Origins…
I remember dancing for D.P.C. (Dance Production Company) at Vista del Lago and being exposed to all different styles of dance from our coach Ms. Minks. When I first started I’m not going to lie I felt pretty weird being asked to do ballet and jazz but after a while it was pretty fun. Especially since a lot of my friends were on the team and we all could laugh about it during practice when we fncked up turns and leaps and all that jazz (see what I did there). I’ll never forget those 3ish years performing at assemblies and practicing for our shows. Those were great times with awesome people and what made me want to pursue dance in College.
When I first found out I got accepted to UCR the first thing I did was look up dance teams. I was surprised to see that there were 2 teams: 909 and Evolution. I was surprised not by the number but by the fact that they were hip hop teams. During my time in high school we never focused on any one style. We were all exposed to the many different styles of dance so that each of us could find one we truly liked and wanted to pursue. Hip hop just happened to be mine. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out that there were 2, count them, 2 teams that were at the college I was going too. That week I scoured the web and YouTube for any kind of video with 909 or Evo in it.
I was pretty much blown away by what I was seeing because everything they were doing was nothing like the hip hop I knew from high school. This sh*t was from the street son! Hahah. Just kidding. But in all seriousness this was on a whole different level and I couldn’t wait to get out there and audition. I remember walking up to each table at bear facts and acting like a total fan boy for both. The people there probably thought I was a bit annoying but for me I was just excited to meet the people I could have been potentially dancing with.
Fast forward about a month and there I am at Evo’s first workshop. I learned the pieces but eventually decided not to audition yet because I wanted to go to 909’s workshop. It’s not like I didn’t like Evo or anything I just wanted to check out both before making a decision. So the week after I go to 909’s workshop and made the decision that I wanted to audition for them. I liked there style at the time and I thought I had a pretty good shot at making the team.
The day of the audition. I remember I ran into 2 other auditionees. One of them asked me if I was nervous, I calmly replied, “No, I think I’m alright.” It’s not like I had 100% confidence that I was going to make the team, but I really wasn’t nervous. I practiced a little bit and even made up a bit of choreo for the freestyle portion. I was hopeful that I was going to make the team.
Time for the audition. I don’t remember how I did and I had no one there to record it for me. But looking back on it, I probably did bleh. Hahah. But the thing that makes me cringe is that I forgot my choreo that I made up and ended up doing the chicken head dance. (O_O) If you have no idea what that is just YouTube “Chicken Head Lesson”. Let me put this out there right now, I looked absolutely nothing like that. It probably looked fncking awkward as hell. But I had to do something and that was the first thing that popped up. Needless to say at the end of the day I didn’t make the team. I was disappointed but I didn’t feel defeated.
The following week Evo had make up workshops and I told myself, “You are going to make it on this team, no matter what.” So once again I go through the workshop week and I practice the pieces over and over. I don’t think I tried to choreo anyting for the freestlye part. I don’t even remember doing the freestyle part. But I finish the audition and wait.
Well later that night I’m informed that I made the team and I probably almost shat my pants. I was so happy to be a part of a team finally and I couldn’t wait to get started.
The rest I think I’ll save for another post since this one is already pretty long. If you have read this far you’re probably wondering why I wrote this. To be honest it’s because I watched a dance video like 20 minutes ago and I remembered how I first got into dancing. I thought I would share my little origin story with all of you. Maybe sometime I’ll write about my first year on Evo because it was a crazy experience.
Back to watching random YouYube videos. =D
