Flamenco Class Show

I've got mixed feelings about my dance performance at our flamenco class presentation yesterday...

One of the good things is that we felt a sort of sense of unity through the lessons and practices. After the weekly classes, we had extra sessions by ourselves and helped each other for perfecting choreographies and techniques. I don't mean that we actually got 'perfect', but the important thing is that we tried! Also, we enjoyed chatting about flamenco after the lessons, in a cafe or restaurant, which motivated us to keep practising and improve ourselves. We might have developed a sense of friendship.

Another advantage is my actual 'improvement' through the lessons and practices. Perhaps it wasn't really dramatic, but bit by bit, I felt I was actually geting better, and I must thank my teacher and classmates for it. My teacher is one of the best-known flamenco dancers who is working in the area, and she sometimes had to make harsh comments on our crap dancing which was far from her ideals. But her warm personality prevented her comments from ending up as simple criticism or insults, so we knew what she said was out of her kindness or something similar to 'parental love' towards us. She just wanted to make us better! Actually, I personally felt my improvements thanks to her 'to-the-point' or sometimes humourous pieces of advice. I was getting confident little by litle, even though I knew that I wasn't good enough for the show...

Well, nobody is perfect. But you're not supposed to make mistakes once you're on stage. At run-through, I somehow did a wrong footwork which I had never done in the series of practices. Other students seemed to do something wrong as well. But we could laugh those things away as it was just rehearsal. I told myself not to make the same mistake in the real part. Then... how come I did the same error on stage? As soon as I noticed it I tried to correct, so, hopefully, it didn't turn out to be a serious mistake. But still... Oh shit!

After the show, I found out that most of my classmates also made some sorts of mistakes themselves. They were laughing such things away. We're still students anyway... Just try to be better next time!

So, my show exprerience ended up a sort of sweet and bitter memory...