Olde Town Fall Festival

Every year the city holds a Fall Festival in the historic old town district. There are vendors, food, and two performance stages as well as a children's area with games and such. It's a small festival, but usually lots of fun.

For the past several years my student troop, Halleyah Raks, has performed with the dance school where I teach my class - Dominy School of Performing Arts. We've always enjoyed performing at the festival.

This year I branched out a bit and a new group that I'm dancing with, Daughters of Djinn, also performed at the festival. So I was doing double duty - performer and mama hen. The process of getting there was a bit rough, with DOD having to re-choreograph our performance pieces after we got moved from one stage (large and flat) to the other stage (small and high) about six weeks out. Frustrating, but we made it work.

The day was beautiful. Sunny and breezing. Not hot, but not too cold. You could smell Festival foods as the wind blew - popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, etc. Since DOD performed at 12:45, none of us had eaten and the stage was downwind of the food vendors so we were hungry! The wind had us worried - our first number had lit candles, sword and fan veil! All difficult props to work with in the wind. Bella, the member dancing with the fire, is a professional fire performer, so all precautions were taken and she was confident she could manage the flame. And low and behold she made it through her section without a candle going out until the very end! About the best one could ask for under the circumstances. Next up was Stacia with a large and sharp scimitar. She managed very well and made it through with no bobbles! Then it was my turn. I picked up the fan veil with a sigh. I had planned some really neat moves, but the wind was whipping by and I just figured that at some point the darn thing would eat me! But I made it through without being wrapped up in my veil and when I watched the video latter was quiet surprised at how wonderful it looked!

Our next song was a new choreography - the one we'd had to do in six weeks. Well 5 weeks really since I was out of town for my sister's wedding for one of those weeks. Lots of turns and my shoes were sticking to the stage horribly! I made it through with only one bobble, that I can see on the video, but probably few others noticed. Poor Stacia flipped too soon at one point, but other than some minor polishing stuff - it went off really well. When I watched the playback, it was so funny to hear an audience member say, "We have this in Conyers, GA!?" Yep - you sure do!

Then it was pack up everything, help Bella and Stacia change for the Halleyah Raks performance, and run over to the other stage! A whirlwind and there were lots of folks I wanted to visit with that I just didn't have the time to do so and when I caught my breath they had left! Sorry about that! We made it to the second stage, got everyone together. I turned into mama hen and pinned belts, checked hair and make-up and got everyone together to mentally walk through choreography before they had to go onstage. We were second to last in the line up and the girls did beautifully! Watching my students perform and excel is one of the wonderful things about being a teacher. One of the newer girls, Heather, had her first solo and she was terrified - but she looked cute and cool as a cucumber! The audience loved it and after a few minutes of adjustment started clapping and enjoying the peppy energy. Whew - they were done and it was great!

We spent some time in the small gardens taking some nice photos for everyone to remember the day and then walked around the festival handing out class flyers, etc. A really successful day, but I've got to remember that just because it's not hot - doesn't mean I don't need sunscreen! Oh my aching cleavage!

Halleyah :)