My day at the Soulceity show

I'm a TV dance show fan. I'm currently loving America's Best Dance Crew on MTV. The show is in it's third season and there's some seriously amazing talent competing for this year's title. Periodically, crews from past seasons perform at various shows all around the country. I recently had the wonderful opportunity to attend such a performance.

Soulciety, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering and educating overseas youth, hosted a benefit yesterday in Alameda, CA, which happens to be where I live. In speaking with NancyT at Blogging America's Best Dance Crew and Ron Carino at Soulciety, I agreed to cover the event for the blog. Through her, I was able to get in early (during a run through of the show) to go backstage and interview two ABDC alumni crews, Supreme Soul from San Francisco and ASIID from Detroit. I will post a link to the article when it goes up. Thanks Nancy and Ron!

When I say that I was able to get in early, what that meant was that I was asked to show up at the same time as all the high school kids who were volunteering. The kids ranged from age 14 to 18 and WOW, was I out of place...it was pretty obvious that I was the old odd man out. 4" heels at an urban hip-hop event? Yeah, not so much. Mental note: if ever attending an event of this type again, the black suede Pumas would have been much more appropriate. Pumas, skinny jeans (which was the only part of the dress code that I managed to get right) and some sort of black oversized top that has been modified with scissors. Total apparel FAIL. Clearly, my time on the hard streets of the Blackhawk Country Club did not serve me well here.

Anyways, most of my day involved a lot of waiting. I assumed that the director of the event would introduce me to the groups so that I could interview them, but he had his hands FULL with the last minute event planning details and left me to sit in the auditorium. Totally understandable. I watched most of the show run-through and was really impressed with most of the acts even though they were just doing a dry run of their performances. After taking matters into my own hands and getting my interviews with the dance crews, I was satisfied and went home. When I left, I didn't really intend to go back for the actual show. I figured I had seen most of the performances and that was good enough.

But I did go back. And I'm SO glad I did. The run through was nothing. Put people in the seats and the performers come to life. Half of the people that performed didn't warm up their acts in the run through. I would have missed them had I not gone back. I sat there for the entire two hour show with a huge smile on my face. The audience's energy was positive and exhuberant. We were treated to two unreal beat boxers, DJs, DJs with a solo violinist, spoken word poets with cello and stand up bass accompaniment and some of the most unique dance companies I've ever seen. I was truly entertained. I'm SO happy that I went back. It was an incredible night for a great cause and I am happy to report about it now.

I'll keep you all posted on when the article and interviews go up on Nancy's site. For now, I'm off to get some work done. Peace. =)