Gotta Dance!

This week’s theme was “Dancing With the Counselors.” Counselors were selected in a semi-random manner and paired with a camper in a totally random fashion.  After the dancing partners were announced, they only had a brief amount of time to work up a routine, which they performed in front of the whole camp!

It’s always a pleasant surprise to watch counselors and campers perform together.  Considering they have had maybe, 30 minutes of practice time, the routines are highly entertaining! We often see campers watching their dancing partners and trying to imitate them.  Okay, so campers and counselors usually aren’t in sync, but this isn’t “Dancing With the Stars.”  We don’t have judges or scorecards, but by monitoring the cheering from the audience, it doesn't seem as though the crowd has an overwhelming favorite team anyway.

Costumes are important components of "Dancing with the Counselors".  Wigs are good – if the wig matches the concept - that’s a bonus.  Gaudy hats, coats, vests and bowties are common if you get your costumes off the Doublecreek costume rack.  More suitable costumes are supplied by the dancers themselves. Props help.  We’ve seen everything from tables, chairs, water guns, balloons, shaving cream, whipped cream, ladders...well, you get the idea. Oh, I forgot the goat, horse, and a long time ago, a pig.

I suppose you’ve figured it out.  The dancing is good, but it’s creativity that really drives the bus!  This year we had some couples that combined both – creativity and dancing. Some were heavy on creativity, light on the dancing.  But, all fifteen couples were heavy on having fun!  There were no mirror ball trophies handed out after this competition.  Some will say that we had no winners.  That’s not how we see it.  We had a fifteen-way tie for 1st place.  Besides, when everyone has a good time and there are smiles all around, why bother with a trophy?

Don't worry though, our counselors didn’t go home empty-handed.  Each contestant received a paper sunflower with candy attached.  Who says we don’t have tangible awards for excellence?

-- Joe Ray

Here's the link to this week's video:  https://vimeo.com/222848002