Day 62

Today was probably the best of the summer so far. We woke up early to line a field, then went to brass to warm up and continue detailing parts of the show. Visual was rather chaotic due to a storm - we kept going inside and back outside. We finished up inside with a pretty inspirational speech by Greg (one of our visual techs who aged out at Phantom last year) about how little time we have left and making the choice to be excellent. For brass block, we started out inside working on our encore tunes for tomorrow night, so the tone of the rehearsal started out too relaxed, but we fixed that. Then we ended outside (no more rain!) for ensemble. What a rehearsal! I guess we had a lot of energy from being inside during the heat of the day, but our energy, focus, and retention during rehearsal was at a new level, and it felt great. I'll never forget what happened next - we had a full body warm down with one of the guard instructors. It consisted of stretching and tension-release exercises to some very relaxing music. I was in tears and the emotional connection I felt to the rest of the corps was indescribable.