Oops I did it Again - Kennedy's don't half-bake anything!

The story starts 6 days ago on Monday morning – I’d been asking them what song they wanted for a few days and at first we thought we were gonna do "Toxic", a classic Britney song right? We even started choreography and spent probably 45 minutes figuring out what to do, but we soon realized that there are other Britney songs with more lip-syncing potential. We then went to "Hit Me Baby, One More Time" (and thank goodness we didn’t choose that cause… that is a SUGGESTIVE song) but almost immediately that was ruled out due to the slow beat. So, we finally decided on "Oops, I Did It Again", and seriously, for almost two hours on Monday, we pounded that choreography OUT! I was seriously in awe of watching the girls work – there were three main front runners that helped get everything organized – Amalie (Musical Theater), Ella (Visual Arts) and Lilah (Dance). The way they just knew what looked cool, what worked, how each move went into the next, they’re seriously good at what they do. And Ella isn’t even a DANCER, the only experience she has is as a rhythmic gymnast (the gymnastics with the ribbon).

 

The main jobs I had as their counselor was music editor (I cut out a whole second chorus at the end), director (making us practice at LEAST once a day, usually more ;), and choreography supervisor which turned out to be the most important job. You know in any group project, there were a LOT of opinions that need to be heard and only SOME that can actually be applied. The first day of choreography, the girls worked BEAUTIFULLY.  Seriously, they listened to each other, acknowledged new ideas, compromised and you can see their hard work paid off, but some of the other days (especially as the performance date got closer) there was quite a bit of frustration over differing opinions and rehearsal strategy, but we had a good talk about how this was valuable experience for future group projects that would be much less successful and moved on better for it 

 

Fast forward to the day before the performance. To be honest, I was a little nervous cause we had decided that day to do basically the whole song and not just a portion, so we had to add more choreo, but you know what, cabin 157 SHOWED UP and by the end, I was confident in our performance ability. Especially after a quick run to Hobby Lobby earlier that day added details like face mics for everyone and a big mic for the opening verse (which actually ended up being a fat paintbrush with some chrome tape and pipe-cleaners)

 

The day of, we woke up READY! We listened to the song a good 4 times that morning – needless to say the cabin floor was pounding cause the girls HAD practice the choreo even while brushing their teeth  After dinner we RUSHED back to the cabin to put on our outfits – we had all agreed on black bottoms (the bigger the flare at the bottom, and the lower the waist, the BETTER) and a colorful shirt – if they weren’t already tight like Britney, we MADE them that way with some quick ties at the bottom. Add a hair crimper, some well placed braids and pig tails and we were ready. Applying the mics did prove more difficult that we thought, but we hurdled that obstacle after discovering eye lash glue works well to secure things anywhere on your head.

 

Then, it turned out we actually had a good hour before we needed to head over to Upton Morley, so we did a quick run through (you don’t want to over do it on performance day) and then had a quick little photo shoot. After that, it was OFF TO THE RACES! The first 3 performances were… lack luster. Some were cute, some were rushed together, but honestly, I couldn’t pay that much attention anyway cause I was SO NERVOUS for my girls! Not because I didn’t think they could do it, but like, we had worked SO HARD, and I knew what we could do and I wanted this to be the best performance EVER! I wanted all that hard work to PAY OFF! Calder (the program director) announced our cabin, the song, and we got in position. 

 

And MAN did that cabin SLAUGHTER that performance, I mean, it was one of our best performances ever. There was just enough adrenaline to make everyone alert and serious, but not too many nerves to leave anyone shaky or unsure. I was so glad we had spent the time we did rehearsing, it was tiring skipping rest hour, or practicing the dance instead of more phone time, but the payoff was WORTH it. Throughout the performance there were gasps of amazement, cheers of surprise and awed silence, seriously, it took the crowd a good 5 seconds after we ended to erupt into applause cause they were so blown away. I was so proud of them, seriously. The best compliments both came from Phoebe, our waterfront director and a fellow Music Education major. First, she said, “I don’t know what you are feeding your cabin, but it isn’t Pine Crest,” and second, “I saw them up there, and I knew that was the work of an educator.” The other compliment/sign of our success with everyone’s inability to believe only two members of our cabin are here for dance. Sure, we have a synchronized swimmer, a rhythmic gymnast, a visual artist who dances and a musical theater major, but those girls are the only ones with significant choreography experience. We’ve got primarily creative writers, singer-songwriters, orchestra members and visual artists, but we played to our strengths, used what we knew and practiced like there was no tomorrow to give the performance we did. 

Update: In case some of you didn’t hear, my cabin WON I-IDOL AND WE’RE GOING TO KRESGE BABY! There might be some stiff competition at Kresge, but I think we’ve at least got a decent chance at winning tomorrow, and I found out we are the last to perform on the program so… 