For Highland Dance, you work your way through skill levels and once you reach the top tier, you become eligible to compete in Championships. The United States has 6 regions for highland, each of which holds their regional championship to determine who will compete at the US National Championship. Each age group sends their top three dancers out of the regional.
For the Midwest, our regional is always held over Memorial Day Weekend in Alma, Michigan. The competition is part of a larger weekend long highland games event that features bagpiping, dancing, heavy athletics, food, music, vendors, etc. It's a lot of fun! If you ever have a highland games in your area, I would encourage you to give it a chance and check it out.
My two students competed on Saturday and did well. One took a 3rd and a 6th in two of her four dances and the other danced beautifully, even though she didn't end up placing - both girls had tough competition in their groups!
I competed on Sunday and ultimately finished 7th overall in our region, just a few spots out of qualifying for nationals and several spots higher than I finished last year. This year also marked the first time one of our younger dancers competed in regionals and she finished 6th overall in her age group.
The only live action shot I have right now:
awards for my age group:
myself and our studio's other regional competitor:
the parents!
the man!
After the day of dancing was done (from registration & warmup to awards, it ends up being about a 6 hour day) we packed up, wandered around the games a bit, caught the last pipeband competing
and headed to the stadium for closing ceremonies. Most highland games open and close the weekend festivities by having all of the pipebands play together on a large field. I've been going to various highland games since I was 4 and watching Massed Bands never, ever gets old for me.
If you click on the still shot below, it should open up a short video clip ....
My dance teacher's husband took this picture while I was recording ... the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?
We also found a new favorite snack at the games this year, which we munched on while listening to the Massed Bands:
They were seriously delicious! I'm not even kidding. I know haggis is the butt of a lot of jokes, but it really is quite tasty and these chips were SO good.
So that sums up most of my Memorial Day Weekend. Memorial Day Monday, Ryan & I went to workout with our crossfit gym to take on the workout "Murph"
CrossFit has a group of workouts that are named after soliders who have fallen in the line of duty and Murph is one of the most well known. These Hero Workouts are designed to be grueling .... to remind you that even in your darkest, most trying moments of the workout, you are doing it in memory of someone who gave everything for us. Murph consisted of a 1 mile run, 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats and another 1 mile run. It was rough, especially on sore legs from dancing the day before, but I was glad that I did it. We had a cookout at the gym with our friends and then spent the rest of the day relaxing.
Disney Related Activities of Note:
Flight info has been sent to our TA to link up our ME arrangements (YAY!)
I will soon be delving into our planning spreadsheets and dialing in our day-to-day plans. Plus I need to look at when I'm going to purchase our
MNSSHP and La Nouba tickets before too much longer!
- glad you found your way over here!
he certainly seems to be a keeper!
)
