Author: Tonya

Posted on

Male Ballerinas, Bad Non-Brazil-Rooting Ballroom Dancers, and Social Issues at the ABT

My pics from the Manhattan DanceSport Championships are now up on the photo page. It was a lot of fun — I always like this comp because, being in Brooklyn Heights, it’s in an area easily accessible by public transportation and near courthouse-area parks and Montague Street eateries, and, since it’s local, I end up knowing lots of people and reconnecting with old dance friends. Expectedly, Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova won the Standard, Tony Dovolani and Elena Grinenko the American Rhythm, and one of my favorite couples — Maxim Kozhevnikov and Yulia Zagorouitchenko won the Latin (current US champs Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruychkova didn’t compete for some reason; I didn’t see the American Smooth comp). The only grumble I had was, on Saturday the 3rd, after finishing watching my friend compete in Pro/Am Standard, I ran to the hotel bar to catch the second half of the World Cup game only to see, horribly, Brazil lose. And all of the crazed Standard dancers watching with me cheered wildly when France won??? Ugh, evil Standard people! That never would have been the case had the Latin comps been underway at the time! Actually, it well could have been the same. Almost all ballroom dancers, Standard and Latin both, are European and likely root for European teams. Plus, I think I am the only person who actually takes an interest in the culture from which these dances emerge. . .

Anyway, backtracking a bit, I went to the ballet (ABT) on Friday night to see Marcelo! and Julie perfom Swan Lake. The ballet is not one of my favorites, but Marcelo! is. This year marks Julie’s, I think 20th anniversary with the company, and during curtain call, Marcelo! did a Nureyev and bowed down to her, and on one knee, took her hand and dramatically kissed it:):):) Of course Fonteyn scolded the boy Rudik, telling him it made her feel like an old lady. Julie seems too sweetly down-to-earth to say the same though. Earlier, when Marcelo! came out alone, someone tossed a bouquet onstage, and he caught it mid-air with one hand, just like a football (American football of course). Gia Kourlas of TONY said of Julio, after removing his ballet shoes and placing them atop Giselle’s grave during his last ever performance of that ballet a week ago, “Bocca may not be a ballerina but he certainly knows how to act like one.” Well, Julio was Marcelo!’s little-boy role model so… Although I think Marcelo!’s a much more interesting ballerina — a big, brawny, 20-foot-high leaping, football-catching, leading-lady-worshipping one! Marcelo!’s inner ballerina rocks!!

On a more serious note, included in the ABT’s Playbill this month was a survey form that they asked be filled out and deposited in a box in the opera house or mailed in. The survey consisted of interesting questions such as which are your favorite full-length ballets and what do you like about them, and who are your favorite choreographers, both contemporary and classical, and why. It made me think, and I started to answer. Then, at the bottom of the form, it asked for the survey-taker’s salary. It listed many ranges, but extremely specific ones, starting from ‘under $50,000’ and going up in less than $10,000 increments, ending at ‘above $175,000’. I found this interesting. I’ve definitely seen surveys asking for the person’s general income-level, but in $50,000 increments, so the testers basically wanted to know who their demographic was. But this form was too specific for that, they seemed to want to know your exact salary, as if the degree to which they intended to take into account my choice of ballets and choreographers was based on what level of patronage I could give them. First, I think that’s rude to be so obvious, and second, don’t they know that the wealthiest people in New York are living off of trust funds and don’t even have salaries? They would have been better served asking what’s in people’s bank accounts or investment portfolios. I don’t even really like most of the ballets they put on; I come for the dancers. They nicely offered first-time subscribers discounted orchestra tickets, so I’ve been sitting either in the orchestra, for performances that are either part of my subscription plan or for matinees which are less expensive, otherwise in the balcony. Friday night was almost sold out, and they only had family circle tickets left, so I sat up there. And I realized that, unless you’re in the first couple of rows in the orchestra, you can see almost the same from the family circle as you can from anywhere else. I also encountered lots of interesting people up there — there were several giggly teenaged girls who were obviously dance students and would burst out laughing whenever the dancers did something impossibly great. I honestly felt like I learned something just listening to them. Next to me was a large, burly construction-worker-type who resembled Herb Ritts’ Vladimir without his makeup on, sitting, interestingly, alone, and, judging by his howls during the curtain call, was a fellow Marcelo! fan. And behind me were several elderly couples watching with mesmerized looks on their faces, as well as a young mother trying to explain to her two little daughters the beauty of the ballet. I honestly found family circle patrons a much more interesting bunch than the people who sit in orchestra and, although I understand a large ballet company’s need for financial support, family circle patrons’ interests should not be taken lightly! Anyway, whatever bad taste ABT’s management left in my mouth, happily, my fellow family-circle spectators and Marcelo! cured 🙂

Posted on

Dead Weight, Lightweight, and Boxing, Bullfighting Ballroom Dancers

“Dead weight. Dead weight. Dead weeiighttt,” Pasha kept moaning while shaking his head all throughout my lesson last week. Ugh. Could I feel fatter? I guess when we do this far-more-complicated-than-it-looks lift / dip / spin thingy that I stole from my favorite Latin diva, Karina Smirnoff, I’m supposed to hold myself up by pushing my pelvis as far into Pasha’s groin as possible. Otherwise, I’m “Dead Weighttt” ie: too much for him to hold up. It just feels weird and, like, violative of boundaries dare I say, since I’m crushing my bony crotch as far as possible into his. I guess real dancers get over the boundary thing fast. But I still don’t completely understand when guys tell me to hold myself up. I know I have to strengthen my body during a lift and hold my position as much as I can, so I’m not dragging him down, but how much can you hold yourself up while suspended in mid air? And what about during a dip when you’re supposed to be “dipping” at least part of your body downward?

