movin' on up

As you might remember, I'm a member of my bellydance company's student performance troupe. I've been dancing with them for... counts fingers... four years now. I love it. Being in the troupe gives me more performance opportunities, along with the challenge of learning new choreographies from different directors, and a fun group of girls to hang out with each week.

I've slowly moved up the ranks from 'rookie in the troupe' to 'still-kinda-new,' and from there to 'one of the veterans' (changed that fast in a year - we had a lot of turnover). This past year I've gone from veteran to Veteran+TroupeMom. Not anything official, of course, but I've certainly become the one who others ask for choreography clarification, the one who gets the "I'll be late for practice!" texts, and one of the few given the opportunity to choreograph a duet for a show... things like that.

I'm the most experienced in the student troupe. So it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when my troupe/company director pulled me aside a few weeks back to talk. (These talks are never just "hey, how's it going?" That can happen with other people around. This was one of THOSE talks.) So we sat, and she told me, "we'd like to invite you to join [name of professional troupe] for next year."

I stop breathing.

Internal dialog: What? WHAT??? REALLY??? Whoa this is awesome but OMG I'm going to have a newborn and we can't afford it and....
She interrupts my thoughtstream with: "...but we know it might be hard to manage with school and a newborn and stuff. So, know that we want you in the troupe. BUT if that would be too much, we'd like you to be a director for [student troupe]."

ok, breathing again.

She tells me I'm the most qualified, and they'd love to have me, but it is a huge time and money commitment, and if I can't do it this year, that's totally fine. They want to give me the opportunity to grow as a dancer, and choreographing for a troupe is a big step up from unofficial TroupeMom.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that's the scoop. I'm not moving up to the professional troupe next year (which doesn't kill me to say it as much as I thought it might), but I *DO* get to choreograph for and perform with the student troupe. It'll certainly be a challenge, but I'm excited about it.