This past weekend, some of the members of the dance company I'm a part of (Mari Meade Dance Collective, bitches! We beez fo' real. Weez been performing all up in yo grill.) (And so ends my brief foray into ebonics. And shameless self-promoting. For now(z).) went on tour to Asheville, North Carolina. I want to be honest for a moment here and say that I wasn't actually very pumped about this brief tour, mainly due to the fact that it required two 13-hour bus rides, a hostel stay, and an income-absent weekend. But. But, but, but, but. I had a fantasmical time. Butt-numbing bus rides and all.
First of all, Asheville is a super-cool, hippie-fied city. So I felt cooler just walking around on the downtown city streets, let alone performing in its uber-awesome Fringe Festival. And everything there is locally owned and operated--no chain stores are allowed, save one Urban Outfitters that apparently had to first make several hefty donations to local non-profits to get in the city's good graces. And it's so much CHEAPER to eat/drink/live there than it is here in New York. Mind-boggling, really. Aaaaaand everyone there dresses like a hipster. And virtually all of the restaurants there serve organic or family-farm-raised or just plain ole delicious vegan food.
I could go on and on about Awesome Amazing Asheville, but I won't. Because then I won't have any time to tell you about the funny things Mari said, or the terribly smelly and awful bus rides the four of us had to endure.
Bus rides first. Now, we are a fledgling modern dance company. So we don't have any money. Therefore, our bus ride tickets and rental car had to come out of the small donation fund we've set up as a non-profit. This means that we needed to take the chinatown bus down to Charlotte. And this, in turn, means that: A. The bus had no heat for the majority of the trip; B. The seats were...quite close. (And mine didn't even RECLINE. Damn it. I'm STILL angry about that.); C. The "toilet" on the bus didn't flush, and there was no "toilet" paper. So, it smelled. Realreal bad; D. If one wanted to brave moving down the aisle in the crazily-swerving bus to attempt to urinate (and hopefully ONLY urinate) in the godforsaken "bathroom," one had to use headrests and occasionally people's heads in order to regain equilibrium. (I saw this happen twice, with Mari's sleeping head alone. Close call, tiny Asian man.)
But something about such truly awful bus rides makes me feel more like a legit modern dancer. You know? Obvs I'm not in this profession for the money, but struggling so valiantly to perform in this small, hippie festival and stay in a hostel for three days and eat Pringles for dinner and shower in flip-flops makes it all seem so much more worthwhile. Or something. I'm doing a terrible job of articulating, obviously, but hopefully you get the gist.
Mari, who is my choreographer and possesses an extraordinary brain which I imagine operates as does a pinball machine, often says very funny, non-sequitar-ish things. Here are just a few examples from this past weekend:
1. The four of us all got The Shirelles' "Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This" stuck in our heads this weekend, to the point where one of us would start singing, "Mama said--" only to be given abrupt, menancing glares from the other three listeners. Mari began quietly singing the song to herself at one point, and somehow managed to shush herself before any of us could jump in. So what an outsider would've heard coming from Mari's mouth was: "'Mama said'--SHUT UP!"
2. In a pathetic attempt to get "Mama Said" out of our heads, I began singing some tunes from Disney's "The Lion King." Mari ended this quickly by emphatically stating: "There are two things I hate in this world: Jonathan Taylor Thomas and coleslaw."
3. Apropos of nothing, actually: "I've always wanted to take a bath in mayonnaise."
4. And finally. Whilst walking around downtown, Mari and I spotted a dog with unusual markings--half dalmation-like spots, and half big ole black spots, similar to that of a cow. Mari then began describing the dog, in a terrible North Carolina southern accent, which I will attempt to duplicate phonetically: "Naow, that's what we cawl a dow. Thaat'd bee a cross betweens a dawg and ah caow. Ah. Nahw, nawh. Way-ut. Thaat'd actually bee wut we cawl a CAWG. Ya know. Thaat's wut wee cawl a CAWG IN THE SYSTEM." This...made me laugh. So very, very hard. In fact, I still laugh when I think about it. I'm laughing as a I type this. I love wordplay. And bad accents, apparently.
The entire trip was hectic and cold and I had to pee whenever I couldn't. And I had a ridiculously good time. (Despite the fact that we boarded the bus back to NYC by only the skin of our teeth, a panic-attack-driven time for me that included a harried rental car trip back to Charlotte's airport, followed by an Avis shuttle ride from the rental car drop-off to the terminal's taxi line, followed by a careening taxi drive to the rando, sketch chinatown bus pick-up locale. I have never been so blissfully happy to sit my ass down in a cramped, freezing, horribly-upholstered bus seat.) (Also: I awoke in the middle of the night to find my window had actually ICED OVER on the inside ledge. How is this even possible? I think the heat was on at this point. This continues to baffle me.)
And then I arrived back in the city only to be greeted with nine-degree winter weather. Yahoo, indeed.
Hahhaha! You nailed it.
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