Hot on the heels of their 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Junior Dancers Showcase, Esprit were back on stage last week to deliver a unique show like nothing they’ve ever done before in Final Fantasy 14. The event was hosted at the troupe’s new Free Company house on April 1, so that should give you a clue as to what kind of content they delivered.Each number was geared toward comedy for this special April Fool's performance, utilising songs we all know and love or have been forced to commit to memory against our will because they went viral at some point. Every song performance included top-tier costume design and perfectly choreographed routines, as expected with Esprit.Esprit's Jesse Locklear explained that the team gets to test the water with smaller shows now that they have their own venue, "When we were first discussing the idea of doing semi-frequent, smaller shows at our venue, I realized that April 1st fell on a Saturday this year, and that would be a perfect time for us to test out smaller venue shows, give people a chance to do goofy songs and pull a fun little April Fools prank without any malice in it And so, the Totally Normal April Show was born."I said to our group when we were getting ready for this show that we had so much fun writing our songs that nobody could've shown up, and we would've still had a blast being goofy with each other. Not only that, but it was such low pressure because every song was a joke, so it didn't super matter if you missed a macro; in a lot of cases, it just looked funnier."One number had the troupe dressed as Waluigi dancing and singing along to ‘Waafrica’, a parody of Toto’s Africa, while another saw the team dressed as Shinji, Rei, and Asuka from Evangelion. A hilarious rendition of All Star by Smash Mouth even had the team dressed as Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey, before a flood of Shreks drowned the stage with their dance moves, all wearing the Leafmean headpiece to make themselves look sufficiently ogre-like.
Another song had a dancer dressed to the nines in a smart suit come on stage before the unmistakable first notes of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley started playing. The dancer made the extra effort to time their costume changes in sync with the original music v🍬ideo, seeing them don a black outfit with a long brown coat, a matching blue getup, and a black jacket outfit.
My favourite performance of the evening had Esprit macroing out Steamed Hams from The Simpsons. It was perfectly presented and incredibly funny, b🎀ut it was especially interesting to see the troupe doing a more acting-heavy skit, though it still involved a few expected dance moves. I’d love to see them venture into more acting-dance hybrid performances to mix in with their dance shows as it worked so well.
"Jesse begged me not to do it, actually," Esprit's Xanthe Almondbright tells me about the Steamed Hams skit. When asked if the troupe would consider more acting-dancing combos in future, Xanthe explains, "I think the best application of t😼hat for our purposes would be numbers from musicals. I've had my sights set on acting performances in-game ♑for a while, and that's the closest you can come within Esprit outside of a gimmick show like this."
"I had concerns that our audience wouldn't get it," Jesse adds. "That they wouldn't appreciate something that doesn't have music, or that people would not think the 'song' had started and would therefore not be paying attention. I was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. While Esprit will first and foremost always be a dance troupe, I think the idea of combinin🌼g the two in the future could be really fun. Especially the use of furniture and props, now that we have access to our own venue.
A close runner-up to my favourite of the evening was the Konbini Store Song by Brief & Tru𝓰nks (also known as the Convenience Store song), which s𝐆hot into virality as a meme in the late ‘00s. Esprit also performed Vending Machine of Love by The Stupendium and had all the dancers dressed in colourful armour sets to represent different soda cans. It’s quirky little ideas like this that make their performances so good.
I’m al꧃ways enamoured with the attention to detail and presentation of Esprit’s shows, so if you haven’t checked out one of their performances before, make sure you add it to your Warrior of Light’s bucket list! You can stay up to date with Esprit by or .
