So last weekend was the  IDC Seattle Competition which was highly anticipated by all the Praiseteam members. We’ve spent the last few months stressing and preparing for one of our favourite dance competitions. We love it cuz it’s always so hyped and this year 3 canadian teams PraiseTEAM, XSS, and SickStylz together hyped up the competition to its full level. And why not? it was the canadian teams that took home the top trophies. We have a reason to yell at the top of our lungs everytime one of our groups were up on the stage.
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I have to say though that the results of the competition where quite a surprise and a little confusing. The numbers we barely practiced and weren’t very confident about did better than the dances we worked our butts off for. For example our Senior C HipHop routine titled ” Heartbreak “. Senior C is the group of praiseteam members that have already graduated highschool. This routine was the last priority of all the dances and groups we had competing at IDC. We cancelled a lot of Senior C classes to make more practice time for the other routines. We figured this dance wasn’t nearly as complicated nor was it as elaborate as the other dances. On the wednesday run through before we left, this dance was a serious mess and didn’t get a chance to go over it until a few hours before we actually had to dance it at the competition so we’re thinking “wow were screwed”. Yet, Heartbreak recieved a Platinum standing and even recieved a trophy as second runner up for highest scoring champions. We have NO idea how that happened or what the judges saw in it. It’s funny how some things turn out.

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This is the clip of our Heartbreak dance but with one of the judges commentary in the background. We don’t have the real DVD yet… but we do know what the judges are thinking.

You can imagine our faces after recieving the awards… or you can see here.

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On a different note, I screwed up really bad in one of our other dances. It was probably the biggest or most obvious mistake I’ve ever made in the history of my dance life. I have proof.

It’s my most favorite time of the year. Everyone’s happier and the decorations are just beautiful…Here’s one of our choir songs that we are singing in our Christmas repertoire… still
a bit rusty… but it’ll get there…

For two years now I have been a Hip Hop teacher for kids ages 6-8 so I haven’t choreographed for older, more advanced people in a while. Julio’s task for me to choreograph a part of our Sr. C group’s Heartbreak piece was a real challenge for me. It’s different when your teaching a younger group because whatever you teach them, even if they mess up, people will think they’re cute anyway. With the older more advanced group though, ofcourse there’s higher expectations, and routines have to be good and well thought out.

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So anyways I had to share the section with menelaine, another praiseteam teacher. I got the verse, and she got the chorus. We spent about half an hour in my living room just fooling around, making up silly moves and me complaining about how much I suck at life. I decided I needed an ice cap cuz you know… Ice caps are the solution to all my problems.. hahaah Then we headed over to menelaine’s studio which was a better atmosphere to work in with mirrors and a wooden floor. We ended up sleeping around 2AM all tired and delirious.
I wanted to post up the video me and menelaine recorded doing a walk through of our choreo incase we forgot…I don’t have it though… unfortunately menelaine didn’t get to finish teaching her part because we ran out of time… next week perhaps. but my part is done… Another challenge overcome

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Here it is… The dance is to a song called “Damaged” by Danity Kane

Here’s the number of me and my brother’s intermediate hip hop class last year. It’s called “Snap” and the little theme we have in this piece is about celebrities and how people (paparazzi’s) obsess over there lives. They did lose a few props after performing it so many times in competitions, but they’re still cute anyway. I miss them! They were a joy to teach and a talented bunch. This year’s class is a bit of a challenge because most of the students have never dance before, but never the less they work really hard so I can’t be mad.

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after a few tries on posting up the TV special that Arcadia was featured in, I finally have a good version! No lagging and better resolution…and close ups! Yikes…

Only 3 more days left ’til the premier of “Lovin’ the 80’s”. This Saturday we preform our 80’s dance piece for the very first time! I hope it goes well. Aside from the dance we also have to worry about our hair. So I have two days to figure out what I need to do with it to really capture the feel of the era. I have a few ideas… What do you think?

courtesy of Google and Sexy People

             

             

             

             

Everyone’s wrong! there ARE things to do in Nashville! I already spent a good amount of time uploading the pictures onto facebook. 5 albums full! ye ye ye.

Well what can I say? This was quite an awesome experience not to mention my first time traveling to teach dance. Of all places, who would’ve guessed… Nashville? I cannot complain though because boogie and I were privileged to have met a hard working group of people. 3 days, 15 hours, and a group of 25 girls who are not used to Julio’s style of hip hop. Yes, it was hard and stressful, but in the end we accomplished our goal. In the last hour of the last day, the parents were invited to come and watch the end result of those 3 days and as I was watching them perform the completed Arcadia, I started to tear up. After 15 long hours the dance was finally done and I was so happy. Watching these girls busting their butts off reminded me of myself when I was learning this dance… all the sweat, bruises, and sore that came along with it. It’s heart felt experiences like these that remind me why I love dancing so much. I thank the Nashville cast of Arcadia for being such an awesome bunch. You guys will rock it!

