing!
As the day progressed, the seas gradually calmed themselves down, but you can still feel a bit of rockiness. Finally, 9:15pm came and it was show time! The Union was jam packed, with people having to stand on the sides because there was no more seats nor space left! I was in Act 2 of the show, right before the finale, so I had to sit through the entire two hours with the same darn butterflies in my stomach fluttering around!! I almost wish I was in the beginning part of the show just so I could've sat back and relaxed and enjoyed the show without being all nervous and anxious! But I guess being in the later part of the show works just as well because that's what people tend to remember once they leave the show since it's still fresh in their memory. And as my friend put it--they had to save the best performances for last ;) Hehehe
Before my dance, I asked God for 3 things:
(1) To watch my every step, literally, so I won't slip or fall and die of humiliation especially since the ship was still rocking
(2) A receptive and responsive audience - I love feeding off of the crowd's reaction and energy! It makes dancing so much more fun
(3) A fun performance!
I am happy to report that all 3 things were faithfully met :) I had such a great time up there performing, that even though I messed up some parts (I cringe every time I watch the video and see some of the steps I did that I didn't like lol), I felt good. The response was so positive that I couldn't help but smile and thank God for a successful performance! And oh yeah, Ship Crush also went up to me, TOUCHED MY SHOULDER, and told me I did a great job!! hihihi :") HASHTAG KILIG?!
I am happy when I make people happy with my dance. I hope I made God just as happy!!
So that's it, those are the two main highlights from this long crossing at sea! In between those two ship events, I have been constantly battling schoolwork so I literally had no time to myself for leisure! But things have winded down now the closer we approach Argentina.
Buenos Aires, here we come!!
Til the next post!
Love,
Laura
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