My DancerPalooza Experience (Pt.1)

At DancerPalooza I had an amazing experience. I attended the Travis Wall Experience and in all honesty, it changed my life. Although palooza is pretty expensive, it is definitely worth it. Make sure you get the early bird rate. If you can, try to get a scholarship at regionals so that you can get extra money off. However, the Travis Wall Experience doesn’t allow you to use your scholarship towards money off. Also, I didn’t realize I wanted or could go so I also missed the earlybird special. I did have a scholarship so I could have used that but by the time I signed up, a lot of the intensives were sold out. I had to choose between Viva La Nika and Travis Wall. I had never taken a class from Nika before so I didn’t even know if I was going to LIKE the classes. It was a really hard decision but I new that I would be truly happy if I did Travis Wall. Of course another expense is the hotel. My parents both had to work so they couldn’t just fly out to San Diego with me .(Keep in mind that I decided to go about a week and a half before) I was also going to help pay back some of the money that Palooza costs when I got back home. I flew out with my dance friends and one of their moms on Saturday. When we got to the airport, I dropped my phone and it fell on the floor. It had cracked and I wasn’t even 30 minutes into my adventure. We were planning on getting it fixed and not even telling my parents(I ended up telling them later in the week.) We were going to stay in a cheap hotel that night because it would be late and the hotel was super close to where we wanted to go the next day. When we got to the hotel, it was about 2am while at home it was actually only 11pm. There were 4 of us and they only gave us a room with one bed. We

all squeezed in the bed and fell asleep.

Our checkout time was supposed to be 9am, but because we were tired from traveling, we ended up checking out at noon. The adult staying with us actually became friends with someone who worked there who let our late checkout slide. That day (Sunday)was amazing. We met up with one of our

other friends and went to this gorgeous beach La Jolla. It was so fun! I had never ever been to the west coast so I didn’t know the water was so cold! I also had never been on a beach that had rocks on it. It was such a cool beach Comicon was also going on at the same time so the streets were jam packed with a bunch of people all dressed up. I met up with another friend who I would actually be staying with for the rest of the week. *photo and video credit to me :)

We went to the pool for the rest of the night.

When we woke up in the morning, we went to the other hotel that the rest of our friends were staying at. While the adults went to the grocery store, we decided to do a Ten Minute Photo Challenge with my camera in our hotel room. Instead of just doing one……we did about 5. There was a welcome party and check in that night. We met up with all of the other kids from our studio and ate at this really good dinner in the hotel. At check in, there were swag bags that we got which included coupons, a stretch band, a resistance band, a garland with our intensive on it, and more.

When intensives started the next day, I was so excited. At the Travis Wall experience we first had an audition. I was very nervous because there were a bunch of AMAZING dancers (Ella Horan, Tate Mcrae, Lucy Valley, Ruby Castro, Wyeth Walker, Megan Goldstein, Elise Monson, Brady Farrar, etc.) We learned a really amazing combo and then when it was time to audition, I nailed it! Once we were done with the audition, we just had a few classes with the faculty. During our rehearsal, we learned a bunch of different segments that would be used in our show. We also tried out some lifts and formations such as a giant square where we did sort of like the wave. They called out a group of kids that would be considered the "select group". I was put in the group and I was soon excited! I was a little bit nervous because most of the group was Beat Squad and I was not. Travis had them teach us a combo that he had done at The Dance Awards so a couple of kids knew it. Our rehearsals were very long and tiring. We had so many rehearsals, more than any other intensive. I barely had any other free time during the week. There was an ice cream party and I got to meet my instagram friend @bella_the_tapper ! One class, I had to skip because me ankle was throbbing! I also met Morgan Perschy, who had done some photoshoots with Lexi just like me!

-Stay tuned for part 2 next week!