Editor’s note: Adelina Salikhova is a dancer for the Glenn Guardians.
In the weeks leading up to the annual Spring Show last weekend, the Guardian dancers spent most mornings and afternoons practicing in the dance gym, perfecting their moves, going through routines and learning new dances. The rehearsals were led by Guardian director Kelly Mabry, Lindy Foster and captain Kaely Smith. Sweat dripped onto the floor, adding to a thin layer of grime on the auditorium stage. Dancers left rehearsals with black soles.
“In the morning, I’m captain, so I would typically run it and we would just perform the show’s first act,” Guardian Captain senior Kaely Smith said. “After school we would do the first act with costumes, then the second act without. Then the next day the second act with costumes and the first act without, it was just a lot of repetition of running first and second act. It was very fun and stressful. It was a lot of pressure, but I think with our theme being Evolve, it was definitely us getting to show the evolution of our year.”
However, the Guardians were not the only ones working. The theater and dance classes gathered during rehearsals and practiced in full uniform, learning their dances prior to rehearsals. The advanced theater guys crew worked on their vocals and songs along with their dances, performing their Thespian award winning song, “There is Nothing Like a Dame” by Oscar Hammerstein II.
“That is our competition piece that we chose to take to the Texas Thespian Festival,” senior Kaleb Millard said. “We competed with it and we scored 1 point off a perfect score, qualifying us for a trip to nationals. The process of rehearsing was a lot of researching what the song was about, figuring out what the emotion and the thoughts behind the song, and then putting that into our acting, and then taking that acting to not only elevate our singing but our dancing as well.”
With so many groups participating, dressing space was limited.
“It was pretty organized in the way that we all were able to get on stage and stuff,” freshman Izayah Kolbe said. “At the end of the day we were all able to perform, but I think it was a little messy with managers backstage, and people being told different things by the coaches and the reps. I brought a container from home to keep my stuff backstage together.”
The three hour long show, led by Mabry and her assistant Foster, took place in the auditorium on April 24-27. Having limited time to work on this show this year due to less auditorium space time, the show was built together on a stage in one week. The routines however were rehearsed in the gym months before so that adjusting to performing them on a stage went smoother.
“While we had a lot more time in the gym, as you know as a dancer it’s not the same thing,” Mabry said. “You gotta add your lighting, you gotta add your cues, at what means do you come in, you gotta do your quick changes. It all has to be rehearsed and we only had three days to do that. This was my favorite show of my three years that I’ve ever done. I was proud of every act in this show, and I haven’t said that in years past.”