Audition time! 5 quick tips for an outstanding audition

Can you believe it's almost time for winter guard season to start up again? Having just returned from living in Brazil I know I am having a hard time of it! Whether you have auditioned for a dance/color guard team before or not, here is a list of advice from our staff about how to do your best at auditions:

1. Show up early!

Getting there early is helpful on a number of levels. First of all, you get to explore the place a little bit and get more comfortable with your surroundings before it starts. You can meet the instructors, judges, or anyone else who will be evaluating your audition, or any veteran members who are there early as well. It's great to also have time to do your own stretch and warm up before starting in with the group. Plus, it's the professional thing to do!

2. Relax and be yourself.

The best guard members are pretty chill on the outside, no matter how much they are freaking out on the inside. Put your own personal emotions aside and focus on showing off the best version of yourself that you can!

3. Be confident.

Even if you don't feel confident, just having a solid posture and standing toward the front of the block will make you LOOK more confident. If you look confident, people around you will think you are confident and they will treat you like a confident person, which in turn helps you FEEL more confident. This is one of the best positive feedback loops of performing!

4. Take care of your body.

Get plenty of sleep the night before and drink plenty of water for a few days before the audition. Having a properly rested and hydrated body will open you up to being able to better reach your full potential.

5. Dress appropriately.

Just like wearing business attire to a job interview or a swimsuit to the pool, make sure your clothing is appropriate for the audition. Generally, instructors like when dance and/or athletic clothing is worn with jazz shoes or sneakers. However, this can change from one guard to the next so the best thing to do is ask someone what you should wear. Often guards have pages or events on Facebook where you can connect with staff or other members who can give you more information about what to wear, the best way to have your hair, and so on.

If you know of any other tips that you would like us to include in our next audition blog, or if you have requests for another blog, just contact us through our website, shoot us a message on Facebook, or tweet us @SpintronixGuard! Break a leg this audition season... Boa sorte!!

The Bad Guy - Reprinted with Permission

I've been a busy little bee! As you may have noticed,Learning to Breathe is now available on LOTS of different e-reader formats instead of just Kindle! You are welcome, world!

 

On that note, I love when I don't have to be the "bad guy" in a situation. What do I mean? Well, there has been this girl in my life who I really was not a fan of for several years. However, being the soft-hearted and kind person that I am, I was nice to her. I was always nice to her. She thought she was being nice to me often, but she mostly just came off as a mean and overbearing person. I kept being nice, though, because I know that is just how she is and she can't help it. I'm sure it was something to do with the way she was raised.

 

Anyhow, she recently contacted me on Facebook to let me know how immature she thought I was. The thoughts in my head, of course, "Oh boy, here we go. Haven't had any contact with this girl in like 2 years and suddenly she feels the need to tell me something I am doing in my life is WAY out of line." So she gave me what-for, informed me that she knows everything about me, my personality, my character, and my life (suuuuuuuure you do, sweetie), told me everything I am doing wrong. Then I let her know that people who ACTUALLY know me really like me and think I am funny. I never said anything mean, never cut her down, and was just being informative.

 

Here is the part where I don't have to be the bad guy... She responded by informing me that I am wrong (again) and immature (again) and she doesn't even know why we are still Facebook friends because there is no reason for us to be. She also said (and I am imagining she is using her slightly higher-pitched dramatic voice for this) that "this will be the last time you ever hear from me because I don't really care what you have to say in return!" Then she blocked me. There wasn't even a pause before I threw myself a little party in my mind!! I am a nice person, like I said, but it is still really difficult to continue being nice to someone who continually treats you like a lower life form than themselves. For her to cut off communication and block herself from my life is the greatest blessing.

 

I hope you all have continually great blessings in your life as well. :-)

J.M. Hope

A little more Carioca

It's hard.

I can do it, but it's hard.

I'm taking my life in Rio and trying to slowly integrate myself back into the reality of my life in the States.

I'm trying to keep talking to all of the incredible friends I made while in Brazil, but they are getting back into their normal everyday routines of going to work and taking care of their families just like I am back home and working every day as well. They don't have as much time for me, I don't have as much for them. Still, I try to send them messages on WhatsApp every chance I get; to tell them something that reminded me of them or to let them know how much I miss them. Sometimes they reply, sometimes they don't, just like normal people in their normal lives. The sad thing is that I feel like we are running out of things to talk about and I want nothing more than to just continue talking to these wonderful people, allowing them to inspire me and trying to inspire them as well.

The important part is that I don't forget what I've learned and the inspiration I had while I was there. So many new perspectives and ideas were presented to me and I want to integrate all of them into my life, my home, my work. But I also have to keep up. I have to catch up on everything that I missed while I was gone and then somehow keep up with everything that is going on while trying to integrate these new perspectives and ideas.

It's almost impossible.

I spend a lot of time listening to playlists I downloaded while I am working. Brazilian music with a mix of American and Spanish music that's currently popular in Brazil, mostly. It helps.

I wear jewelry and clothing that I bought while living there, and look daily at my beautiful Brazilian tattoo. It also helps.

But really I think the saddest thing is the relationships. Those people mean so much to me because we went through so much together; suffering and heartache, happiness and excitement, boredom, love, just everything! We were living together in a huge community and depending on one another in a way that I've never depended on anyone.

