New Uniforms! Two months to go!

Working on my splits in my kitchen!

Kaci here!

We've been training for over 6 months now. I know, it's a little hard to believe. For me, the time has flown by. We started out slowly getting into things, learning terminology and basic stretching and conditioning exercises...and now we're in the middle of working on choreography for the dance portion of the cheer routine and continuing our path to jump excellence (which is a much more difficult form of jumping than the kind you do when you're scared by a cockroach).

I still personally feel like I could be stronger and more flexible. I start to get in my head about it, and then I remember that I'm NOT actually a cheerleader and I'm not exactly expected to be awesome at this. Still, it's been exciting to get better at something that seems so impossible at first glance.

Kaci, Halyn, Karen, and Kayla (Courtney not pictured)

This past Saturday at 8:30am we got to try on the athletic, super sparkly cheer uniforms that we will be wearing in the show to match the boys and girls in Austin Cheer Factory. We went ahead and bought our own from the same supplier, and boy, they were NOT cheap (but still worth it!). Speaking of which, we're going to be launching a Kickstarter soon to help us with some starter funds for the production. Don't worry, we'll have lots of fun goodies as rewards for donors, and some inside sneak peaks as the show develops.

As far as the play portion of the show goes (which is honestly a very, very important component I haven't mentioned here much) things are moving along well! All the ducks are in a row! All the shoes are on the mat! All the girls are...in a pyramid formation?

We've got most of our design and technical crew on board for the show including a stage manager, sound tech/designer, scenic designer, several choreographers, stage hands, and more. The working script for the Blood, Sweat, and Cheers (written by myself and the very talented Amy Gentry) is finished and we're having a live reading tonight with all of the actors. We used improv to help develop the characters and script and we'll continue to use improv throughout the process to keep things lively and fresh! So far the feedback on the script has been very, very positive to I feel good going into crunch time.

We've got about 2 months and 5 days until the show opens on Thursday May 30th at The Salvage Vanguard Theater on Manor Rd here in Austin, TX. Now the real countdown begins! We've got acting rehearsals, dance/cheer practices, and more on our calendar to keep us busy. I'm personally planning to ramp up my fitness goals as well to strengthen my endurance as much as I can.

This shit is happening. Damn!