Hello dancers, family, and friends! I’ll start by reiterating how much of a blast I had watching everyone dance and have fun, as well as putting together this version of the video. It took a little while, but I hope the end result is worth it.
Once again, YouTube has blocked our recital video; obnoxiously after leaving it up for two days, so I thought everything was okay. This time practically every dance is affected, so the only way to watch will be on this page (or to download the file yourself).
In any case – the same caveats as before – I have two versions here, and you need fairly decent bandwidth to stream either. Alternatively, you can download the files directly and watch on your computer, phone, or smart tv via something like Plex.
Since I spent the time adding chapters in YouTube, I took a stab and re-creating them here. It’s quick-n-dirty, but it seems to work (at least on my machine – hah! the common developer’s defense)
High Bitrate (20Mbps Internet Recommended)
00:00 – Welcome / Introduction
01:57 – Dancer’s Prayer
02:47 – Little Girls Pom Team
04:52 – She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain – Preschool (A) Tap
07:34 – Thank God For Kids – Tuesday K/1st Ballet
10:37 – You Raise Me Up – Tuesday/Thursday 4th-6th Christian Ballet
12:49 – Monday 2nd/3rd Hip Hop
15:07 – One More Day – Wednesday Ballet
17:41 – Bop – Thursday 1st-3rd Tap
20:06 – Home on the Range – Preschool (B) Ballet
22:46 – Peace in Christ – Tuesday K/1st Christian Ballet
25:19 – Hymn of Heaven – Wednesday Christian Ballet
27:45 – 9 to 5 – Adult Tap
30:14 – Angels Among Us – Tuesday 4th-6th Ballet
32:18 – From Austin – Senior Brittney
34:16 – My Girl – Father/Daughter
39:34 – I Have Nothing – Senior Mallory
41:53 – 60 Second Hip Hop – Adults
43:21 – Achy Breaky Heart – Monday 2nd/3rd
45:41 – Happy Trails – Pre-K Y
48:11 – On the Road Again – Thursday 1st-3rd Tap
50:10 – Tuesday K/1st Hip Hop
52:45 – Cotton Eye Joe – Wednesday Tap
55:11 – Tuesday 4th-6th Hip Hop
57:25 – Goodness of God – Monday 2nd/3rd Christian Ballet
59:49 – Love Will Turn You Around – Thursday 4th-6th Ballet
01:02:16 – I Speak Jesus – Thursday 1st-3rd Christian Ballet
01:04:32 – Guy’s Team
01:08:27 – Older Girls Pom Team
01:10:46 – Fly – Wednesday Pointe
01:13:14 – Born to Be a Cowboy – Preschool (B) Tap
01:15:58 – Thursday 4th-6th Hip Hop
01:18:16 – The Race is On – Tuesday 4th-6th Tap
01:20:28 – Country Girl – Adult Ballet
01:22:41 – Happy Birthday Grandma – Wednesday
01:26:46 – Thursday Hip Hop – 1st-3rd
01:29:00 – One Voice – Monday 2nd/3rd Ballet
01:31:39 – Swingin’ – Tuesday K/1st Tap
01:34:06 – Queen of Hearts – Thursday 4th-6th Tap
01:36:38 – Wednesday Hip Hop
01:38:39 – Finale
01:41:40 – Closing Remarks
Low Bitrate (7Mbps Internet Recommended)
00:00 – Welcome / Introduction
01:57 – Dancer’s Prayer
02:47 – Little Girls Pom Team
04:52 – She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain – Preschool (A) Tap
07:34 – Thank God For Kids – Tuesday K/1st Ballet
10:37 – You Raise Me Up – Tuesday/Thursday 4th-6th Christian Ballet
12:49 – Monday 2nd/3rd Hip Hop
15:07 – One More Day – Wednesday Ballet
17:41 – Bop – Thursday 1st-3rd Tap
20:06 – Home on the Range – Preschool (B) Ballet
22:46 – Peace in Christ – Tuesday K/1st Christian Ballet
25:19 – Hymn of Heaven – Wednesday Christian Ballet
27:45 – 9 to 5 – Adult Tap
30:14 – Angels Among Us – Tuesday 4th-6th Ballet
32:18 – From Austin – Senior Brittney
34:16 – My Girl – Father/Daughter
39:34 – I Have Nothing – Senior Mallory
41:53 – 60 Second Hip Hop – Adults
43:21 – Achy Breaky Heart – Monday 2nd/3rd
45:41 – Happy Trails – Pre-K Y