But now I'm home. Life isn't like that here. I want it to be. I can't let it be the way it was before. It won't be the way it was. I'm going to change it.

Be ready, Missouri.

I'm back and I'm a little more carioca than you remember.

Life-Changing - Reprinted with Permission

What makes an exerpeince "life-changing"? We have so many experiences on a daily basis, all of which help us to make decisions that affect the outcome of situations or our lives every minute. Why, then, is every decision not considered to be a life-changing one?

 

I think the descriptive words to use here shouldn't be "life-changing" but "perspective-changing." Think about this! Your life is always moving along at its own pace, you are making decisions, doing the things you like, avoiding what you dislike, talking to people, etc. All of these things are constantly different, except for one thing: your perspective. You are always looking at things through your own eyes, watching the world work through the lenses that formed on your mind from past experiences. It is only once you stop and look at the world with the knowledge and experiences of another person that you can see it from a different perspective. The so-called "life-changing" part of this is that once you can see your life from more than one persepctive, you can make your decisions based on more information than just the information in your own mind.

 

I learned a really neat perspective test last week that I would like to share with you. Point your index finger at the ceiling, with your arm extended straight up above your head, so you have to look up to see your hand. Yeah, I know you look a little silly, but just stay with me here! Move your finger around in a clockwise circle (as if you were pointing at the hands of a clock on the ceiling and following their motion). Now, while still moving your finger in a circular motion, slowly lower your hand down, in front of your face, in front of your shoulder, in front of your chest, until you can look down at your hand as it continues its circling. What do you see? Comment if you had a cool experience with this!

J.M. Hope

Communication - Reprinted with Permission

I know it is a touch early for this week's note, but I doubt if I will have a chance to write tomorrow so there you have it.

 

What makes for good communication between two human beings? How can you tell what someone is trying to say to you? Well, you may think this is easy and say "duh, listen to their words." Unfortunately, the spoken word is onlyabout 8% of the message you are sending. The rest has to do with your posture, facial expressions, tone, inflection, volume, and everything else. Yeah, we are taught this in our communication classes and at leadership seminars, but come on, who really listens to and follows that kind of stuff?

 

I listened to it this time. And finally, I listened to it for real for once. Then I had the opportunity to apply it and I did. After that, I had the opportunity to apply it again and again, with each time getting more comfortable and meaning more to me than the last time. I would have to walk up to a new person I had never seen before (usually a student, occasionally a parent, from time to time another unrelated adult), look them straight in the eyes, shake their hand, and introduce myself. I made sure I had decent posture, slightly forward, arms down at my sides, and the more I did it, the more comfortable it became.

 

Okay, you wonder why on earth I am blabbing on about this, but I am telling you for one reason; it worked. You would not believe the difference that it made to students who might not have mingled with anyone otherwise. I can't put a price on any of the connections I made recently because of this method of attention to detail. I feel like I made a lot of kids' experiences better by making them feel more comfortable; one girl who was sitting on her own informed me that she wasn't hungry even though it was lunch time so we sat and chatted. Before long I offered to give her a tour of the dining facility and guess what? Suddenly she said to me "I guess I'll eat something after all." That was all it took. Win.

 

I actually used to be really good at this when I was younger, I was so fearless I could communicate clearly with anyone! Unfortunately, the world got its hands on me and I began to feel as if I was invading people's private spaces by looking them straight in the eyes, by touching their hands as we shook. No more... Everywhere I go from now on, no matter the camp, book signing, or other event, I am all about this straightforward and friendly communication style. I wish more people could be like band people because it would really make the world a better place.

J.M. Hope

Expression - Reprinted with Permission

What makes a good expression? I know that in dance, it is the lines of the body, the muscles of the face, and the quality of the movement. Many young and new dancers tend to perform dance as a series of poses: a plie here, a tendu there. The problem with that is dance is NOT a series of poses, but a series of movements. The dance is seen only in the style with which a person moves between one pose and another. This can be a difficult concept for students to grasp on their own, so I find it useful to explain this outright, to let students know that this is exactly what will be looked for.

 

What makes a good expression of words? Here is a problem that our society is running into daily. The issue is that we are humans, used to in-person interactions in which we can see one anothers' faces and be able to tell the meaning of the words from the body language that goes along with those. When the telephone was born, we had to learn how to better use the inflection of our voices to demonstrate meaning where body language was not a factor. With the written word, however, the majority of our society is not educated enough to express their true meanings by using JUST words. It starts in our schools, where students who write papers are allowed to "say what they mean" out loud when they answer a question incorrectly on a test. It goes on from there in online formats, where people might get into fights over something that was said online but meant in a humorous manner, or someone showing true compassion through a text message is interpreted as being sarcastic or poking fun at the less fortunate.

 

The only way to become better writers is to read and to write. We all need to do it, because this is what our society is turning to as its main form of communication. Sure, writing has always been around, through newspapers, books, magazines, you name it and people would read it all. The people writing those publications, however, were well-educated in their trade. Now that EVERYONE must be a writer just in order to communicate, we all need to work on getting educated in good writing techniques to increase our ability to communicate properly and with a solid understanding of one another.

J.M. Hope