Author: Tonya

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Bollywood!

A Bollywood routine this week?! In addition to Alvin Ailey! This show is rockin!

Fuller review coming up on HuffPost, but that was so cool! No one better to do it than Katee and Joshua! I’ve seen only one Bollywood dance before and it wasn’t performed by professional dancers (was on a cruise ship and performed by Indian waiters — the final show was devoted to celebrating the cultures of each nationality on staff) and this was way the hell better! I’m so glad they did that. The highlight of the show, imo.

And highlight 2: Pasha and Anya’s choreographic debut of course. What a crazy fun cha cha! When he said “nice” with his voice inflecting and drawn out at the end like that, the subtext indicating he really means ‘okay, good start, you finally got the idea, but now you have to work like hell to get it right,’ I felt homesick :S

Can’t wait for AA tomorrow night. I think they’re gonna do my absolute favorite, “Sinner Man”… — three men, performing a section from Revelations? — what else could it be???

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Rhythm And Standard

My photos from Sunday night, the final night of the competition, are now up. They start here.

Sorry the pictures are blurry. Someday I am going to get a professional camera, I really am.

The final day of the competition was okay, not as exciting to me as the others. For one thing, it was pretty obvious who would win. For another, there was a surprisingly low number of entries in the Rhythm category. There were only 13 in all, which means there were only two rounds: a semifinal and a final (since 12-13 people can dance on the floor at once). There are usually twice as many. So, we only got to see two rounds of the top dancers. Not enough!

Jose Decamps was himself. He’s so much fun to watch — just look at his facial expressions in my pictures! It would be worth it to see him in a one-man show. I think he’s probably the most charismatic dancer we’ve had in any of the categories for a long time.

Placing second were Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine and Julia Gorchakova, another favorite couple of mine, who I feel I hardly got a chance to see. They usually dance on the sides of the ballroom floor and I was at a table in the middle, and it all just went so fast. There just wasn’t time to run around looking for your favorites with only two rounds. From what I saw of them they looked like their usual colossally entertaining selves.

And of course Arunas and Katusha won Standard. They are just like plush satin the way they dance, so liquid smooth, so rich and luscious. Every move they make just has this satiny sheen that makes you swoon. I will always cherish the chance to watch them perform live.

And Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed, who expectedly took second, were their usual charming selves. Those two make dancing look so fun, so immensely enjoyable. She always wears this sweet, dimpled smile that looks like she is going to burst out giggling; even has a hard time making that severe Tango look. They seemed to get the most audience applause, and were called to each side of the ballroom floor a couple of times, to take bows.

Anyway, I have more to say about the competition in general, but am too tired right now… I’ve gotten home around 4:00 every morning and this morning had to get up only four hours later for a dentist appointment. In the meantime, the MDS website has some videos up — unfortunately I think they’re mostly from last year… And big huge thanks to Parker for scoring us such excellent seats 😀

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SYTYCD Week 4 Cuts

My post bemoaning Matt & Kourtni getting the boot, etc. is up on HuffPost, here. (Sorry about the holiday delay!)

Am still hoping my piece on NYCB Dancers’ Choice program will go up soon on Explore Dance. Will definitely link to it when it does…

I’m uploading all the pictures from the final day of Manhattan DS Championship and should have them up by the end of the day!

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Yulia and Riccardo Take Latin, and More Pics Up

My pictures from the Pro Latin and Amateur Standard championships are now up; they begin in the album here.

Latin’s my favorite competition and it was a good night, although I was sad some of my favorites — Vaidotas Skimelis & Jurga Pupelyte, Andre Paramov & Natalie, Andrei Gavriline & Elena Kruschkova — didn’t show (although Gavriline was in the audience watching).

Sometimes, that’s good though, because you have a chance to focus on others. And, I don’t know whether it was that I didn’t have Vaidotas and Andrei to fixate on or that they just danced better than ever before, but Pavlo Barsuk and Anna Trebunskaya were ON FIRE! Pavlo gets this cute little evil imp, almost vampiric, expression on his face where his eyes widen considerably and he looks so serious, so hungry, so bloodthirsty even — and all of that energy just radiates downward throughout his body and it makes him so mesmerizing to watch. She was ravishing as well. Those two danced to win. And they almost did, placing second, even beating out two couples that normally place near the top, right after Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko, who were, as expected, excellent.

Riccardo, I now know from Blackpool, has a very endearing personality, which translates into a charming dancefloor persona. I love how they interpret rhythms, slowing down and even coming to a full stop at points in order to accent their speed. When a couple just dances fast, on the beat, the whole time, it’s almost too much; it lacks a certain variety and development. And Yulia is back to dancing on her toes and making her miraculous shapes again. When she does a spiraling sous sus, she looks like a ballerina she’s so far onto the tips of her toes.

