Several years back, I got my Equity card (Actor's Equity is the theater actor's union) playing Barnaby Tucker in Hello Dolly at The Mark Two Dinner Theater. While doing the show, I became friends with one of the dancers in the ensemble who was also a choreographer.
Fast forward a year or two later and this same guy contacted me about doing a gig with him. It turns out that the job was to be a back up dancer for a female impersonator who was needing dancers for a pageant talent number. Now the funny thing about that isn't that it was for a drag queen pageant, it was the fact that this guy considered me to be a dancer at all. But, it was certainly something I'd never done before and we were going to Atlanta for the pageant. How could I NOT say YES?
We were doing the song "Big Time," sung by Linda Eder and it had this 20s jazzy swing feel to it. The choreography wasn't anything too difficult (I can move after all) so, rehearsals went fairly smoothly. I even got to do a tiny solo bit at the beginning of the number. I was to run out, spin and do a jump. To picture the jump, stand on your left leg, right knee up, right arm straight up and left arm straight out to the side. But, in the air.
We were gonna do the number at the Parliament House, before going to Atlanta, to try it out in front of a crowd. It was pretty exciting because we were the opening for the drag show that night and we wanted to be great. That afternoon, we ran the number about 20 times (no joke) because Susan (the DQ for whom we were dancing) wanted her number to be perfect. Needless to say we were already kind of pooped before the show even started.
So the show starts, they announce us and the music begins. As any performer knows, once your music starts there's no turning back. The show goes until the music stops. Filled with adrenaline, I run out on stage, do my spin and jump. And then, I dislocate my shoulder. I run off stage because my next thing is to escort Susan on. I tell her what just happened and she's a little confused (she's got other things on her mind and someone injuring himself wasn't part of the number). So I say, "let's just go." And I proceed to do the entire number with a dislocated shoulder because, in my mind, the music had started and there was no turning back. It was painful but, I got through it.
After the number, I spent the rest of the drag show back stage trying to get my shoulder back in place (remember Mel Gibson's character in Lethal Weapon 2?). My friends, who came to the show, thought I didn't come out because I was too tipsy (not true, on this occasion). I eventually made a trip to the emergency room to get things put back in place.
Needless to say, I never got to make that trip to Atlanta but i couldn't despair. I got to make a later trip to Miami for a different pageant with the same group and then another one at the P House after that. Regardless it's definitely something that not many people can say that they've experienced and thanks to the girl yesterday, I've decided to share it with all of you today. Hopefully, you all find it as funny now as I do. Of course at the time, I was pissed because I'd worked my butt off to get that choreograhy right. But life doesn't always work the way we think it should. That's what keeps it interesting.
Until next time...
By the way, I tried to find a video of Linda Eder singing "Big Time" for those of you not familiar with it but all I could find were dance recitals and crappy covers. So, no video this time. Sorry.
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