Dream Off

There's always a captive audience in a mall rink. Above, a rowdy group of fashion models supervises our practice.

This announcement should not come as a shock to any of you who are competitive ice dancers: We have changed our free dance music.

This early in the season I guess the correct response is "who cares??" I did make kind of a big deal about our choice of music with the "guess our music" contest, but that was just because I couldn't think of anything else to write about that week.

We still really like "Dream On," the music, but we don't like "Dream On," the free dance. We saw the first 45 seconds or so on video and went "bleah." That's how we felt when we were actually doing it on the ice too. Granted this is new choreography and we haven't given it much time to gel yet, but I think we can already tell that this won't be the best music choice for us. We felt the music just fine, but we were portraying it internally, which is the kiss of death when judges expect to be hit in the face with expression. And believe me, I LOVE hitting judges in the face!

They may say "oh, isn't that pretty," but they will have no idea what we are feeling out there, and the audience will be similarly bewildered, and they certainly won't join us in feeling the feeling. And that would be a "Dream On" nightmare.

Being hams, we are capable of over-the-top expression. So we think it's a better idea to do something that showcases that strength. We have some ideas but until we know for sure there will be no "guess our new music" contests. Looks like I'll have to find something else interesting to write about. (I've already sunk to a new low and written about GUM, so this could be quite a challenge.)