Dancing for Hospice 2024: Showtime nerves increase as curtain time draws near

Rotorua Daily Post's Laura Smith is taking part in this year's Harcourts Dancing for Hospice.

Rotorua Daily Post reporter Laura Smith is taking part in this year’s Harcourts Dancing for Hospice. She shares her thoughts in the build-up to the August 17 event.

OPINION

I generally don’t consider myself a nervous person.

But as the weeks fly by and our remaining training sessions are rapidly dwindling, I find that my tummy is doing little flips as I think of dancing in front of a rather large audience.

Knowing my dance partner Nikora will be literally going through it with me step by step helps, as does our determination to put on a really good show for everyone.

We had our first little tiff of sorts the other day, following on from a mini run-through of everyone’s dances, where we didn’t feel we did as well as we could have.

It lasted about a minute and we were laughing about it about half an hour after, but it shows we are quite stressed to get it all perfect.

We want to do well, for each other, for the audience, and of course for Hospice, and that takes a toll.

Instead of dwelling, however, putting our energy and emotion into improving and building on our performance is proving productive and, honestly, quite relieving.

We’re back on track and it feels great.

Thank goodness we’re both as stubborn as we are.

I’m so incredibly proud of all the work Nikora is putting in, I’m very lucky to have him as a dance partner.

I’m also very proud of how everyone else is doing - I truly think it’s going to be a beautiful night.

If you want to support any of the dance couples, you can do so by voting for the Steiners People’s Choice. It costs $4 to vote, but of course, that isn’t a limit. Go nuts if you like. All proceeds from the People’s Choice award voting goes to Hospice.

Harcourts Dancing for Hospice is on Saturday, August 17, at the Energy Events Centre, Rotorua. This year, for the first time, there will also be a matinee on Sunday, August 11, at the Sir Howard Morrison Centre. Tickets to both the matinee and the main event are on sale now at Ticketmaster.

This author is taking part in Harcourts Dancing for Hospice outside her salaried hours. NZME is a sponsor of the charity event and any content by the Local Democracy Reporter is done in her own time.

Laura Smith is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. She previously reported general news for the Otago Daily Times and Southland Express, and has been a journalist for four years.