The last day of our stay in Nashville was quite relaxing and enjoyable. It started off with boogie and I having lunch at the Aquarium restaurant. Even though I loved the large amount of shrimp we had, the food there is actually not that great but just the atmosphere, seeing the big fishes in the gigantic fish tank swimming by you as you eat made it good times. Then we did some shopping at Forever 21 my favouritest store ever! We didn’t have much time but it was enough to purchase a pair of purple jeans, and two jackets. Then we headed over to a park to see an exact replica of the Greek Parthanon. It was amazingly beautiful. Then we went over to another park to have a picnic with some of the dancers and their families. Boogie and I had a huge laughing fit as the other dancers watched us laughing at our laughter…. does that make sense? We also had a great time running around the field and rolling down the hill… it was good times and then goodbyes

And now back to real life….
Here’s what we did in class today… I swear Boogie’s goal is to kill my neck and my legs

View from my window…

PraiseTEAM was blessed with prestigious awards when they took a trip down to Florida for the IDC Finals (International Dance Challenge) On top of those, one of the owners of the competition ,Randy Coleman, took special notice of Praise TEAM. There was more to it than just dancing. There was a message and you could see it in the faces of the dancers. Because of that, he wanted this dance to live on so tomorrow Boogie and I are being flown to Nashville, Tenesse to teach Arcadia to Randy’s Dancers. So he sort bought Arcadia from us which is really interessting because I didn’t know people did that in this industry so I’m very curious and quite excited to see how this is going to turn out. It’s funny no matter how many times we say “This is the last time we’ll ever dance this”, we still end up having to dance it again. Arcadia just never dies… and I’m not complaining. This dance makes me happy =)

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Super Incredible packing method…

Well I’m just about done packing, I just need to figure out what to put in my backpack… I was told It was best to roll up all the clothes because it saves alot of room. I’m not exactly sure if its true but I like it so I did it. I’m not used to packing a lot of scrubby clothes to sweat in for dance. It was so tempting to pack all my formal clothes but I guess I don’t really need them…

So today, me Boogie and Dani went to a whole bunch of vintage stores downtown to shop for our 80’s costume. I thought we’d be looking around for hours trying to find something. We go to this shop ,in front of the puma store on granville, called Used. We found a few 80’s-ish looking dresses but none fight me quite right. Dani on the other hand found a nice purple one that fight her just right.

So we went to the other vintage shop along robson and found LOADS of dresses to try on. So it came down to two dresses. One was a cute purplish one the had a nice skirt but the turtle neck collar on it was ugly and sort of throws you off. I thought that maybe I could just remove the turtle neck and fix it up a bit… The other one was a royal blue one that was waaaay too tight but looked like it would look really good if it fit me right, I just needed to get my grandma to expand it a little and shorten the length cuz it was too long… I chose the blue one. If anyone knows me… I’m the kind of person that would see something I like but go around to look and see if I can find something that I like better and when I don’t, I go back to get my first choice…BUT if it happens to not be there, then it wasn’t meat to be.

So being that kind of person, I decided to just put the blue one on hold. Upon doing that… I caught a glimpse of something bright and shiny just peeking out on a rack behind the counter. I was like “hey dani do you see that?”… we asked the employee if that was the rack of things on hold and she said yes. Me and Dani were both like “Aw man”… Luckily the lady at the cash register heard us and asked which one are you talking about? We quickly pointed at the shiny material and the employee took it out to show us. A pink dress already the perfect length, with layers and a petty coat underneath, and black lace embedded on top. All three of us at the same time went ” OHHH!!! ” and then quickly changed to disappointed with the knowledge that the dress was already being held. Then the woman said ” oh this dress is new it just hasn’t been priced yet “…. not on hold?!?! how lucky could I get?

I took it to the dressing room to try it on chanting to myself  ”this dress will fit me, this dress will fit me, this dress is GOING TO FIT!” … ok I have to say it didn’t quite as perfect as I hoped. I had to suck my tummy way in and needed both boogie AND dani’s help to get it to zip up. Super tight and it pushed my boobs waaaay up front and… back. BUT! I looked at the stitching inside… totaly fixable! So boogie took it to the counter to ask for the price as changed back to regular clothes. I yelled out “I don’t care how much it is! I’m getting it”



All this happened in less than an hour… Me and Dani didn’t know what to do after so we just went to cafe crepe to have our dinner then walked down Robson for some Gelatos. Fun times indeed. halakaw!