dance dance dance dance dance dance

It would be really unfair to this past week if I didn't blog about it.

Last Thursday, the fam and I went to Martha's Vineyard for a brief weekend getaway. Well, actually, Mamtha and I were signed up to dance at Lauren and Vijay's wedding reception on Friday, the day after. We drove for about two hours on Thursday evening, took a ferry off the mainland, and reached the island at about 9 PM. It was rainy and gross. But, we stayed in a nice cottage.


The next morning, it was still raining on and off and we didn't know whether we should try to make it to the Hindu Ceremony, which was supposed to be at Aquinnah Lighthouse, or start getting ready for the performance. We chose wisely when we decided to start getting ready. We spent two and a half hours in Mamtha's hotel room getting dressed and bejeweled--which is actually a pretty fair time considering that we each had to do full braids + hair ornaments with only two mothers for assistance.

Then, we sped down the roads of Martha's Vineyard (by sped, I mean drove at the speed of 30 mph when the speed limit was 20) and got to the wedding reception at 7. Thankfully, it wasn't raining and sun was kind of coming 0ut. The performance went wonderfully, especially since we were not expecting people to actually watch us. However, we seemed to get everyone's attention and they sat around us while we danced for 45 minutes, like it was storytime! It was cute. They seemed to really like our dance and thanked us with gifts and a lovely dinner.


We had all of the next day to ourselves, so we drove around the island to different popular locales such as the Gingerbread houses, fudge shoppes, and the lighthouse. And the Black Dog store, where Mamtha and I bought the same shirt ("how cute", I know). It was a rather exhuasting day and my fam ferried and drove back to the mainland that night.

On Sunday morning, I woke up realizing that I had another dance performance that day. Nritya Haram was taking place at 4 pm so there was really no point in my trying to scrub away the red marker on my toes/fingers. Jyoti and Nisha showed up at my place and while driving to Littleton, we reminisced about the arangetram memories of last summer. After the show, I went to a nice little Nritya Haram afterparty at Praneetha's house with Sravanthi, Bhavana, Swathi, and Sravanthi. It involved food from Olive Garden and Apples to Apples. It was therefore awesome.

Here is a picture of us senior dancers after the Thillana (thanks, Swathi, for the picture).

Over the next five days, I attended rehearsals of Nayaki, the solo performance that Jothi Aunty was doing on the 27th. I was in charge of lighting. I expected it to be just dimming and brightening, but it turned out to be WAY more complicated than that. Here is a poster for Nayaki:


The performance took place yesterday at the Sorenson Theater, in Babson College. I literally spent 8.5 hours there: I got there at 1, helped set up, programmed in all the lighting cues, drew some stage markings with tape, and rewrote the lighting cues into my notebook. It was then 4. I went over the lighting cues again and made some final changes. Then, I had to help adjust some fixtures so that the musicians could have more light. All of a sudden, it was 5:30 and I frantically got changed into my sari. I hobbled up to the technical booth in my heels, basically exhausted and starved from not sitting down or eating for the past 5 hours. The show started at around 6:30 and for the next two hours, my heart rate was pretty freaking high as I repeatedly punched the 'go' button for each cue. Turns out there were 108 separate lighting cues. 108!! Not even kidding. The lighting turned out well except for one issue when the computer froze and I kept hitting the wrong "back" button, so the stage was dark for a fe seconds. But the dancing was, of course, fabulous (we are talking about Jothi Raghavan here). At 9:30, Manasa and I left for Saketh's graduation party. But we left pretty quickly from there because, well, I was exhausted. And I hadn't even danced!!

I can't believe this week is over. Now, I just have to write a 5 page essay to submit on Tuesday and try to study before the next week of DANCE CAMP! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah