So you think you can dance?

Sunday morning we had a pretty early call for the Redeemer Choir. We sang at the East Side Morning Service which attracts about 2000 people in the Hunter College Auditorium. It was fun to be on stage and feel a part of the service. Our songs went really well and it was a really joyful and intense experience of worship. I forgot how much I love to sing in a choir. Fun, fun. The service itself was so different from my usual West Side AM and I remembered why I chose that one! The East siders do only hymns with organ and there is just a much more old-school feel to it all. Now that Redeemer added 5 services, Tim only speaks at 4 and so one service gets a rotating pastor. John Lin did a really good job but I have to feel bad that he knows that everyone is disappointed to miss Tim. This service had a very elaborate coffee hour at the Hunter College Student Center...several stations of coffee with multiple flavors of coffeemate to boot. Fancy! I ran into my West Side AM buddy Julia which was so fun because I had missed her the last few weeks being out of town, etc. I also met an opera singer couple who are friends of Jenny. They were fun to talk to and I loved how they were wearing orange accessories that complimented one another. So cute. I walked home from Hunter (68th and Lex) and noticed how much cuter the delis and cafes are in the 70s than in the upper 80s and 90s....we're going to have to work on that!
When I arrived home I basically prepped and worked myslef into a tizzy about my upcoming dance call. What to wear, what to stretch, yada yada. I discovered that Broadway on a Sunday afternoon between 34th and 26th is not the safest place to be. I think there are flea markets nearby on Sundays so there were all sorts of characters around that I was not used to seeing. I arrived in the room and just felt suffocated by the string beans stretching our their splits and adjusting their worn-in leotards. Oh dear. What did I get myself into? It ended up taking a very long time to be seen...the guys group was running late ahead of us and the most redeeming aspect of the afternoon was watching their "Hairspray" combo in action. So cute. I was in the 2nd group of 2 girls' groups...they taught us original Jerome Robbins choreagraphy of "America" and about 64 counts of it!!! Kill me now. It moved so fast and it all moved to the left, where I was standing in my group, so I never really had a good view or a good opportunity to practice the steps. And then, they ran our of time and called my group up first. We totally fell apart and none of us got asked to stay any further. I was actually pretty humiliated and disappointed especially because the choreagrapher is a teacher that I've taken class from at Steps. I am just so embarassed at how poorly I did and I wonder if I'll be able to go back to class! I swallowed my sorrow in the form of a Pinkberry treat before heading home for pizza night with special guest Eric. I made one of my best pizzas complete with goat cheese and sauteed onions. Yum. We had fun seeing the ones that we wanted make it to Broadway!