Dance, monkeys, dance!

Apparently I am dancing at the trustees dinner this Friday. Ballroom is doing a four-dance exhibition of Tango, Foxtrot, Swing and Samba; because of the inevitably dismal gender ratio, I'm actually only dancing in two of those, Foxtrot and Swing, but hey, whatever. It'll be a nice last hurrah for my four years in ballroom, particularly since I didn't compete this year. Plus, we get to wear the club costumes. Granted, I'll almost certainly be stuck in the pink dress (girl in the picture isn't me), which...ow, but I suppose that dress is kind of a rite of passage I haven't gone through yet, so perhaps it's just my time.

Because this is an exhibition and we can do whatever we want without having to worry about syllabus, I'm also doing my very first aerial in swing. Granted, it's a leapfrog, so it's the easiest jump/lift ever, but it's still kind of nifty. You've all done something like it as kids; the dancers face each other, the girl puts her hands on the guy's shoulders and uses it to push up into the air; he catches her around the waist and provides a bit of lift; she kicks her legs out to give the illusion of height. I enjoy it, anyway. I may not enjoy it as much in my Latin shoes (3" heels, anyone?), which I haven't worn in...two years now...but we'll see how that goes.

Of course, this would be this week. I would rather it were another week, but ah, well. Less sleep for me, I suppose. (Why yes, I do in fact have three papers due this week and another next week. I currently hate life.)

I should really make myself a ballroom icon at some point. Hmmm. Perhaps after next week...

Ballroom costuming as done by blind monkeys

As I suspected, I'm wearing what we fondly refer to as "The Pink Monster" for the trustees dinner. Hey, they asked for us to wear our big poofy Standard dresses.

( Cut to save your eyes from bleeding )

Yes, it is in fact that exact shade of atomic pink. Most of our spiffy donated Standard dresses are better, or at least not quite so neon. Sadly, none of them fit me. Of course, "Matilda" also doesn't fit me, which is good, as it is..."hideous" doesn't do it justice, but it'll have to do. It is in fact both a Latin and a Standard dress, which means, yes, it has a rip-away skirt. Yes. The top/Latin dress portion is made entirely of large sequins. Entirely. They are teal blue, with a silver diamond in the middle. There is a little tail of dark blue satin and, because the "dress" only goes down to one's crotch, there's a little...front-tail? Frontispiece? Codpiece for girls? in the front made out of satin. Yes. HIDEOUS. It hardly gets better with the teal blue Standard skirt (with more silver sequins) attached.

So at least I'm not wearing that one. And this one's skirt spins out nicely; I must get at least a six-foot skirtspan when I'm going full tilt. That cross-body spinning step in Foxtrot is going to be entertaining, oh yes.