The fact that everyone else was wearing lycra and dancing shoes should have given it away.
But there I was in my sandals and a skirt with negligable elastic, blithely unaware that perhaps I should not have been at this particular audition.
My friend had urged me to go along so that we could potentially go to rehearsals and get involved in the show together. Given the fact that I had met my friend through vocal auditions, I assumed that this was an audition of the same ilk.
And so, I sat through the briefing and even allowed myself to be measured for potential costumes.
When we had to do a few movements, I still remained blissfully ignorant of the audition’s purpose. It’s not like singing doesn’t involve some movement and so I put this down to chorolography or, perhaps, method acting.
By now the doors were closed and there were people all around including someone with a video camera. Oh well, I would probably not be noticed in the middle of the room. I wondered when the singing would start.
The music started and we were instructed to move our arms. I mastered quite successfully the first eight bars. The second eight bars involved a bit more arm movement and a bit of a jump. I decided to bob instead and even then, I could feel the skirt with the loose elastic start to head south. I abandoned one of the arm movements to clutch on.
There was a bit of looking to the right and pointing, followed by some very fancy footwork that I couldn’t master. Things had started to go downhill – including the skirt.
By now I was starting to sweat and not just from the effort of bobbing and pointing and putting my arms up and down. This was when we were asked to move forward in rows and were videoed line by line. No fancy footwork was going to be able to propel me backwards.
This was when I realised that this was no vocal audition and the people in the room could have worked on the set of Dirty Dancing.
I figured that apart from the guy in the wheelchair (who was more than likely expecting a bit of singing too) I was probably among the worst dancers there.
I accepted the rejection email with the humility of any chorus line professional.
