My first dance recital...at age 30.

So remember when I said that I joined a Yosakoi team? Well this past Sunday, a small group of 9 Ikkijyu (our team name) members, Daniel and I hopped on a big bus, along with members from other yosakoi teams, and rode 2 hours to Nagasaki. We were set out to perform at the "Yokabai Yosakoi Matsuri." Daniel came along to record this momentus maggie event. (More like catch me acting a fool on film.)

[note:] Yokabai is pretty much Sasebo/Nagasaki slang for saying "It's all good!"

Anywho, I have to tell you how hard I practiced the week before! So 4 days before my debut, I FINALLY got real props to practice with. The props included 2 fans and 2 narukos. Narukos are these wooden clapper things. Lemme tell yah, practicing with the real stuff is A LOT different from faking it with my jazz hands! I practiced every night till that fateful day. On one of my practice days, I whipped open a fan so hard that it flung out of my hand and flew nearly out the back door! :O You can imagine the new anxiety I developed after that happened! But by Saturday night, I was feeling pretty confident and ready to just get out there and do it!

On Sunday morning, the only thing Mami (the team mate that got me in all this madness) told me to do was to make sure I put my hair up when I got there. No problem I thought, I can whip my hair up in a high pony in a matter of minutes right? But when I got to the place where everyone was meeting THEN I understood what she meant. She meant make it NICE. All the girls had their hair done up perfectly -It looked like one of those cute "prom" hairstyles. PLUS they all had fantastic makeup on! ....And here's me, the super-sized japanese-american (yes, I can honestly say that I am pretty much bigger than EVERY member of the team -guys too!) with my sad little ponytail and barely a lick of makeup on. Damn.

Luckily the girls had some spare hair pieces. They were made like scrunchies, hairy scrunchies. They all had a good laugh when they put it on me. The thing looked really fake since the color didn't match with my natural hair color at all. Even so, it still looked better than my sad little "real hair" sprout!

We got there at about 10 a.m. Our first performance was at noon, so we had 2 hours to kill. So what do they decide to do? Get drunk. :\ hoo boy.

We walked to the nearest convenience store and stocked up on beers, chu-his and snackies. Is it just me, or do you get buzzed faster when you drink in the sun? I felt totally relaxed. And then it was 11:50. At this point, I felt surprisingly okay...not at all as nervous as I expected to be. We did a quick stretch and then huddled together for a pep talk from our coach/sensei Miyuki. She said to just have fun, don't worry about messing up and ....Gambare Maggiesan on her debut! And everyone agreed and told me to gambare.

Woah. After that, the ONE butterfly in my stomach decided to multiply. We ran up on stage and made formation. This was it!

~Look out into the audience and smile maggie, SMILE.~

CHEEEEEE........
Two booming pounds of the taiko starts our song. I must've practiced dancing to this song at least 20 times that week, but this time it was different. To the beat of the taiko, my heart felt like it was a big ball, bouncing against the inside of my chest. It was a cool feeling.What added to it was the fact that the stage was set up along the harbor. As I danced, My eyes scanned over the people watching us and out to the water... it was beautiful! I didn't panic about the moves at all... kinda felt like my mind was detached and my body was just goin' on without me! Well, it was like that up until the second segment! That's the part with the fans!

I knelt in position, holding my closed fans, waiting for the exact moment to whip them open....

*fwap* First fan opens...success!

[close fan] prepare for finale...

Here it is, let's do it -both fans open!

*fwap* *fwa...* Uh oh. Right fan opens all the way. Left fan, only halfway.

I spent the next series of movements trying to pry it open with my pinky. No success. It's the end of the song and we have to do a final pose with the fans before we bow to finish. Daniel, captures a priceless moment ...I really need to work on being more discreet :O

After that, we ate lunch, shmoozed with other teams, drank more chu-his and performed again at 3.

All in all it was a great day. And I have the headband tan to prove it :)

Kampai!!