I just had the nicest gig last night. I’d promised my Irish dancing group instructor that I’d be performing at a small party of some association, SLU, which has something to do with sports.

There were only five of us – our dance group is 15 girls altogether – but we put on a really nice show. We had both softshoe and hardshoe dances, which always brings some additional anxiety when you have to change the shoes between dances in about 15 seconds.

The party took place in some old stable or storehouse (there were no boxes, so I suppose it was a storehouse), and we were set to perform quite late in the evening, around 10 p.m. People had already had something to drink, so they were really enjoying themselves.

The party programme was running a bit late, though, so we had about half an hour before the performance. So the hostess invited us to eat first! They had creamy potatoes and Karelian pie, and it was heavenly!

There was some girl, a student at the Sibelius Academy (academy for students of classical music in Finland), who was playing the accordion. And singing. She was a terrible singer!

I thought it couldn’t be any worse, until she started singing songs in English: I don’t think anybody could be any worse at pronouncing English! Ugh. She totally butchered Avril Lavigne’s Slipped Away! I was quite surprised somebody else in Finland actually knew about her, and liked her music.

Anyways, the torture ended soon enough, and our performance went really well. People were so into it! I hate it when I have to perform in front of a bored, phlegmatic crowd… it makes me feel like they’re just trying to spot any faults in the performance. But it was great, you can always tell at a particular point in our acappella set (we perform that one pretty much every single time we perform anywhere), when we all suddenly jump up and come down with a really loud thump.

If the audience is with you, they’ll rise in their seats a bit, or push back in their chairs just a little, just something that shows they weren’t expecting that. After the jump, the dance becomes much faster. And then someone started clapping to the rhythm. That really made me happy, and I did my best and tried to make the sounds as loud and clear as possible.

After performing, we’d promised to give some teaching to the audience. After we’d managed to coax most of them to the front, they really went for it. They were surprisingly good actually! We showed some basic steps with hard shoes, as people are usually more interested in those. We even had them do the set to music, and they did great.

And as the icing on the cake, to use a completely unfitting metaphor, the hostess had prepared a bag of goodies for each of us. They’d put in the bags two packets of rye bread and one long Texas bun loaf. Yummy. All Fazer quality…

So that was very different from what I’ve experienced all year. All other performances this year so far, I’ve never had enough time to practise, and every single time I screwed up something in each dance we performed. It always makes me feel so bad, especially if we’re being paid for the gig.

But now I think I’ve found again what I originally liked about performing. It’s the positive kind of excitement, knowing that you’ll do fine (if you’ve practised enough that is), but still feeling a bit nervous going in front of a crowd. It’s a great adrenaline rush.