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Long-awaited photos from last month’s gig.
And then some stills after we were done. Notice the sheen on the forehead.
Event: LOVE WINS, a benefit dinner slash launch party for the Engage Network, run by my friend Marianne.
Venue: an old bank building in downtown SF, lit and decked in red, and forested with bamboo brought in for the occasion.
Crowd: shiny happy faces, pretty dressed up– by SF standards. Prize goes to the lady in the Victorian-era garb complete with spats: gorgeous. Lots of peeps from my philanthropy, enviro, and social justice worlds. (*nervous gulp*)
Gig: Annie and I were kind of a send-off at the very end, a little cake icing after Van Jones and Julia Butterfly stretched everyone’s hearts til they hurt in that feels-so-good way. Van, with whom I’ve worked on some book projects in my other life, was supposed to introduce us. We were also supposed to be a visual distraction while tables got moved to create a dancefloor. We created a ten-minute set that featured me in the first song, Annie in the second, and a choreographed duet for the third song.
Costumes: To match the “sari flame” table décor, we wore our red/orange panel skirts and halter tops. I wore mine over red sparkly hello-tush hot shorts, and sewed up some red sparkly bootcovers to match. (Also a cropped vest of red fur that I ended up not wearing.) Annie wore hers with red flared rockstar pants and a gorgeous mirrored belt from India. Long curly ponytails were attached to our heads. There was an abundance of glitter. (Photos to come.)
Music: In keeping with the lovey-dovey theme of the night, my song was Sinatra’s “Just the Way You Look Tonight,” Annie’s was “Your Love Gets Sweeter” by Finley Quaye, and the duet was set to “Ringa Ringa” from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack.
How It Went: here’s where this post’s title (going awry, often) comes in. Let me count the ways. Van had to run off to DC so didn’t get to do our intro: boo. After Marianne introduced us, an impromptu crowd-sing-along rendition of The Beatles “All You Need is Love” was inserted into the program, and so Annie and I stood awkwardly up on the balcony with our hoops lit for its duration, the crowd looking up at us and back to the stage in confusion. Someone was supposed to announce that I have a book on HOOPING coming out in June and people should come up to me after the performance to get on the list for info. This didn’t happen. My song came on; I started hooping. Then the CD skipped, and skipped again, and a third time, at which point the AV people just hit stop, mid-song. Awkward: I bowed. Then there was no more music, and Annie and I waited for her song. After a long minute, I gestured at the AV folks to move on to the next song, and someone came running up saying the CD wouldn’t play any further, and we should just dance to the music they had. So Annie did her thing. It hardly seemed like anyone was watching at that point. And then we started into our duet, and suddenly the music was just turned off unceremoniously, mid-hoop. And then someone got on the mic and announced the electric slide was starting. And Annie and I just gave each other a sloppy hug and shrugged and walked away.
It’s true, I’m bummed. This was my first performance in a long while, and I’d planned it out so thoroughly, from the soundtrack to the costume to the choreography to the capturing of readers for the HOOPING! book. I’d rehearsed with my body and in my head. I remembered to tell myself I was a rockstar in the ten hours leading up to the event. I took my Rescue Remedy and was remarkably calm backstage. Bobby pins, safety pins, bindi, glitter: check, check, check, check…
The Highlights: Getting dressed with Annie, and having Mahfam and Laura, among others, visit with us in the ladies bathroom. Why is getting dressed together ALWAYS the best part?? Meeting in-person a writer whose work I love, on the front end of the evening, before we got dressed. Giving Van a goodbye hug while Annie and I were warming up backstage, and getting glitter all over his suit–that glitter’s in the Capitol now. The photos that the professional photographers took of us in our fineries, which I’ll be getting a hold of. The photos Annie and I took in the silly-hat dress-up booth, a gimmick for the evening’s guests.
The Learnings: Well, arriving nearly three hours before we went on seemed like more than enough time. But it meant the event was already underway when we arrived, and so the AV folks didn’t actually try playing the CD. (A CD was necessitated by the fact that the DJ was a vinyl-only guy, and could get none of our songs on vinyl, so turned us over to the AV people and their technology.) Which is too bad since I also had the set on my ipod, but didn’t hand it over b/c the AV folks seemed confident the CD would be fine. Lesson: arrive early enough to do a soundcheck if you are supplying the tunes. Sigh. Other learnings: oh, heck, I dunno. Keep smiling (which we did!). Expect that nothing will work out the way you’ve planned it, and the more complicated the plan, the more the likely the chaos.
