For Aveda's 30th birthday party, they invited approximately 7000 of their closest friends to the Northrop Auditorium for a small event called "Congress." For those of you outside the Aveda network,Congress is an educational weekend that is held every 3-5 years that brings together hairdressers from all over the world for inspiration and education.

Van Michael Salons has been participating in Congress for 20 years and released their greatest hits compilation in a 1 hour show. Included in the show was before and after transformations, an on stage photo session, Van and his design team cutting technical shapes while Van gave the crowd his always present comedic comments. The show really went back in time with a revisit of Van showing the crowd how to "satisfy a customer, and keep her coming back again and again" with a sensual scalp massage. Van finished the show by then working with his design team to do an edgy undercut shape on a girl hanging upside down from silk trapeze, and a runway show with choreography suited for the Superbowl halftime show!

When the party was all over, most of the guests probably don't remember much, but they definitely remembered "Van Michael's Greatest Hits!"

Congress Preparation- A different perspective

We arrived Thursday morning to present for Aveda's largest show in years, Congress with over 5000 attendees at the Northrop auditorium on the University of Minnesota's campus. First things first, we had to find a few more models for the Van Michael presentation so we attended model call at The Aveda Institute. We walked into the room and were received by over 200 beautiful women all hoping to be models.

Now the funny part of this is 90% of the women here to be "models" do not want their hair cut, they just want to be on stage. For the life of me I can not figure out why a model would show up to a hair show model call with the intention of keeping their hair the same way it is, but as I stated before over 90% of them do. Perhaps it is just to have the title "model" attached to their name.

We look around the room and announce on stage what we are looking for, which is, of course girls that we can cut. We had already picked one stunningly beautiful woman when she walked in the door, and amazingly enough, she was willing to cut her hair (as it turns out she works for Aveda). We spoke with a few more women as they approached and let us know they were interested in our show and found the rest of our models that we needed for the team. Luckily we had come up earlier in the summer and located most of the girls that we would be using as most women in the room were not inclined to cut their hair.

We began prep late Friday morning at the Institute with 4 of the models receiving color and a couple of cuts to alleviate some of the congestion of models that we will have on Saturday. The day went rather smoothly and beginning around 6:00 on Friday afternoon we began prep for our choreography using a few of the Van Michael staff as stand- ins for some of the model that would not arrive until the next day. It is a good thing we started the choreography early, as it ended up being the most intricate of the entire weekend's show. Rehearsal went for what seemed like hours and we all made a break for the hotel to join the rest of the team that was arriving later in the evening.

The rest of the team arrived without incident and we began prep at 6:30 am on Saturday morning. We had one glitch, one of our models was stuck in airport and would not make it in time for rehearsals and prep.

UUUGHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh. I spent most of Saturday morning scrounging around the University of Minneapolis dorm cafeterias looking for a girl that was pretty, tall, and willing to cut her hair on stage in front of 5000 people and she had to make this decision in 15 minutes. Needless to say this was a little more than I had bargained for. Eventually, thanks to Anna our wonderful, badass, serene, (insert your own positive superlative to get the idea of how great this lady is) team coordinator, we were able to find a replacement model.

We continued blocking and went to rehearse on the mainstage, and felt like we were not given enough time to really get a great rehearsal, but that is how a hair show goes I suppose. We are given and hour and a half rehearsal for a 1 hour show that is supposed to be top quality. It is amazing to me how great these shows look considering the amount of time giving for the rehearsals, I can not imagine how amazing these events would be with just a couple more hours of preparation onstage.

After technical rehearsal it was back to the Institute to finish prep and do more choreography rehearsal. If one thing can be said about our weekend, it is that our models were the absolute best in the show. If they complained about the long hours we were asking of them, we never heard it, and they were a true pleasure to work with. This made our jobs that much easier. We ended the day and made slow migration back to our hotel for the 5:30 AM call time on showday.

My experience at the Van Michael (Before and After) photoshoot.

What an exciting weekend! The team was looking forward to transforming pretty girls with long boring hair and giving them short, salon friendly cuts with a progressive edge.

The cutters: Jeffrey, Daniel, Brandon, and Sevin.
The colorists: David, Natalie and her assistant Justine (Tiny)
The make up artist: Leslie (Miami salon)
The photographer: the one and only... BABAK
Also, the wisdom of Van himself to keep all of his nutballs on the same creative page.

Day 1: Prep went smoothly. The cutting team and color team worked together like a well oiled machine. We concentrated on accentuating the models face shapes. After cutting off a lot of hair, we finished the day on time, around five o'clock. Babak arrived and we were off to celebrate a good day and plan for tomorrow.

Day 2: Photo shoot. Despite the "hurry up and wait" aspect of a shoot, the day rolled along nicely. Working on the set with Babak is a unique experience. Imagine mixing the energy of a case of Red Bull and giving it a Mötley Crüe soundtrack and you have a feel for the day. I would imagine that there were as many pictures taken of Babak and the team as there were of our lovely models :) Babak loves what he does, and it shows. At the end of the day, the results equaled perfection!

What more do you need? Good cuts, good color, make up, and ping pong. (That is a whole other story)

In the end, we all walked away feeling as if we had an enjoyable and productive weekend as a team. My personal highlights include in depth team building with two great colorists, a handful of edgy haircutters, a make-up artist and friend I rarely get to see, and a photographer that could quite possibly need Ritalin.

Did I mention the outstanding hair?? Can't wait until you see the finished product.

Check out the video from the weekend by clicking VM Minneapolis.

I have recently noticed an improvement of our style across the Atlanta area and I applaud everyone for looking their best!