Its that time of year again folks. The Radio City Rockettes held their yearly auditions this year and I have been running all over the country...yes the country. Since the Rockettes hold highly publicized open call auditions every year you can always expect there to be a massive amount of girls from all of the world flying into New York for this one day, and 2010 was no different.
I guess you could say that I take Radio City auditions pretty serious, getting a custom-made leotard, dyeing shoes and tights, training specifically for this type of dancing. Its a little insane, but as I grow more educated in the process, I'm beginning to feel like while it may not be absolutely necessary it definitely doesn't hurt. I believe that if you really want something then you have to approach it like you mean it. (Which is also why I'm reluctant to even post this update in fear of jinxing myself. LOL)
Anyways, on Thurs, Apr. 29, I showed up to Radio City Music Hall at 8:50 am to find a line of girls spanning almost two street blocks. Lots of girls came in groups, but this year I came by myself so I got to spend the next hours amusing myself in line. Now the audition officially started at 10, but it wasn't until 11am that I was close enough to the front door to get the forms every auditionee is required to fill out and discovered that I was #292. Craziness, since the line behind me was equally as long as the line in front of me. Once inside everyone turned in their head-shot and resume and was given time to change, stretch, and apply makeup.
Around 12:30pm, almost 4 hours after I arrived, I was taken into the audition room as the fourth group of girls to be seen. The room was packed as they were seeing 75 girls at a time which meant there wouldn't be a whole lot of space to see. Linda Haberman, the director of the Rockettes began teaching a quick jazz combo and then it was time to do it 3 girls at a time. Then it was time for cuts.
(Sidenote, Linda is the first female director of the Rockettes and has taken them to a new level of technicality and amazingness. She is however also intimidating and a bit scary.)
After making the first cut we were taken into the red room for height measurements and to wait until everyone had been seen before we could continue on to the next round. Finally at about 3pm, the remaining girls went back into the room and we added more choreography onto the original combination. Again we performed three at a time and a cut was made. Despite the fact that I swear Linda continued to make funny faces at me, I was allowed to continue on. Next was tap, thank goodness, and it was a simple routine with no arms, and a lot of basic time steps and breaks. It was more all about keeping the rhythm than anything else. After getting through that it was one more round of cuts, and then the girls that were left were invited back for call backs the next day. By this time of the 500 girls that tried out about 36 were left and I was one of them. Yay!
As Friday morning rolled around, I realized how exhausted I was from the week, but I had to get myself over to Radio City anyways. Today they would be videotaping the girls as we added more onto both tap and jazz combinations from Thursday, learned a new jazz combo, and did the famous eye high kicks. I couldn't help but feel off my game and unfocused for the first part of the morning. I felt like the judges were giving me weird/judgmental looks and allowed it to affect my confidence, but still put in a decent performance and since no cuts were made I technically made it to the end. We were told at this point that she would be making decisions by end of May/beg of June and that was it.
Now, since I'm borderline obsessive about somethings, I had already bought a ticket to Los Angeles in case I didn't make it all the way through in New York, I took sometime over the weekend to get some corrections on the audition material and then jetted off to L.A. Sunday afternoon. The audition process was the same, only that just 200 girls showed up out there. I made it to the last 31 or so girls out there and feel like I did a lot better. No more real/imagined looks from those running the auditions and a lot more focus...shout out to Red Bull! So now we will just wait and see. I hope I get it. *smiles, prays, crosses fingers*
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