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Smooth and Amateur Latin Pics Up

Finished uploading pictures just in time to go back to Brooklyn for tonight’s round of fun! Here are the pictures I’ve added to the album thus far, of last night’s two main championships, Professional American Smooth and Amateur Latin. I still can’t believe Jonathan Roberts and Valentina won Smooth. They had excellent choreography — lots of variety with beautiful leg lifts and dramatic drops, but overall I still think J.T. Thomas and Tomas Mielnicki (current national champs in this event) moved with more fluidity and polish, and Jonathan had a couple of little, very minor fumbles with his footwork. I’m thrilled for J & V, but just a little surprised. J.T. and Tomas had a minor mishap in which J.T. was elbowed in the nose pretty badly. Caused quite a bit of bleeding and she had to take a little time out to tend to it. Certainly shook them up a bit at the moment, but didn’t seem to hamper their final round at all. It can be dangerous out there on the dance floor though!

When I was leaving the bar during a break, I heard someone call out “Swan Lake Samba Girl.” I initially thought it was my friend Parker being silly. But it wasn’t; it was a reader, named Ching, who nicely introduced herself and told me she reads my blog regularly and really likes it. She dances both ballet and ballroom as well — I think there is a lot of crossover — and is a professor. Anyway, it’s always so wonderful (albeit surreal!) to be noticed, and to receive such nice compliments. So, thanks, Ching, you completely made my night!

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Back For More Jose

I went back to ABT last night for another Merry Widow with Jose and Julie in the leads. Couldn’t resist! And I’m glad I did; I ended up meeting Roslyn Sulcas, writer from the New York Times, who is really nice and down to earth, and elegantly beautiful.

Anyway, I already wrote a bit about this ballet earlier, and have to get ready for a pre-competition dinner, but I quickly just want to mention a few other tidbits about Jose that make him so great, that I noticed last night. He keeps in character throughout, even when he’s not center stage. I mean, they all do, but Jose really keeps in character. As Julie’s rich widow was dancing with the Pontevedrian men, each man trying to curry her wealthy available favor, Jose was sitting off to the side flirting devilishly with Misty Copeland. And he was really flirting, not just chatting. At one point he raised his eyebrows at her in a way that made me nearly fall out of my seat.

And the way he struts around stage, like a cocky, spoiled, at times drunk, misbehaving boy … it’s not at all balletic, the way other dancers might do, but perfectly in character (and somehow on him, mischievous as it is, becomes so endearing).

I also noticed that when he spots as he’s doing a slow turn, carrying his ballerina in his arms, he looks at each spot on the floor with intent. During his pas de deux with Julie when he was remembering happy times with her in the past, he looked down at each point on the floor like he was lost, forlorn, wondering where they all went. With most dancers they look like they’re doing exactly what they’re doing — spotting so they don’t lose balance. He turns simple technique into art.

 

I also wanted to point out how fantastic Joseph Phillips was, as leader of the Pontevedrian men, with his spectacular bravura-embellished folk dancing, and Craig Salstein as he sweetly but sadly unsuccessfully vied for Julie’s hand. And Julie as the widow was sweetly flirtatious, her smiles and raised eyebrows infusing her prolonged flexes of the foot into quick, snappingly sharp points, with added sexual meaning.

 

Anyway, I’m very excited for Giselle next week!

 

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

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Poets & Dance Writers and Romantics & Poseurs

I’ve been so busy lately trying to juggle various things I got very behind on my reading, particularly dance reading. So I spent part of my weekend browsing the online arts sections of my old favorite magazines and newspapers and found a few interesting things. I’m really loving some of Claudia La Rocco’s recent reviews. This Bayadere piece is really beautiful in her descriptions, and this one had a poetic charm to it as well — look at the Ravel simile! Made me wonder what her background was — if she was a fiction writer or poet. So, I did a Google search and found several of her poems, like this one and this one, and this one on Shen Wei. (At least I assume this is the same Claudia La Rocco!) It does make perfect sense; poetry, fiction, and dance (and perhaps music) writing have a good deal in common. It’s so hard to write about something so inherently visual or sensual and it really makes you strive for that perfectly specific adjective or metaphor or simile that will convey to your readers as precisely as possible what you saw and what it felt like, how it touched the senses and the soul, without resorting to cliche (which tells the reader nothing). Of course you also need analytical faculties, but I personally find the most challenging part is just getting a well-written, apt description down without over-using the “amazing”s and “beautiful”s, etc. etc.

I was also looking through Time Out, after Ariel pointed out a few Gia Kourlas pieces, and found this interview with Tom Gold, who recently retired from New York City Ballet, particularly interesting. About halfway through he talks about how City Ballet has changed over the years and how technique now seems to be stressed over developing the dancer’s personality, conveying the humanity of the dance. I think that’s all important. I feel like, with a few definite exceptions, dancers are focusing so much on the steps, on making them perfect without thinking about what’s behind them, what they’re trying to convey to us with those steps. Didn’t Damian Woetzel recently say people don’t go to the ballet to see technique? We don’t! Gold said he hopes we return to the age of Romanticism soon and I couldn’t agree more. He also has a few amusing expressions of annoyance at artists who are so insistent on being the “new thing,” on being original, that they seem to lose focus on what they’re doing, on the joy and spontaneity of dance, and their work ends up being contrived and derivative anyway. There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new ways of bringing things to light and exploring them.