To Our Beautiful Dancers,
Let me start out by saying that when we decided to audition our piece for the Spring Showcase, Abby and I had no idea that the dance would come together as well as it did. It was SO clean and you all embodied the message and choreography exactly as we imagined it, so thank you times a million!
But I'm not going to lie—right before our first class, I literally wanted to vomit. The hyperventilating was REAL. I was so nervous that you all would think we were weird or crazy (which you probably do, but it's fine, I understand) and that you all would drop our dance. So let me start out by saying thank you for not doing that.
Words cannot express how excited I was to see you all picking up the choreography so quickly. We left the class that night with the biggest smiles on our faces! We knew this was going to be a great semester of dance, and it's all because of you ladies.
With each 30 seconds of choreography that we added to the dance every class, our pride for this dance and for you ladies grew and grew. The way you learned the dance was like magic; everything just seemed to fall into place, and when we went out there our first night of Hell Week, I was amazed by how clean and beautiful our dance looked. (Also can we just talk about how clean our dance was despite dancing in a closet for the whole semester?? AMAZING.)
Now, I must admit that there were quite a few things behind the scenes that you guys didn't get to see, including the fights Abby and I would have about choreography pretty much every week right before our class. You also might not be aware of how incredibly precise Abby was with cutting the song just right. It was a given that I would walk into the house and hear "She Used to Be Mine" playing at any time of day. Lowkey that song will haunt me in my dreams, but in a good way. Formations gave us nightmares and hot flashes as we tried to make sure everyone got their shining moment in the front, because for all the hard work you put into our dance, you deserve to be in the front! We had absolutely no idea what to do with lighting, but we eventually figured that out too (barely, but the lighting guy helped us immensely after looking at us like we had ten heads as we tried to half-ass explain what lights we wanted).
But in the end, all of this craziness was 1000000% worth it because we were able to see what we pictured in our heads for the whole semester play out on the stage in front of us, and even better than we could have ever imagined! So this is to you, dancers: thank you for dealing with our craziness. Thank you for dealing with me asking "Any questions??" probably one million times a class. Thank you for enduring my terrible puns and smiling even though it wasn't funny at all. Thank you for learning our dance in a space where you could barely hear the music or us talking and creepy men working out stared at you the whole time. Thank you for being 26 of the most beautiful dancers and for putting your all into our dance, especially for the two shows. And finally, thank you for making our first time as choreographers one of the most rewarding experiences yet. We couldn't be more proud with the way you performed this weekend and in every class we've had. This dance will always hold a special place in my heart, as will all of you. I hope you know how talented each and every one of you are! It's incredible. We can't wait to do this again, and hopefully we will see your beautiful dancers in our crazy class again.
Love always,
Tess (and indirectly Abby because I'm sure she agrees with everything I wrote).
