You might be noticing that my order of events appears to be going backward in time. A lot has happened since my last post in April. Wow, has it really be that long since I last write a blog post?! Holy cow! To keep consistent in the backward chronological order of events, this post will be about Katelyn’s first Tahitian competition with her halau, Kaliloa O Kaleo’Onalani!
First of all, I can’t believe I haven’t posted on single thing about Katelyn dancing Hula/Tahitian. She’s been doing it for about a year and half now. Perhaps it was because she didn’t really have her heart in it until now. For the past year and a half, she went through the motions of going to practice on Mondays and Wednesdays and participating in some (but not very many) performances. When she would dance at these performances, she was always a step behind with the moves and always eye-balling the big girls. Obviously, she didn’t know the routines completely. I would suggest that she practice at home and she’d blow me off. Every time she got picked up for practice, she would cry and complain that she was too tired or too this or too that. She kept asking, “Who signed me up for this anyway?!?! Was it my dad? Did he sign me up?” We kept telling her that it was good for her to be active and dancing hula was a good extra-curricular activity. She was still very disgruntled about the whole idea.
Kate’s halau had participated in other competitions during the time she’s been taking classes but we didn’t decide to include her until the San Jose Tahiti Fete that went down during 4th of July weekend. I didn’t realize the amount of work that went into preparing for these competitions! Two weeks before the competition, there was practice every day. The practices lasted for hours. The only downside to that for Katelyn was that she would get home late and have school the next morning but she was such a trooper. It got tough toward the end of those two weeks - exhaustion was beginning to set in, most especially apparent in the little kids. I wasn't even dancing and I would STILL be tired after just being at practice with them for all those hours (and all I was doing was sitting on my butt, watching). And I didn't even go to the practices every day! I could only imagine how tired the dancers/musicians were!! Truly amazing how hard everyone worked!
Alfred had the honor of being invited to play his guitar and sing some of the pieces for their production so he had practice right along with Katelyn every day. Of course, Alfred sounded amazing singing the songs. The halau dubbed him “superstar” after that weekend!
My job, unbeknownst to me, would be to make her costume. Yes. That entails sewing. Something I hadn’t done in a long time and was never very good at in the first place. I struggled with it in the beginning but, all things considered, Katelyn’s costume came out looking decent. Ok, I’ll admit it. I kind of enjoyed making stuff on the sewing machine. The hand-sewing I could have done without but I can run things through the sewing machine all day long!
The halau placed 2nd place in two categories, which was awesome! It was great to see their hard work acknowledged. It was a great bonding experience with the other dancers and families in the halau. It helped Katelyn learn to really love what she is doing (the halau took a week off to rest after the competition and Katelyn kept telling me how much she missed everyone and couldn’t wait to go back to practice). It motivated Desiree and I to take classes ourselves (although for me it’s more for exercise than for performing in front of audiences. Thoughts of dancing in public makes me feel a little faint!)
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