Then, while choreographing a rag doll into our routine (I couldn’t find a good link to this, but it’s the trick all the dancers are doing in the party scene at the beginning of “Dirty Dancing” that so seduces Jennifer Grey), Luis kept telling me to put my body weight completely into his hands so he could control me, and the trick, better. I kept trying but I couldn’t seem to do what he wanted, and he kept saying he knew I wasn’t as lightweight as I felt and that I must not be trusting him with my whole weight. Ugh! I totally don’t get it — am I too heavy and not working hard enough to hold my own, or am I not heavy enough indicating distrust?? Are all male partners just different or am I nuts??!

Anyway, speaking of Luis, tomorrow night, he and Anya will be teaching the salsa lesson at Midsummer Night Swing! Be there!

And, this weekend is the super mad fun Manhattan Dancesport Championships at the Marriott in Brooklyn Heights. This is the most prestigious dancesport competition in the mid-Atlantic region and all of the top U.S. couples compete at it (so, look for Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruyschkova in Latin, and Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova in Standard). The event begins Thursday with pro/am competitions (when students compete with their teachers), and continues through Sunday evening. Saturday and Sunday nights will be the most fun to watch since they are the professional comps. Saturday is pro Latin (dancers compete in: cha cha, samba, rhumba, paso doble, and jive), and will be followed by an exhibition by the lovely and amazing Sharon Savoy (who, with her old partner, David Savoy, has performed at the Olympics and was a driving force behind making Dancesport an official Olympic sport). Sunday night are the comps in pro American Rhythm (American-style cha cha and rhumba, bolero, swing, and mambo) and Standard (waltz, foxtrot, viennese waltz, tango, and quickstep), and is to be followed by a cabaret show choreographed by Las Vegas choreographer Wendy Johnson, who I’m told really knows how to create a spectacle. These competitions are all a lot of fun and this is one of the best: the crowd can get so raucous rooting for their favorites, the dance floor can start to resemble a boxing match (except the ‘boxers’ are wearing beautiful ballgowns and lovely smiles:)). I will be excited to see the Latin because, ever since Blackpool, I can’t seem to get the paso doble music out of my mind — it’s so dramatic! And you don’t exactly hear it often on the radio… This comp is a perfect way for people to be introduced to the world of Dancesport. It’s a bit pricey — evening tkts are $50, but it’s worth it because the fun lasts for at least six hours (far longer than a Broadway show!) and it’s for a good cause — the dancers’ awards; and ballroom dancers don’t make a lot of money, so they need those prizes…

Lastly, watching Julio Thursday night at the ABT was unforgetable. He will be missed,to make a massive understatement. My pictures are up. I was in the nosebleed section but you can still see the basic action. Enjoy!

Posted on

"Love is . . . when someone is doing something great and you want to let out your feelings"

The above is a quote from Sarah, a second-grader at Juan Pablo Duarte Elementary School in Washington Heights. It was included with a list of other quotes by her fellow students describing what love is to them in the absolutely COOLEST wedding invitation I have ever received. A good friend from writing class, Melinda, the best yet-to-be-published novelist I know, is getting married and her invitation consisted of a series of coaster-sized squares each containing different wedding info such as how she and Paulo met, maps of the venue, reasons why they chose to have a pirate-themed wedding (which I found unbelievably interesting), thought behind the unique design of their rings, and on one square is this very sweet list of quotes from 2nd graders in the school where Melinda recently taught, defining love. Whilst getting her MFA at the New School, Melinda taught for this amazing program called The Community Word Project, a non-profit organization akin to Pierre Dulaine‘s American Ballroom Theater (featured in films Take the Lead and Mad Hot Ballroom), but which teaches children in low-income NYC schools to express and explore themselves and relate to each other not through dance but poetry. Click here for a great article about her class in El Diario newspaper that she translated into English.

