5 hours.
Arcadia University’s dance club, Knight Club, puts on two shows every semester. These shows last approximately 2 and a half hours each. If you have choreographed a piece for the show, it is performed once at each show. What goes into these two performances, these 5 hours?
Let me tell you – it’s more than you may expect.
Each piece in the show rehearses once a week. Each dancer can be in up to 7 dances. Seniors also have the option of adding on a solo or duet to that number, and rehearse the senior dance approximately once a week. That makes 9 hours a week of rehearsals. The show this year took place April 15th and 17th, and we started rehearsals on February 1st, giving us 11 weeks of rehearsals. Therefore, the least active members of the club rehearsed for 11 hours, and the most active members (which includes all three presidents of the club) spent a whopping 99 hours rehearsing for the show – that is 5,940 minutes.
The week before rehearsals start, each dancer is required to take part in 3 conditioning hours to become a member of the club.
Members of the board also meet for an hour a week, adding another 13 hours to the equation. There’s no real way to quantify how many hours we spend creating sign-up sheets, finding available spaces for practices, and answering questions and concerns from members. However, 41 google docs were made for knight club related purposes. 45 separate email threads were created for general members of the club, addressing rehearsals, scheduling, and other aspects of show preparation.
Additionally, corralling people to help with music and lights is always a challenge. We asked 5 people to help with lights before we found someone who was willing. It took 43 emails to get the DJ we use to fill out a contract.
In terms of time, this adds up to 115 hours or 6900 minutes of knight club this semester for myself, as well as the other presidents who lead the charge in putting together the show. But wait, there’s more! Tack on another 3 hours for dress rehearsal. Now, we are at 118 hours or 7080 minutes.
Other activities include shopping for decorations, cutting out 300 paper stars and writing 100 different names on popcorn boxes. Due to typos, 1250 programs were printed, and 300 ended up being individually folded.
Sometimes the mental activities are more draining than the physical ones, though. When we put out an initial call for choreographers, over 60 dances were proposed. The original time limit for dances was 3 minutes – this would have made the show 3 hours long, not including the senior dance piece, intermissions, raffles, et cetera. Therefore, we had to cut a few dances (not letting anyone choreograph more than 3 dances, which in theory sounds fair, but in practice didn’t work out so well), and also change the time limit to 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Making these cuts was extremely strenuous and put a lot of pressure on us. It was a lose-lose situation in which there was no chance of getting out without having at least one unhappy club member. Though we’ve recovered from this for the most part, I still have a little bit of PTSD.
I can personally attest to many other things I have contributed to this semester’s show. I designed the show t-shirt. I made many trips to party stores and art stores to purchase costumes and decorations and props. I met with a member of Arcadia’s REAL program for 3 additional hours a week, to teach her my dance. On any given Thursday, I engaged in Knight Club related activities from 3-11 PM, with a one hour break for dinner. I am even working on Knight Club related things after the fact, editing together the footage into a DVD of the performance for members to buy.
But through all of these tribulations, and after all of these stressful hours, it’s worth it for those 5 hours.
It’s worth it because I’ve met so many beautiful people who have taught me so much, whether they were teaching me lessons about friendship or just giving my patience a good testing. 13 officers I worked with throughout 4 years became great friends. And, most cliché of them all, I met the 1 girl who will be my best friend forever through dance.
It’s worth all of those feelings of uncertainty because the moment I stepped on stage, they melted away and I felt nothing except pure joy.
I will definitely miss performing most of all, but you can’t perform without planning.
