The morning of my Arangetram had finally arrived. I woke up around 8 and immediately started preparing for the day.  After collecting all of my costumes and makeup to bring with me, my mom and I drove to the venue. We had set up all of the decorations the day before, but we still had to rearrange and fix things the day of. While my family was scrambling to make sure everything was perfect, I was waiting backstage for the makeup artist to arrive. She came at 10 am to start my makeup. This process would take more than an hour, so I was practically strapped into my chair that morning.  

I tried to distract myself from the nervousness I began to feel earlier that week by chatting with the makeup artist while she worked. Normally, my dance teacher has her students use a recommended Arangetram makeup artist for their performances, but that woman was booked for the day of my performance. Because of this, I had a completely new makeup artist for my recital, so no one knew what to expect. I had my doubts when she first applied my makeup because the foundation she used was way lighter than my actual skin tone. The base eventually evened out after she used bronzer and contour. The look came together in the end and looked good (ignoring my giant overlined eyebrows) as seen in the picture below.  

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Once my makeup and costume were done, my job was to wait and relax. I was extremely nervous but knowing that my friends and family in the audience were there to cheer me on put my mind at ease. When the full audience (still very small because of Covid) arrived, my parents began their welcome speech and the beginning notes of my first song began to sound while I stepped on beat with the music on stage. After those first beats, the rest of my dances flowed from there.  

Each of the other songs in the first half came and went quickly up until the final one before the intermission – the Varnam. As I have mentioned earlier in this blog, there is a twenty-five-minute-long dance in my Arangetram repertoire, and this was it.  

The Varnam was the song I was dreading the most. I did end up messing up the order of some steps a bit bit, but other than that, it went very smoothly.  

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The intermission came and I got changed into my costume for the second half. Because of the small audience and less restrictive schedule we were on, I was able to go out to the auditorium lobby to say hi to my friends and family and take pictures with them. 

After seeing everyone supporting me, I was energized for the second half of the show. The second half flew by quickly, and I faced my final song. The music began playing and I started to get sentimental about all of the practice that went into my performance. I knew that this performance would not be the end of my dance journey.  

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Linked below are the videos and the first and second half of my performance.  

First Half: https://youtu.be/8TZtC-B4cFw 

Second Half:  https://youtu.be/mjNWezEp_Nw