Anyway, that quote stood out to me when I read it last night because: 1) as a perpetually single amateur dancer and massive dance fan I sometimes think of such terms in the sense of seeing a brilliant performance that makes me want to cry; and 2) in particular, tomorrow night is going to be long-time principal dancer Julio Bocca‘s last performance with the company that has been his home for 20 years, ABT. At only 39, Bocca, who began dance lessons about the same time he learned to walk, became a principal (to non-balletomanes, that means absolute highest level-status attainable) with the most prestigious company in the world (okay, arguably :)) while a mere teenager. Thus, a man, not even 40, who’s devoted his entire life to this art, is retired as of this Friday. He’s explained in the many many interviews he’s given over the past couple months that he’s tired, wants to relax, sail in the ocean, see things, stay up late, eat, drink, not have a nervous breakdown after a vacation trying to shape up for the upcoming season, live like a normal person. He even told Playbill he’s envious of the people he sees sitting outside at Lincoln Center plaza soaking up sun and drinking wine in the afternoon… which I find amusing since I’m one such lazy-ass he’s ‘envious’ of! But it makes you realize just how hard of a life a dancer lives and how much they give up for their way-too-short careers. Even for me, when the orthopedist insists I take a little break, I’m initially upset then before long realize how nice it is to have wine every night with dinner, catch up on movies, books, and friends’ lives over five-course and several-hour-long meals eating whatever I please (beany bloating Mexican food, salty dehydrating Greek caviar spread and anchovies, etc. etc.). I can’t imagine what not only a professional, but one of the greatest in the world must have given up to devote himself so wholly to this life that he’s achieved the status he has. My sedentary appellate law job is cheesecake in comparison… But like most retiring dancers, he’s hardly leaving dance. He plans to perform one more year with his company in Argentina (which performs, in addition to ballet, tango, and what is one of the most beautiful of all dance forms — balletic tango), then presumably will choreograph and serve as its artistic director. And there’s even speculation he may one day lead the ABT. So, sad as his multitude of fans are — and I’m sure there will be a cacophany of sobs tomorrow night in the Met — it’s not like we won’t be seeing his work, in other forms, again and again. Choreographer and artistic director seem like the consummate post-dance-career careers — he can use his mass of creative skills he’s accumulated throughout the years without now sacrificing wine and food and sun and sailing and all that other good stuff life has to offer. So, there, it is a celebration, though a damn sad one.

Back to the Juan Pablo Duarte second-graders’ Word Community Project for a few more truly wonderful little quotes about love:

“Love is like you are in the park, happy with the sun and with yourself.” Madeline

“Love is giving something to each person and love is when you love the person but not like a boyfriend because that’s nasty, yo.” Leslie

“Love is me in ballet with a little pink tutu on and my hair picked up with bobby pins.” Kayla

“Love is me and my brother holding hands, looking at the bright blue sky with a shooting star.” Luismil

“El amor es muy caliente como la luz del cielo, y los corazones se despiertan a la luz del mar” (“Love is hot like the sky’s light, and hearts wake up in the light of the sea” — damn, I cannot write like this at my age; she is 7). Arlene

“Love is me and the Community Word Project practicing our poem with volume, rhythm, and gesture.” Ashley

And my personal favorite:

“Love is being with cute boys and presents and candy hearts and mostly chocolate. Love is riding a bike down the hill and you crash into a cute boy who likes you and cares about you and doesn’t want you to get hurt.” Kiyana

Posted on

World Premier Ballet, Affordable Art, and Braassill!!!…

Technorati Profile

Fun NY weekend ahead! Tonight is a world premier ballet at the New York City Ballet (the last premier of this season’s Diamond Project of new ballets by contemporary choreographers). (I’m going to have SO much more free time when the NYCB and ABT seasons are both over in mid-July…)

Tomorrow is The Affordable Art Fair in Chelsea, which I’ve never been to, but looks exciting. Art priced between $100 and $5000 is being sold and there are going to be lectures on how poor people (like me!) can start their collections. My favorite gallery, DFN Gallery, is going to have a booth, and, according to their email, is going to be selling work by one of my favorites who regularly exhibits there, Dan Witz. I see Witz as someone who kind of turns Thomas Kincade (the “artist of light” with his cheesy nostalgia for quaint cottages, horse-drawn carriages and tourist landmarks) on his head. Witz uses light in his paintings (which are amazingly photo-like) to evoke shelter and community in urban settings. In one of my favorites of his, the light radiates out from the inside of a Brooklyn bodega on an otherwise desolate streetcorner late at night, signifying that inside is a place of warmth, safety, familiarity, and community. I have no idea how much any of his work is going for, but I took a post-card sized copy of that painting on the back of the press release from the gallery, framed it, and hung it in my apartment. So, thus far that is my idea of affordable art — extremely affordable seeing as how it’s free!

