It's the best recovery ever. Like the little memory-zapper Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones use in Men in Black, it will make your audience totally forget what just happened!
I drop my hoops all the time when I perform. It just happens. You go to the beach, you might get sand in your shoes. You dance with hula hoops, you might launch one at an innocent bystander from time to time...sorry!
I first began to realize I had something of a rear end when I was in high school. I played sports, was slender, and didn't have a lot of friends or go out of my way to make any. I dressed pretty funny. I wore a lot of clothes that I made to school. I made my first pair of pedal-pushers with a fabric that I thought was funny, not necessarily appropriate for pants, but dang I thought "Plantation houses?-Ha! What not?" I wore plantation houses up and down my legs (and I cleverly sewed one little house front and center in the middle of my crotch!) until one dreadful day when I was getting off the bus and they split down the ass. Yup.
But I diverge--I first realized the power of my booty when I was in high school. I was wearing a pair of superman-print pajama pants I had sewn in my apparel development class. We were either wearing our handmade garments to school that day on purpose, or I just did it for the hell of it (I can't remember) but I had gone to get something out of my car between classes. Leaning over the trunk to gather what was probably yet more ridiculous printed fabric, a car full of the hottest, most popular football-basketball-track star-super-jocks sailed by slowly... very slowly. I don't remember what they said, or perhaps they just made some animal noises, but as I turned around to see them my face turned bright red. From that day onward I realized....
Use the power of the booty we must!
It might not be the classiest thing in the world, but it is comedic (not because your ass is silly--but because it's unexpected) and it will help you and your audience forget about how you just screwed up. In a way, it breaks the ice.
YOU: "Oh crap! I just messed up!"
AUDIENCE: "Ooooh. She just messed up!"
YOU (turns and shakes ass): "Booty power to the rescue!"
AUDIENCE (erupts with laughter and cheering): "OMG what just happened this is so amazing!"
And for those of us who choose to use other magic powers of distraction, there's an endless list of cool stuff you could do:
- cartwheel, handstand, fake fall, or some acrobatic trick
- use it as an opportunity to solicit support from the audience
- breakdance or other funny dance (maybe you have a signature move you like to bust out)
- something really stupid and funny (i.e. you drop an apple you are juggling, get into a disagreement with the apple that betrayed you, then bite that darn apple and show it who's boss just before you chuck it across the stage and grab a better behaved apple you have on standby!)
- playfully blame someone/something else (i.e. a member of the audience that is particularly raucous and involved, the pink elephant on the stage, etc)
You might have to use all the skills you have to recover--miming, acting, physical flexibility--who cares as long as it does the trick!
I like the cheap tricks and I feel the audience does too--you know it's a cheap trick, you recognize it's a cheap trick, it reminds you that we are all human and have to laugh at ourselves. The show must go on! Everyone has their own style and their own kind of recovery that will work for them. Mine just happens to be over-acting and shaking my butt.
Hasta la vista,
Christy the Amazonian Booty-Shaker
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