48:11 – On the Road Again – Thursday 1st-3rd Tap
50:10 – Tuesday K/1st Hip Hop
52:45 – Cotton Eye Joe – Wednesday Tap
55:11 – Tuesday 4th-6th Hip Hop
57:25 – Goodness of God – Monday 2nd/3rd Christian Ballet
59:49 – Love Will Turn You Around – Thursday 4th-6th Ballet
01:02:16 – I Speak Jesus – Thursday 1st-3rd Christian Ballet
01:04:32 – Guy’s Team
01:08:27 – Older Girls Pom Team
01:10:46 – Fly – Wednesday Pointe
01:13:14 – Born to Be a Cowboy – Preschool (B) Tap
I saw a post on Reddit about aligning tile pieces. I hadn’t heard the credit card method before, but I might just have to try that. Smooth table surfaces seem to work well for me. Anyway – someone mentioned that the Taj Mahal gave them a headache. I remembered I used to build virtually – so why not try this infamously large set virtually! Alas – I built the wrong one!
While YouTube tries to figure out whether or not I’m a criminal for uploading a kids’ dance recital using commercial music, here is one attempt to share it with others!
Update! I finally have a version on YouTube that isn’t blocked; it has some songs muted, but if you struggle to play the versions on this post, go check out https://youtu.be/5V6oaZ8jnT0
Note – this is not like YouTube; if your internet isn’t fast enough, it just won’t work (i.e. don’t try to do this on mobile). The regular quality version is 6GB for a 2-hour show which translates to about 7mbps internet required to watch this. If you have troubles or just want to download either version, use one of the following links:
Files are no longer available here, but feel free to message me on Facebook (or comment on this post), and I can still get them to you!
(One more caveat / apology – someone bumped the camera before act 2 while I was on-stage; I’m so sorry for the couple of dancers who got cut off!)
Three of my kids and I (yes, I, too) were in a dance recital this last Saturday. With my fancy new Galaxy S22Ultra, I recorded the whole thing in 4k on a tripod and told a few people that I was planning on sharing it on the studio’s Facebook page. Unfortunately that’s seeming less and less possible.
Last year, after livestreaming the recital when it was at a smaller theater, I learned that Facebook is aggressive and will just mute your stream if it detects any copyrighted material. I’ve shared several things to YouTube, though, and only received demonitization strikes (as if I’m actually making any money on these things), so I figured that’d be a better route this year.
After several hours of editing and encoding the 2 hour recital, I was ready to upload to YouTube. a 45-gig source file was no trouble for my municipal fiber connection, and it uploaded in just a few minutes. But then the strikes started rolling in.
First the typical “demonitization” strikes. Oh, no! The 10-20 views this video will ever see won’t earn me any fractions of pennies. But then I was notified that the video would be blocked in some countries. After checking, I discovered that no Russians could see the recital, which seems to be a restriction I can live with. But then came the heavy hammer. 7 of the strikes caused the entire video to be blocked throughout all of YouTube.
70 different copyright holders are fine with a kids’ dance recital being on YouTube and just extracting the pennies in ad revenue it’ll produce. 7 want to break kids (and this daddy’s) hearts. Look, I get that artists and publishers are entitled to compensation for their work. But being able to share home video of a dance recital with your friends shouldn’t require a team of lawyers, fancy audio manipulation, or complicated manual work-arounds.