And Sunday, Father’s Day though it is, I’ve managed to get some friends together to go to a Brazilian restaurant to watch the game. Not exactly the Brazilian place I had in mind — which was in Astoria, where I used to live, and I figured out of the way enough that it would only attract locals and not tourists — but some of my friends are coming from Brooklyn, so it’s too much to ask them to go all the way up to Queens. So, we’re going to one of the Sushi Samba places in the Flatiron District. I know absolutely nothing of soccer, but because studying dance made me fall so in love with Samba, I’ve became intrigued by all things Brazilian. So, me and my crazy friends who humor me, are going to root for Brazil! Since I know nothing about the game, I figured I’d go buy that new book The Thinking Fan’s Guide. It was not very well received in Time Out New York, but that reviewer did give a thumbs up to the guy who wrote the piece on Brazil, as well as to Nick Hornby, my favorite author of lad lit, bloke lit, whatever they call it in England (actually, it’s really chick lit since it garners almost an all-female audience…). Hopefully by Sunday I’ll have some clue as to what I’m seeing…

Posted on

If It Takes Five Minutes to Make A Sexy Pose…

it’s not dancing, it’s modeling! Luis discarded all of the choreography he’d done so far, which was fine since I was having a ridiculously hard time remembering the small between-tricks steps, and decided to construct a series of sexy poses that I’m to hit on each of three beats at the start of the song (btw, don’t ever dance to Gloria Estefan — it sounds fun until you start actually to try to keep the beat and then realize how flipping fast it is!). We ended up spending most of the lesson on this since I was having such difficulty striking the perfect pose (especially on the exact beat), and he was being a perfectionist rearranging my hair (and teaching me how to flip it so it’d land just so), pulling back on my shoulders and pushing my chest out (don’t think I’ll ever stop having posture problems), adjusting pelvis, hips, arms, wrists, fingers, knees, toes, etc. etc. etc. ETC. to put me in the perfect state of sexiness (I LOVE working with a gay man!!). So, now I think I have the poses right, but it takes so long for me to strike it perfectly when I’m trying to move at lightning speed, and then it’s so hard to make sure I get the right connection with him so I don’t lose my balance and make him throw his back out catching me. We didn’t work on the overhead lifts since he was sore from moving over the weekend, but I think I am ready when he is. I think. I am trusting him more — we worked on this one trick where I fall forward (holding his hands of course) and before I hit the ground, he whips me up and turns me over and I slide up in a body roll. I know he’s strong and I’m not going to fall, but it’s one thing to know that in your brain and another to tell it to your body in the midst of the trick…

My former West Coast Swing partner, Mark, informed me that everyone in the WCS (how the dance is abbreviated in the “industry”) community is very excited about Benji Schwimmer making it to the finals on So You Think You Can Dance with his partner Heidi, who teaches at one of Mark’s studios. He said the judges seemed a bit confused about what exactly WCS was, but were very impressed, especially with Heidi. I saw a repeat of the show and remember seeing her in Blackpool do a demonstration on WCS versus Jive. She is truly an awesome dancer! I don’t watch a lot of TV because I am usually at either some studio or opera house at night (and tonight is Vladimir night at the Met!!!), but my WCS friends must definitely keep me posted on this! WCS officially on the dance map, yay!

I went to the New York City Ballet last night to see one of the new ballets they are putting on as part of their spring season’s Diamond Project, where they show brand new ballets by contemporary choreographers — one of the reasons I like that company — they perform a combination of classics and contemporary work, so you get a mix. This one was by a Russian choreographer, Alexi Ratmansky, called The Russian Seasons, and was very interesting — dramatic and humorous by turns, with plain but gorgeously-flowing costumes. I’ve seen all of the new ones except for two, and my favorite has been Evenfall, sweetly Swan Lake-like, by their resident choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon, who I think is a genius and have liked practically everything I’ve seen him do.

And, Lincoln Center is now gearing up for Midsummer Night’s Swing outside in the plaza! Luis and his partner, Anya, will be performing and teaching salsa on June 28th!

Posted on

What Is the Point of Building a World Trade Center Memorial…

if it, along with all of lower Manhattan, San Francisco, and about three-quarters of Florida in this country alone, are soon going to be underwater, if Greenland and western Antartica continue to melt at their current rate? A favorite dance blogger of mine first recommended this film, then a fellow alum, director Davis Guggenheim, sent around a heartfelt email discussing his motivations for making it, and I just had to go. I had no idea how urgent the threat of global warming was until I saw An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. Al Gore presents the issue in a very clear way with lots of pictorials and graphics, and even a little humor, to make it interesting. Everyone should see it regardless of political affiliation. So compelling — really, terrorism is far from the only thing we have to fear…

I just finished transferring to video the tape I made on my camcorder last Monday of Luis and me dancing the choreography he’s done so far for our routine. Video recorders are an absolute must-have for dance students wishing to perform. Professional dancers can easily remember their choreography, but for a beginner, there is no other way to memorize than to videotape it. I tried writing it all down with my first teacher, Kelvin, and, when I showed him my notebook, he burst out laughing, “these are damn lawyer notes; I have no idea what they mean!” I had no dance vocabulary and just described in excruciating, and hence meaningless, detail every single movement. So found out the hard way writing is absolutely no use to a dancer, who is by trade visually- not verbally-oriented. A camcorder is the only way to go. And even at that it’s so hard for me to memorize. I wish so much I’d never quit dance as a child!!!!!

