An ickle disclaimer before I start this post - life has been crrrazy. It totally took over and I have just been focusing on getting through. Now that I am on the other side of the hurricane, it's time to catch up. There will be a short series of posts where I catch up and digest the past month. Thanks for, erm, digesting with me!

My first show - November 28th. WOW.

I can't remember when we* decided we were going to have a show. I think it was back in May. Then we decided we need a guest. Then we decided we needed workshops with the guest, who is an amazing teacher/dancer/person.

So around June we booked the wonderful Hilde for workshops and to be the special guest on our show. We booked the venue for the workshops and the venue for the show.

We invited other guests - beautiful local dancers - and started picking music for our numbers. EIGHT dances in one night, but we knew we could do it.

Songs picked, guests booked and confirmed, we started rehearsal - this around late July.

August was pretty much taken over with summer holidays, with most of the troupe being away at different times - no rehearsals happened.

September was busy drilling technique and putting together the basis for the coreographies. October and November was rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Stress. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Stress a bit more. Get sick because of not enough rest.

Three days before the show a dancer pulled out. Grr. TWO days before the show another dancer pulled out. GRRR. Both for health reasons, so totally understandable, but STRESS!

The show itself was a blur. Dance after dance after dance. The dancers we worked with were beyond amazing - professional, full of energy, friendly. I will certainly work with them again! The crew at Crawdaddy were so so helpful and accommodating, we just can't wait to work with them again. The unofficial video looks amazing and I can't wait for the official video and pics to be ready.

But, of course, it was not all roses...

The stage - we had been to the venue before, and remembered the stage being small, BUT the specs we got from them indicated a much bigger stage. Groovy, we thought, more space = better. Turns out the stage was still small... we had to make some total last minute changes to a dance with 8 dancers, which meant that confusion ensued and not everyone was on the same page for it.
Lesson learnt - do not trust specs, go and visit the place beforehand, even if you have to fight for that right.

Tickets - we probably priced the tickets too high for Dublin. Tickets sales covered all our costs (just about), but it was a far cry from the full house we hoped for. At the same time, as Nell said, some bands play for their friends and family for years before they sell out a show, so for our first show we did ok.
Lesson learnt - revise ticket prices so they are more in line with similar shows in Dublin.

Marketing - well, we really failed on this. We advertised only to our newsletter and on Facebook. It totally wasn't enough.
Lesson learnt - I am not sure what we will do different for the next one, but we are planning and brainstorming on this.

Overall, it was wonderful and well worth the stress. The night was magical for us. Our next show will hopefully be magical for a full house

* Not the royal type, but me and my troupe.