Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Regional Dance America/Southwest Festival 2009 - Sugar Land, Texas

I traveled to Sugar Land, Texas with the ballet company from Western Arkansas Ballet in March. They were attending Regional Dance America- Southwest Region's 2009 Festival. This was my third trip to RDA with the WAB girls, but my first to attend as a chaperone. Oh my goodness, can you say EXHAUSTED?? That's exactly how I felt when we got home and I didn't even dance ; ) We drove down on Thursday, checked in the hotel and took the girls to dinner. Friday - Sunday the girls took classes from 8:30 a.m. until 4 or 4:30 p.m. Each night there were performances to watch. A few of our girls danced Friday night in an emerging choreography piece by one of our former company members. There is a dancer party following the performance on Friday night so we were out until about midnight. Most of our girls danced Saturday night in the piece that our adjudicator had chosen. Saturday night there was no event after the performance so we got to bed maybe a little earlier. Sunday night was Gala Night - 3 hours of ballet followed by a VERY late banquet. We were up early Monday morning for the long drive home - exhausted!! As a chaperone, I had three girls in my room and also had responsibility for making sure the girls were fed at meal time. The festival provides pre-ordered box lunches so all we had to do was pick those up each day, but supper was a fun experience. Ever try to order takeout for about 25 people? Umm, giving an Italian food order to a man with a heavy Spanish accent while riding in a car in Houston traffic was a memorable experience! Hey, they delivered and got the order perfect. Chik-fil-a rocks when placing a large order, especially when you place it early in the afternoon! They priced each order individually so LeAnn and I weren't stuck with a calculator for an hour like we had been the day before!! Actually, as exhausting as it was - it was a lot of fun and our girls were great. The only downside of the entire trip was that Rachel was playing around in a van on the way down and cut her toe and is losing a toenail. She didn't take some of her classes so she missed out on some good stuff but I hope she learned a lesson about taking off her shoes in the back seat of a van and kicking the seat in front of her - Lol : ) Rachel @ RDA Gala with some friends from last summer's OU SummerWind Dance Intensive


WAB Company girls @ RDA Gala (being silly late at night)

Rachel & Emily at dinner before the Gala performance
Rachel & Mom

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