I've officially finished the first two songs for the show. I'm really proud of the first one. The second... not so much. My brain was very much elsewhere (we discovered a mouse running around our apartment on day 3 and although we haven't seen or heard it since then, we have no proof that it's actually dead or gone and apparently sometime in the past four years my dislike has become a phobia so I'm still VERY jumpy).
I may end up cutting the second song from the show entirely. I still have plenty of music, and the song is extremely repetitive, plus I'm not proud of the choreography. It's complete, so I can always slot it back in if I do end up taking it out. I haven't actually taken it out yet, but it's definitely on the chopping block.
The next song intimidates me, primarily because of its sheer length. It's just less than five minutes, which I have absolutely done before, but it just feels different somehow. Maybe because it's been so long since I choreographed anything? Maybe because there are no lyrics, and till now 98% of my choreography has been to music with lyrics? Maybe because my self-confidence is still shot from college (read: the prof with no emotional integrity who had absolutely zero business being a performing arts professor)? Maybe because last time I tap danced was when I filmed Inside Of You in October 2023 and am TERRIFIED that I have forgotten all the knowledge I had managed to scrape together about tap dance? All of the above?
This is also the song I have known the longest out of all the songs on this list. This shouldn't be this hard. Should I embrace the difficulty? I'm willing to do that but I don't know how. The story of my life. All those times I would go into that gutless professor's office and ask how. How do I 'be more vulnerable' (his main demand of me... me, who was losing friends by the dozen because I was 'too personal')? How do I sing better? How do I improve as a performer? How do I get a role, any role -- especially when he has done nothing but tell me I'm such a talented performer?
Despite years of trying to break free from his tyranny, I'm here nearly six years later, still trying to break out from under his thumb. I haven't spoken to the man since 2019. I know, on some distant intellectual level, that he had to be at least somewhat inaccurate in how he viewed me. But I still can't get out from under his shadow.
On one hand, it's because my in-laws replaced him within a year of me breaking free. But I've seen this before now, and I know not to buy any of their crap. It's a lot easier somehow to brush off my in-laws' opinions than the opinions of the man who told me in no uncertain terms that he held my future in his hands and never quite artistically mentored me in the way that I still wish I could be. I learned from that professor, and I alienated my in-laws before they could get close to me. But that doesn't help that 20-year-old kid who went to college with a heart full of joy and a head full of dreams and handed them over to the powers-that-be and watched those powers repeatedly dash her contributions against the rocks.
This is exactly the emotional place I probably should be at later in the piece -- once the world starts caving in around the protagonist. Maybe what I really need to do is skip to the end and work backwards. I've been listening to the show playlist as I've been writing this and the darker songs are standing out to me.
Worth a try, I suppose.
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