Last Friday was a good day. I came home from school, and ta-da! My ELLEGARDEN cd was waiting for me in the mail! I've been listening to it all week ^__^ They're so awesome, especially since most of their songs are in English (there are three that are Japanese, but they have English in them). Notice I typed EngLish, not EngRish. The lead singer writes all the lyrics, and he has very good grammar. There's only a slight hint of an accent when he sings, too. I think my favorite song right now is "Space Sonic," although there are a couple grammatical errors in it, but I wonder if he just did it on purpose or if there's some reason behind it.
Friday was also the first day of the NUVO dance convention! I've never been to a convention before, so it was quite the experience. I had a lot of fun, though it did wear me out. I didn't feel the fatigue until I got home on Sunday. NUVO is in its first year, so it's not very well known yet. Those of you who watch So You Think You Can Dance? are going to be familiar with a couple of names I'm going to mention.
Justin Giles taught the contemporary class, his class was my favorite. We also had a contemporary class taught by TRAVIS WALL. His class was difficult because of how fast he moved and how intricate his choreo. was. There wasn't much time to pick everything up before he moved on. I'm not too big on his choreo., to me it looks like "flailing with style." He's an excellent dancer, though.
Justin Giles' contemporary class. This was taken when the convention was in Utah. The choreo. is the same that I learned, but this group learned 16 more counts than we did. You can hear Justin in the background shouting and clapping important cues. The girl in the green shirt does it the best, but you can't see her half the time.
I'm no good at hip-hop. I've never really taken any classes, so I'm bad at it because I have no experience. I didn't really like the first two hip-hop classes because I was frustrated at not being able to "get it." The last one, though, was a different teacher, so there was different choreo. And it was much more fun, because on top of being hot, and acting cute, IVAN KOUMAEV is REALLY funny.
There was a faculty show at the end, and Kelsey and I got some of the best seats, though uncomfortable because there's no chairs and everyone's packed in trying to get close. We were right on the aisle that all the dancers entered on and we were pretty close to the front. It was a great show. Travis Wall wasn't in it, though, and Ivan took his place in the opening number. You can find these performances on youtube. The convention has an account called ClubNUVO (which is actually what they call the show), and it's got the opening number and some solos and such. You'd have to look up the Detroit convention to see the opening without Travis, though. There's a lot of videos of the competition up, too, though I don't think any were the winners.
Wow, that was long. Well, so was the convention. Two classes Friday evening, six classes on Saturday starting at 7:30 a.m. and six more on Sunday starting at 8 a.m. The Hyatt was packed, too, because there were two dance conventions and an old lady quartet competition going on all at once.
Spring break is almost over!! TT___TT