I normally don’t see the same ballet twice during the same season, but Friday I saw ABT‘s Cinderella again to see David Hallberg dance the role of Prince Charming, so I could compare him to his dressing-room roommate, Marcelo! (whose name I must follow with an !) My favorites are Jose, Alessandra, and Marcelo!, and I normally try to get tickets when one of them is performing, but David‘s contributions to my favorite dancer blog made me interested in seeing him too. And I’m very glad I did: he made a very dashing prince — and it’s interesting to see two different dancers interpret the same role. David‘s slightly smaller so kind of gets around the stage more quickly and does really amazing jumps, and his lifts with Gillian looked completely effortless. But Marcelo! is so big and it’s so romantic to see him envelope little Julie in his arms… And he has such a wonderful appreciation for women (as he expresses in many a good interview) — it really shows in his beautiful partnering 🙂
Tony’s are on, gotta go…

Posted on

Cadbury-Induced Tummy Pudge

After my two lessons this week I now realize how horrendously out of practice I am. Two weeks away from the studio for a beginning dancer is a serious recipe for failure. Before doing any lifts, I warned Pasha that all the Cadbury bars and black pudding I’d consumed in Blackpool had put serious pounds on me and when he frowned I pointed to my stomach, which has now developed a round little mass of pudge. Pasha is Russian (obviously) and thus given to brutal honesty, and he basically responded, oh that, that’s always been there… yes, everything is the same. Argh! I knew I didn’t have a completely flat stomach, but didn’t know it was that obvious… am beginning to think your dance partner knows your body better than anyone, including boyfriend… I also told Pasha about my toe, he asked if it was serious, I said no, just another stupid injury requiring yet more ice and Advil, and he shrugged his shoulders and said, we all live in pain; if it’s not falling off or cancer, you ignore it. Okay, am slowly learning the dancer way of life…

I’m really nervous about the upcoming performance though, because I seem to have forgotten: where my center is, how to spot, how to move my hips properly (without disconnecting them from my upper back and jutting them out too much) , can’t do a simple spin without wobbling all over myself . . . everything. And, I need to cancel my lesson next Wednesday with the immensely popular and hence impossible to re-book Pasha because I must go to ABT. Vladimir Malakhov is performing for practically the only time this season, and as I think he’s one of the two greatest male dancers in the world right now (the other being Jose Carreno, who is performing a splendid many times with ABT!), I must not miss it. I’ll just have to kill myself with ballet classes until October because, though it’s not Latin, ballet is ESSENTIAL to training in any kind of dance.

Posted on

Big Fat Ugly Toe

Embarrasingly, I broke down and went to the podiatrist yesterday for stupid toe pain and swelling. Two weeks ago when I was in the studio with Pasha I suddenly felt this horrible surge of pain surge through my right big toe and, after the severe pain went away, it kept hurting. I thought I may have a splinter from the hardwood floor, but when I got home I looked and looked and couldn’t find anything in my toe or shoe. It continued to hurt off an on all the way through Blackpool. So the doctor took an x-ray and verified there’s no splinter or glass. But what I do have is a bone spur, an inflammation surrounding the bone, caused by pressing down too hard on the bone. So, how am I supposed to point or go up on high releve, onto the tips of my toes??? Doc says I’ll need to ice it regularly and take Ibuprofin when pain gets bad, and possible Cortizone injections may be in my future.

So, I have only been dancing two years now and this is my injury list thus far: tendonitis in both hips, bursitis in both hips, partially torn meniscus in right knee, strained left adductor muscle, partially torn ligament in left wrist, tendonitis in right thumb (latter two are due, I kid not, to guys in class holding me too hard — and my hand surgeon made me promise I would either learn to be more assertive and tell my classmates not to manhandle me so roughly or else I’d have to stop with the group classes and only take private lessons with pros), and now this bone spur in my big toe. I don’t know how professional dancers do it. I only dance a couple of hours a day!

Yesterday on my way home, I ran into an old friend from my former studio, Brittania, who told me she’s competing for the first time with her teacher at the upcoming Manhattan Dancesport Championships, which brightened my day because I was starting to get depressed from Blackpool being over and getting back into my daily grind, when she reminded me of this fabulous competition coming up over 4th of July weekend. This was one of the first I attended and is what made me really fall in love with the idea of competing. All of the best pro dancers in the country are there, as it’s the most prestigious comp in the mid-Atlantic region. It’s at the Marriott in Brooklyn Heights (despite the competiton’s name…) and much more will be posted closer in time!

While talking with Brittania, I saw Doug Liman (director of Swingers, Go, and Bourne Identity movies), which excited me because, before dance overtook my life and I was a big movie-goer, I used to have a crush on him — partly because he went to my alma mater and his father was a big bleeding-heart do-gooder attorney. My friends make fun of me because I have been known to practically bump right into, without recognizing, people like Gwynneth Paltrow and Wesley Snipes (Gwynneth was incognito and my friend only recognized her by her sunglasses, which she saw her wearing in Vogue, but Wesley was actually filming and thus surrounded by cameras and crew!), but then I’ll recognize a behind-the-scenes director walking down the street, or a ballet dancer like Herman Cornejo on the subway…

Posted on

Blackpool Pics Up!