In the meantime, I have the original file (and some lighter-weight encodes as I produce them) available at https://flessnerfam.com/danceRecital/ Additionally, it seems like YouTube will let me just mute the “offending” portions, but each one requires re-processing the video… which takes several hours. So maybe in a week, it’ll be available…. with 7 randomly scattered silences.
(P.S. I also wanted to share the original Bobby Fischer skit, but good luck ever finding SNL clips on YouTube that aren’t immediately taken down for similar reasons. I guess they figure their DVD sales…or these days Peacock Premium subscriptions…actually draw more revenue than the millions of views some of these sketches would pull on YouTube…. well, they didn’t get any revenue from me)
Update 5/11 – funeral info, visitation details, and a place to share memories & photos can be found at https://www.dahlfuneralhome.com/obituary/arnold-flessnerIt would be a welcome blessing to see any photos you have or to read any stories you share there. Thank you!
Update – 5/10 – Dad went to heaven this afternoon, peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by family. We’ll have details about services hopefully by Wednesday afternoon.
Quick update – as of yesterday afternoon, my dad Arnold Flessner entered into hospice at Allen hospital. He’s been getting treatment for cancer for the last year and a half, but a couple of other conditions and an infection brought him to the hospital a week ago. One treatment after another failed to correct what was going on, and yesterday he was just ready to stop being poked and prodded. In his words – “I’m ready to go to heaven.”
Throughout the last week, he’s been bringing smiles and laughter to everyone coming to the room, from family and friends to the nursing and custodial staff. Stories and memories are shared with everyone. Winks, smiles, and nods communicate when words don’t. We’re sad to see him go, but we also know we’re not saying goodbye, just “see you later”.
We’re requesting only family try to visit, and please drop us a line first. We know Dad was well-loved by many, but our family time is precious right now. Thanks for understanding.
The only other real “sculpture” (at least according to Rebrickable) after the Minifig and Dragon is the Statue of Liberty – so here we go! It’s nearly 3000 parts and almost exclusively sand-green (which… according to Studio and my color-blindness is nearly identical to light bluish gray… sigh)
This guy was surprisingly easy – I had him done in a couple of hours. It helped that each layer was usually very square and symmetrical; I often didn’t need to even do the “hide previous layer” step I used on the dragon. Once again, though, I did miss a couple of pieces, but found and placed them pretty easily. I’m still a little nervous about the 2 1×8 bricks, but beyond that, all I have left in the inventory are 2 1×1 bricks. Not bad!
And now for something completely different! A Lego Dragon, set 3724 from 2001! After a few buildings, a couple attempts at the Death Star and even a vehicle, I thought I’d aim for something a little simpler. Actually, I did a search for 1000+ piece sets from prior to 2005 and there’s not a ton to choose from that aren’t big bins of bricks. There’s a creepy Darth Maul set that is probably built similarly to this guy, but I have zero interest in building him. but this fella looked like a fun distraction, and at 1,538 pieces, fit my search criteria quite well!
This is take 2 in a number of ways. Since I’m putting the massively Complex Death Star on the back-burner, I thought perhaps the intended-for-display Death Star II would be an easier/quicker build. Yikes – was I wrong on a couple of counts! At 3,460 pieces, it’s practically the same count as the UCS Death Star. And while it did not have an overly-detailed interior, it did have angles – tons of them – which stretched my Studio skills to the max.
To avoid finishing all the modular buildings by the end of the month, I was aiming for something different – building the iconic Death Star and making fairly decent progress – when Studio decided to die on me and take away 8 hours worth of building work (I swear, I do save, but apparently not enough). Being too uninterested in repeating steps I had just done, I went back to buildings. But I thought I’d aim for some character and attempt a highly-detailed set that has eluded me through a couple of sales and may simply be forever out of budget: the 2057-piece Fishing Store from 2017.
