Welcome to Pure America’s Got Talent

As I just mentioned in my previous AGT LA Auditions post, I asked Mina the belly dancer if she could provide her first hand experience going to the LA Auditions of America’s Got Talent. Amazingly, as I was writing that post I received an email from Mina describing her AGT audition experience. Here it is:

I was contacted by one of the casting directors and after sending in pictures and videos of our bellydance group, we were invited to audition by appointment.Our appointment was for 9:30 but there was so much going on that we actually auditioned at 12:30!

They asked us to arrive in costume so we had to wear them for that whole time. There was a line out of the convention center that was as long as a city block. We checked in and were told to wait so we rehearsed our routine several times. Many others were doing it too.

There were lots of people there that were in street clothes so it wasn’t obvious what their talent was. I was surprised to see that people came dressed in very casual clothing. Our instructions specifically to come “dressed to impress.”

We were escorted up the stairs past hundreds of people waiting in lines and being directed every which way. We were told our stage dimensions would be 35 x 35 (which I assume is the estimated size of the area in one of the rooms at the convention center. I peeked in the room that we were going into and saw a 10 x 10 ballroom stage so all of a sudden, we had to pull our dancers in to fit on a stage 1/3 smaller than rehearsed.

There were signs posted on the walls of the hallways saying that when you enter, you will be asked your name, age, your talent and what other things you can do. So we had rehearsed that and walked in right after a fantastic Irish Scottish band which I have a feeling you will be seeing on the show.

It was a banquet room with two tables, one woman in the center who looked important and did all the talking and she had a few people that looked like helpers or standard employees that didn’t have a say in the decision making process. So we introduced ourselves and got into position to start. She put our CD in and it sounded terrible, it was crackly and the sound was very low so I thought they would start it over or fix it but it just kept going, so we danced.

We heard from others that the people watching would watch with a poker face but this woman seemed to be enjoying it, she was nodding her head while we were dancing as if to say “yeah I like this!”. Then she said thank you and we left. Then we walked down the hall and saw the Scottish Irish band and since we had made friends with them while we waited, we asked them why they were standing outside this other room. They said they were asked to audition again for a larger group of producers which we did not get asked that, we aren’t sure what that means though.

But they did keep asking us to do stuff on camera like pretend we were standing in line but told us not to look at the camera. Then another time they asked us to dance as if we were warming up, and they asked us to pretend like we were registering (which we had done 2 hours before) so they told us to walk to the table on cue in a group and I pretended to be filling out the application while they filmed it. I found it really awkward to “act” on their cues…it was totally unnatural for me. I now have a new appreciation for acting, it’s HARD!

I should add that we were allowed to bring our support people into the audition with us, even though they said we weren’t allowed originally. But before being allowed in the room, they had to sign release forms.

Thanks John!

Mina
MinaBellydancer.com

Thanks Mina and I hope that we’ll see you on the show and that everyone will benefit from your experience. Anyone else want to share their experience from the LA Auditions of AGT?

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