I’ve now posted many of my pictures from Blackpool on the photo page. I’m a Latin girl, so most of them are of the Latin comps. Plus, the Brits take their Standard VERY seriously and I couldn’t find a good, ground floor seat for basically any part of the pro Standard comp, so my photos of Standard are from the balcony. Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot to set my camera to PC mode for the first day, so my pictures from the beginning of the festival are going to have to be Photoshopped down in size and may take a while to post — those photos were mainly of the team match. Each of the four teams — Italy, Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. preceded their dancing with these cheesy little playletts. Italy did a futuristic vignette, I forgot what Japan did, and the U.K. had the team ride out onto the dance floor in a double-decker bus driven by a drunk driver in his underpants. Apparently, there must have been something in the tabloids recently about a drunk bus driver in his underwear because the crowd went wild over this. And we did this corny but fun Disneyland theme where all of the dancers dressed as various Disney characters. Andrei Gavriline played Donald Duck. And then the team captains played George Bush and Dick Cheney; once Cheney saw Donald he whipped out a rifle and began chasing him around stage, and of course when he took a shot he missed Andrei and got the president. So that’s what is missing from my first day pics — the U.S. national Latin champion waddling around stage in a giant duck costume.

So, highlights from the last day were definitely the Underdogs of Standard, and hence my favorites since I am an underdog-rooting sort of person: the U.S. couple Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed. Anna wore this very sweet green dress with a black cape and matching hat. It was truly original, very 1920s and very sweet. She was the queen of class in that dress! They’re such a charismatic couple to me — I know nothing about Standard so can’t judge anyone’s actual dancing, but I just can’t take my eyes off them when they are on the floor. They made it to the semi-finals. And Jonathan and Katusha from the U.S. (U.S. national Standard champs), placed third. Katusha wore two beautiful gowns — a gorgeous white one for the first several rounds, and a sleek black for the finals. (How expensive it must be to be a female Standard dancer — yikes!) I was somewhat disappointed because my second favorite Standard dance is Viennese waltz and they didn’t have it in this competition — the dancers competed only in the other four. Why is that — why no Viennese waltz in Blackpool??? My second favorite is Quickstep and it was worth it to watch the whole comp just for that — the way the big beautiful ballgowns bounce around the floor is such an amazing sight. Timonthy Hawkins and Joanna Bolton from the U.K, in my opinion, have the best Quickstep (they placed 2nd overall, but I think 1st in Quickstep) and they do this really fun step that I think he called a slide, which is a kind of combination jump and skid that precedes a run. It looks like so much fun, but so hard because you both have to jump the same distance and at exactly the same time and you’re in such a close embrace, you really have to move as one or you’re going to go down. And he always gets this excited English schoolboy look on his face when he does that step — so cute!

Also on the last day was the Latin formation team competition, which one of the two Chinese teams won. They did a lot of lifts and complicated tricks, which I know from being on a swing team myself, even just doing easy things is hard when you have to have everyone moving in exactly the same way at precisely the same time — particularly hard for partner-dancing — for it to look decent. Still, as amazing as such precision was, this competition didn’t do much for me. I think I’d seen so much incredible Latin body movement to be impressed with people just dancing in unison. And I was getting really tired toward the end. I don’t think I could have walked into that Winter Garden one more day!

My flight out of Manchester was delayed on Saturday, and I didn’t get in until Saturday evening. And then I had a ticket to the ABT, which of course I couldn’t miss because Marcelo was dancing! Even being half asleep from basically not sleeping for 8 days and then being jet-lagged on top of it, I loved their new version of Cinderella. It was great fun — Erica Cornejo was a riot as the dorky stepsister. She had a funny part to begin with, but she took it to the extreme and it was really her show. It’s seriously worth it to see this ballet if just for her! And Carmen Corella was the other, wannabe seductress but sweetly goofy stepsister. She was very good too. I think she’s really so beautiful. Her face is so interesting and she has the ideal female dancer body. And of course Marcelo is the perfect prince 🙂 The ABT spoiled first-time subscribers by letting us sit in the orchestra for relatively cheap — so I felt like they were all dancing right in front of me!

Anyway, tonight I have my lesson with Luis, and am so tired. And, I am just now realizing I didn’t think at all about overcoming my fears of doing overhead lifts during Blackpool, like I was supposed to have done. Ugh. Not that we’re going to be doing any such thing right now though because, on top of not having stretched for over a week (on my first day in Blackpool, I tried to use the top of the dresser in the B&B as a barre and almost broke it — oops!), I have definitely definitely gained from all of those English breakfasts and Cadbury bars!

Posted on

Greetings From Coney Island, U.K. II

Broke down and exchanged $40 more for pounds, so I have more money to spend at the trendy little internet cafe, which also serves delectable mochas, coincidentally. I have lots more time to kill as well since the last comp of the festival — the Pro Standard — doesn’t begin until 4 p.m. and I’ve thoroughly roamed — and bought out — all of the festival merchandise stands.

