How about a play-by-play?

Here's your handy guide to finding myself and OneMike at various stages of the performance. I feel terribly narcissistic for doing this, but hell, this is my blog, and I'm gonna enjoy it anyway.

First, a key for the directions I'll be referring to, relative to the camera angle:

+-----------------+
|    left         |
|      \          |
|       \         |
|front --+-- back |
|         \       |
|          \      |
|         right   |  (ph3ar teh ASCII!)
+-----------------+

When I say "left", I'll actually be referring to the top of the screen. Sorry, I'll leave the change of coordinate system to you, but if it's still hard, just tilt your head. Times will be the remaining time as YouTube displays it, and *should* be the same or close on the WMV if you switch to time remaining.

5:32: Our starting lines. OneMike and I are in the back of the far left line. OneMike is dancing with Grace (white dress), and I'm behind him dancing with Cathryn (red blouse).

Mario (bottom left) signals, "Oye!" to start the music, at which point I begin calling.

5:02: We've just formed the big circle. OneMike and myself are in the middle-front, still with the same partners, though we'll be trading across the circle momentarily.

4:55: The infamous "criss-cross". It can be called normally if you're dancing in a small circle, but was a mess to coordinate with a group this big. It looks great, but it's a shame we had to take out the spins (normally the girls would spin across the center). Girls change positions, guys are still in the same place.

4:29: We've just transitioned to circles. OneMike and I are in different circles, but right next to one another -- we're both right in the center, where the two circles are closest to one another. I'm on the left, OneMike on the right.

4:05: We're rotated around a little bit, and now we split into even smaller circles, or "pods" -- groups of two couples each. This one is also callable, and a pattern we dance regularly in rueda 3. As the camera zooms in, I'm in the top-left corner of the view dancing with Vanessa (red blouse), and OneMike is just a little below me in a different pod, dancing with Vicci (pink blouse).

3:43: Big circle again. OneMike and I are back to our initial big circle positions, with Vicci and Vanessa, respectively.

3:30: Shameless back patting here. At the end of cadenita (think right and left grand, if you know that one), I'm dancing with Marlena (light-blue dress) in the right front, and do a hook twist that looks better than I thought I was capable of. Yay! OneMike is dancing right next to me with Joanna (light blue top, black capris).

3:18: Madness. The lines weren't perfectly straight, but wow, we got it. We only practiced that transition with the full team what, maybe twice? Everybody got there, and everybody looked great. I'm in the center-back (and a little behind the line) with Vicci (pink top), and OneMike is in the far-right front with Anyansi (dark blue dress).

2:58: Big circle again, just rolling out from where we were in the lines. Bridgette takes over calling (planned), for good reason. Not only did the routine from here on out change a lot over the last week, but the timing was really tight for a few spots, and she was going to have to adjust the routine on the fly if we didn't make it. We all made it, of course. ;)

2:47: OneMike starts back from the front of the tunnel, still with Anyansi.

2:42: I pass the front of the tunnel, still with Vicci.

2:32: We begin the split from tunnel to our trick groups almost *exactly* at the ideal time (transition in the music), and well-within our safe window. It was a large, hard to measure (pun lol) passage, which we were fine-tuning right up to the last second in order to (hopefully) get it right. It worked, yay!

2:18: Trick groups. OneMike and are are dancing with Anyansi and Vicci still, along with Jim and Karina in the far-left group of six. We did a move called "Peter Pan", and did great, but don't bother watching us. Watch the front group of eight -- they do a much harder trick, "star", and it looks incredible. Big clap to Bridgette, Vanessa, Christina and Victoria for doing the hard part, and Thomas, Mario, Richard and Dominic for holding them up.

1:56: Back to the big circle. OneMike and I are both on the left-middle. OneMike is now dancing with Karina (dark red dress), and I'm dancing with Anyansi (dark blue dress). It's probably easier to spot Grace (white dress) who is just behind me.

1:35: Resoterra. I just want to say that this one is awesome, whether you're watching or dancing. It's a bit tamed due to the space we had available, but the way the circle contracts and explodes out again looks great, and the power you whip around with also feels great.

0:47: About to strike the ending poses. OneMike and I are both up in the front line. I'm in the middle with Reiko (red top) and Marisol (pink top), and OneMike is on the right with Christina (who you can't really see at that point).

0:41: Ow, my crotch.