Bigger is better!

Only 5 days to go!  On Saturday is the 6th Annual Aerial Dance Christmas Show! We’re billing it as our “5 year anniversary celebration” since that happened in September but we actually did our very first show after only being open 3-4 months! Even cooler, we have some of the same women dancing in the show Saturday as danced in our very first!  Amazing.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Christmas Show. I LOVE watching the girls prepare. I LOVE to see everyone grow, perform and share all their hard work. I LOVE the excitement! I LOVE introducing Aerial Dance, our students, and the sport of pole to a wider community. I HATE all the little logistics that go into making it happen; it takes months to plan and then I have to be willing to make immediate changes as things don’t go as planned!
In the olden days, we just did the show at the studio. It took time to decorate and make all the cookies for the party after, but it was an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, with 15 or so dancing, so it was easy to manage. This year we are holding it off site, on a big stage, with 45 girls dancing and an anticipated audience of 400.  Needless to say the logistics have grown exponentially with the size of the event!
The first hurdle in the show is to find a venue that will allow us to bring in poles. There is a liability concern any time someone is off the ground. Many places don’t welcome us as a result. Thankfully Jason and the owners of Mill Creek and Tanners are awesome. They took great care of us last year at Mill Creek so it was an easy step up to their bigger venue, Tanners. Without their kindness and help I honestly don’t know how we’d make this happen.
Because this year we are in a BIG venue, we needed a stage. Last year sightlines weren’t good with some many people in attendance so this year we wanted to make sure everyone can see! We had originally planned on using Tanners stage as part of our room rental. Well, as of Sunday (you know 6 days before the show) that isn’t going to work. We have rented an aerial rig to be able to have Silks, Hammock and Hoop in the show. The rig measures 16’x18′ as it’s base footprint. Our original stage was 18’x24′ so that should fit, right? Nope. The 18′ of the rig is the wrong direction for the 18′ of the stage so if we used the original stage the double point hammock would be facing the wrong way! So on Sunday I found a new stage (a HUGE thanks to Willie who helped make this happen for us on short notice!) that is 24’x28′ and I am meeting with the set-up guys on Tuesday to suss out the details. So now we have a bigger stage and I am no longer losing sleep worrying about girls falling off it. But this is one example of last minute changes to the plan that add expense and make the show a beast in it’s own right. Thankfully my staff are amazing at helping with the changes and supporting me as we make this show happen. With 5 days to go I’m so excited to see all the girls perform!!!!  And I’m looking forward to sleeping all of Sunday…