The show Saturday night was a blast. We drove 2 1/2 hours to get to the Waikato Polytech, in less than perfect weather conditions. Fortunately it was held indoors - it's never very nice at this time of year! There was a lot of chaos with various 'acts' getting ready and doing their last minute practise runs, and with some interesting seating arrangements (BYO chair, blankets) they managed to fit about 400 spectators in, with room to warm up (in the dark) behind them, and the arena (18 x 50m) in front. I shudder to think what OSH would have to say about the arrangements!

We had time for a ride around in the arena prior to the show, then it was time to get ready - white bandages and saddlecloth for Mr B, Black for Tom, white top hat and tails for me, black for Debs, a black and a white glove each...white and black face paint quarter markers respectively.

You may have guessed by now our theme was Black and White! We did our pas de deux to (RIP) Michael Jackson's Black or White (an uptempo remix), and a techno mix of One Night in Bangkok (from the musical Chess). There was a certain amount of ad-libbing, as the smaller arena threw some of our timings out, but all in all it went off quite well. B was hyped to the max - he loves a crowd, so we got some passage and piaffe which was great, and some one time changes (the 2's were a bit of a mess as he was doing his own ad libbing at that point!), and as a team we managed to keep our patterns together, and stuck together like glue.

The point of the exercise was to get the boys out to do something fun and different, to expose them to a night time, crowded, indoor environment, and to play with some of the GP movements without the pressure of competition. So we did all that and had a good laugh too.

As we were on in the middle of the show, we didn't get to see the other performances. We did catch the totally impromptu ride by one of the judges (a well known NZ 3DE rider, playing "Paula" with fishnet tights, wig and fake boobs) on a contestants GP horse - which was hilarious.

I hope the audience had as much fun as we did - we didn't stay to find out, as with a 2 1/2 hour trip home ahead of us, we made a quick getaway and were home tucked up in our stables by 11pm.