Sunday, January 13, 2013

Jazz hands and smile pretty!

I was never really into the whole show choir thing. I enjoyed watching it, sure, but I never really had the desire to be in it myself. I tried out once, in sixth grade, didn't make it in and that was enough for me.

This year, I decided to join the show choir band, called the combo, at our school. I had friends doing it and I enjoy playing trombone, so why not.

Now as a band kid, I really had no idea what to expect. I had seen the show choir perform before and knew a fair amount of people who either were out had been in show choir. And they all loved it. But these people I knew and talked to were just the singers/dancers. I hadn't really talked to any of the combo members or the crew members, so I was taking this essentially on faith.

The first practice with the choir was terrifying. They had been practicing since summer, while we only had our music for less than a month. How would we ever measure up to the extremely high bar they had set? Granted they had a lot more to learn than we did, and what they did was more difficult than what we had to do, but the task ahead of us was still incredibly daunting. 

But things gradually got better. The choir understood that we weren't going to be perfect at the beginning and we knew we had to work our tails off in order to not let them down. So we did just that and the choir was there every step of the way.

You can really feel the passion of the group, and that's what I've come to love the most. They really are like one big family. They have highs and lows, good times and bad ones. But they all sick together for the love of the sport. They're so incredibly dedicated to what they do and they work hard to be the very best.

But they don't keep that feeling to themselves. They project it through their show. You can see it in the way they even treat the combo and crew. They will let us know how grateful they are to us. They know that just like how we would have no show without them, the show would not be able to go on without the combo and crew. They go out of their way to make us feel like a part of this group. Just yesterday, at a performance, the director mentioned to them that one member of the combo thought this was just an awesome experience and wanted to meet all the members of of the choir. Immediately, someone turned around and introduced themself to that member. By the end of the day, so many singers had made sure to talk to that person and introduce themselves.  It was really a great feeling to see them all rise to the occasion, just to make one person a bit more happy.

And then there's the parents. They have just as much enthusiasm as the choir does, if not more. They're encouraging and incredibly helpful. They really complete the feeling of family in the group.

So through this experience, I've learned so much. And this is just the start of the season. We'll get better and grow as a group. Overall, I feel each one of us will come out changed by what we have done and accomplished, and I'm confident it will be for the better.

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