Last night was the pro Invitational Exhibitions comp, which, strangely, wasn’t all that impressive to me. Maybe it’s because it was one of the two events (together with the pro Latin) that I’d been looking forward to. It’s only invitational, so the Blackpool dance committee has to invite the couples, and they only invited 7, and, for some reason, everyone limits their performance piece to about 3 minutes, so the event was over practically before it even began. Definitely Hanna Karttunen and Victor DaSilva from South Africa, who won, were spectacular with their lifts and gravity-defying tricks (they do this one where he lies on his back and rests his body weight on his forearms and holds her body in a lift with his feet), but I don’t know — maybe I’ve seen too much ballet, where the dancers perform just as, if not more, physically demanding pieces and go on for longer. And I think with these exhibitions, they’re more about theatrical, death-defying tricks preceded by drum rolls than about artistry and beauty and with a story-line, like ballet. Maybe I’m just too much of a ballet head to have a lot of appreciation — which is a shame for me since this is the kind of ballroom dancing I most want to do. Oh well, I can seek to be original, right, and do ballroom/ballet — if Pasha and Luis will let me…

Very excited today though because I found a quaint cobble-stoned street with a few benches in the sun, and, because it’s my first day here that it’s been ‘nice’ — meaning not 40 degrees below, I sat outside. A local guy passing by said to me, ‘Dancing are ye?’ Even though I spent a semester in London as an undergraduate, I don’t seem to be able to understand the accents here very well, so I had to ask him to repeat himself. When I finally got it, I smiled and shook my head no. But it made me feel really good because I feel like I’ve gained a good 20 pounds here — eating greasy bacon, sausage, fried eggs, and baked beans every morning at my B&B (using as my excuse that it’d be too rude to the landlady to not finish my plate!), and I’ve developed the nasty but delicious habit of whenever I travel to Europe, sampling every single kind of chocolate that we don’t have in N.Y. — a magnificient way to ‘experience another culture’!! Anyway, after the guy passed by, the proprietor of a flower shop across the street called out to me, ‘You do look like a dancer. Lemme guess, Polish, right?’ I said no, American, laughing. He said, ‘Oh, oh, sorry,’ like he’d just made a huge blunder. It’s so weird to me though, because every time I come to Europe, I have this weird experience of people either asking me really slowly if I can speak English (as a young guy here did trying to sell his festival ticket to me on my first night), or people just start speaking Russian, or Spanish, to me. I don’t know how I could look both Eastern European and Spanish, but clearly (and cooly), I must not look American!

Back to dance… So, I have new favorites here — Latin semi-finalist Yulia Zagoruychenko, whom Mika knows and introduced me to and is very sweet in addition to being, I think, the greatest Samba dancer here. She and Maxim performed their routine from Ohio again during one of the lectures / demonstrations the top coaches and dancers give during the first two days of the festival. It’s called the Congress. This year, Len Goodman, judge of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ in the US and ‘Stricly Come Dancing’ in the UK gave one on tango (interspersed, I might add, with many dirty British-style, Benny Goodman-esque jokes — who know he had this personality?!). Also, the American team coaches gave one on what it’s like to teach in the world’s fast-food capital where teachers are expected to impart the basics of every extant ballroom dance in a single one-hour lesson (mainly geared toward Eastern Europeans considering emigrating but also funny for everyone); Latin’s top dancers Carmen and Bryan Watson gave a very funny one on how not to try to play-act actually being a bull and matodor during Paso but just dancing the dance; America’s top standard couple, Katusha and Jonathan (whom I’ve decided looks like Ralph Fiennes) gave a very polite one on the Viennese Waltz; legendary dancer and now coach Shirley Ballas gave one on the similarities and differences between Latin and Ballroom — specifically tango versus Paso, and foxtrot versus samba (I hadn’t realized how many similarities there actually were…), and the Congress ended with the most celebrated Latin couple in the world, Donnie Burns and Gaynor Fairweather, now nearly 50 though Gaynor honestly looks in her late 20s — who gave a somewhat tear-jerking but funny lecture on what Blackpool, now celebrating its 80th birthday, has meant to them over the many years they competed — a perfect lecture for a first-time Blackpool-goer. There were many more lectures, but too many for me to mention here — but for a newcomer to Blackpool, the pre-competition lectures were essential to the dance festival experience.

And my other new favorite is Sergei Surkov, a Latin dancer from Poland who placed 7th overall with his partner. I had the fortune of seeing him dance up very close, as he did both his early-round cha cha and rhumba right in the corner where I was sitting. He’s absolutely gorgeous — looks a lot like Keanu Reeves — and he moves incredibly well and makes amazing lines. I know Mika would think I’m silly for not thinking of these dancers more as couples, but I don’t yet. I still see them individually, the way I do most ballet dancers. Maybe that will change as I grow more experienced in ballroom.

Okay, the two computers in the internet cafe are very very in demand on a Friday, so I must get going. It’s been a really wonderful time for me here. I’ve learned so much and seen so much and this trip has been so worth it. But, I am getting extremely ballroomed out and am very ready to come home. Tomorrow morning I fly home, and tomorrow evening I will see yet more dance — Marcelo Gomes, my love!, and Julie Kent fly on a pumpkin in the ABT’s Cinderella…

Posted on

Greetings From Coney Island, U.K.

Don’t have much time to write because the only internet cafe in Blackpool is exorbitantly expensive. This town is hilarious. It’s a total holiday area, not at all unlike Coney Island, complete with loads of casinos, pinball machines, a boardwalk, posters for circus and way-off-the-West-End shows, and even a huge ferris wheel. Now I know why so many of the B&Bs I found on the internet specified they were for quiet singles or couples only (and there are all these rules posted in mine absolutely prohiting overnight guests. How do they enforce that?!). It gets very raucous here at night, and it’s definitely not the dance crowd, who are all far too panic-ridden right now to be partying.

Mika, who knows everyone and everthing in the Latin ballroom world and has been an amazing resource, has now returned home, as she is only a Latin person, so I’m on my own for the last two days now, which are devoted to Standard (amateur today and pro tomorrow, with two treats for me thrown in — the exhibition comp tonight and the Latin formation team tomorrow– whatever that is… I’ll be excited to see.

But last night was by far the biggest night for me — the Latin pro. Carmen and Bryan Watson from Germany won — no surprise; they’ve won every year for the past several. The amazing Joanna Leunis, who does spins like no one I’ve ever seen in my life, including prima ballerinas, and her partner Michael Malitowski from Poland won second, and Katarina Venturini and Andre Sculfa won third. Most exciting for me though was Karina Smirnoff, my favorite dancer in terms of artistry who regularly places in the finals. Normally, the couples who placed at least in the semis in the prior year don’t have to compete in the first two qualifying rounds, but because Karina broke up with her former partner, Slavik, and now has a new one, she wasn’t exempt from those two initial rounds. So, I got a great seat up front before the masses arrived for the later rounds and got many many many great pics of her. She is so gorgeous. And pure muscle. Such a star. The crowd went wild when her heat was called and she took the floor. And, funny, I never realized it til I saw her up close, but her face really looks like Madonna’s. Unfortunately, she and her new partner are dancing for Russia, so she’s no longer a U.S. competitor. (They came in 4th by the way). We had no Americans make the finals this year, but the two top US couples both made the semis. Tomorrow, the US does have two couples who place well in the Standard comp, so that one should be a lot of fun.

As for the team match, Italy won, and I’m told by one of Mika’s friends who added the points up, Japan came in second, US third, and UK fourth, which was the first time in history the UK didn’t place first. But that math wiz also said the US came in first in Latin, so good for Andrei, Elena, Maxim and Yulia — it’s true, if there was no Russian immigration to the US,we’d have no team!

Okay, I have a lot lot lot more to say about this most brilliant of all dance festivals, but have to sign off now or I won’t have enough pounds stirling to get myself home. Will be writing much much much more when I return to NY and will be posting tons and tons of pics on the photo page of this site as well… (have nearly taken 400 and still have two days to go…)

Posted on

Off to Blackpool!

Am all packed and ready — very excited! Unfortunately, the weather’s going to be crap — rainy and highs in the 50s everyday, so no beach time. But, according to Mika, one of Pasha’s students whom I’m to meet there, I won’t have any time to go to the beach anyway. Mika’s been a few times before so I’m glad to have someone to show me around and hang out with. She says the team match is one of the most exciting events, and the U.S. has a great team this year. Our awesome team consists of:

For Standard: Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova,

and Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed

And for Latin: Andrei Gavriline (who teaches at my studio!) and Elena Kryuchkova

and Maxim Kojevnikov and Yulia Zagorouitchenko

I’ve seen Andrei dance in person and he’s amazing — he’s a tall, thin man and he’s so light he just seems to fly across the dance floor. And his wife and partner, Elena, is so tiny and gymnastic she looks like she’s just floating up into his arms during their lifts. Andrei and Elena and Maxim and Yulia took first and second places respectively in the America’s Ballroom Challenge competition in Ohio last November, which was televised on PBS in February. Maxim and Yulia did an amazing samba for their showcase — if I could only move like that woman!

Jonathan and Katusha and Victor and Anna didn’t compete in Ohio because there was an international standard competition going on in England at the same time. They are both very popular couples, and Victor seems to be a crowd favorite. When the emcee in Ohio announced that they had just placed in the finals in England, everyone started cheering. Mika says Victor does a mean tango!

I am crushed though because my teacher Pasha and his partner Anna won’t be able to go. A few days ago someone broke into the studio and stole her purse, which contained her passport and work visa. There was no way both the U.S. and Russian governments could re-issue her papers so soon, so she can’t leave the country right now. She may have to go back to Russia to get another passport because renewing from here will take months. What an immense pain. I had really wanted to see them dance and they had a real shot at placing in the quarterfinals if not the semis, so it is really really unfortunate. At least they will have a chance again in another year — Blackpool is the Olympics of Ballroom, but thankfully for all of us, it happens four times as often!