My prediction exactly of what would happen with the Nilas Martins case. If it wasn’t enough cocaine to constitute possession with intent to sell, he’d receive a slap on the wrist. I love the judge’s words to him!
Places to Score Great Ballroom Videos, Particularly Those Containing Pasha and Anya :)
April had recently asked me where she could get a video of the Dance Times Square showcase I’d blogged about earlier containing Pasha and Anya’s brilliant performances. I directed her to contact the studio itself, as they usually have a professional videographer at the showcase. However, the videos have in prior years included only the student showcases, presumably to prevent choreography-stealing. But, in the last couple of showcases the student performances have been so interspersed with the professionals’ that the videographer has just included them all on the DVD. Anyway, if anyone contacts DTS about the videos, just make sure you ascertain that Pasha and Anya’s pro showcases are on there! Don’t worry; they won’t mind if you ask — they understand!
It occurred to me, though, that there are other places you can find videos of Pasha and Anya dancing, along with other stars of the dancesport world 🙂 Two years ago, in May 2005, they competed at the Blackpool Dance Festival in England and placed second in the Professional Latin Rising Star category 🙂 🙂 🙂 . Quasar Videos makes DVDs of three of the competitions that take place there each year: the Professional, Amateur, and Professional Rising Star. I found the 2005 Pro Rising Star on this website. You can probably order directly from Quasar as well. They’re expensive though (I think they’re around $100). These are live filmed ballroom competitions, so all of the finalists are on the floor at once — they’re not individual showcases like on SYTYCD. But, for people who’ve never seen one, these ballroom competitions are so cool! And Anya had THE most gorgeous costumes that year — one white, one black! It’s too bad that they don’t include all of the competitions on one DVD (meaning Professional and Rising Star Pro) because you’d get to see all of the most awesome dancers (like my loves Slavik Kryklyvyy and Sergey Surkov 🙂 ). But you will still see some breathtaking ballroom dancing — both Latin and Standard.
They also competed in the Ohio Star Ball two years ago (2005), and that was filmed and shown on PBS as “America’s Ballroom Challenge.” If you missed that earlier competition when it aired on PBS (it was from 2005, not last year — they had to miss last year because of an illness), you may be able to purchase a DVD of it through PBS or ABC. If you’re able to get a hold of that one, you will witness how popular Pasha and Anya are with the dancesport crowd. People were NOT happy when they didn’t take one of the first three spots — even Marilu Henner (host) remarked to Tony Meredith (co-host), “wow, this is the most passionate reaction we’ve seen all night!” Annoyingly (I was obviously there that year), the producers did a bunch of “sound clips” — I don’t know if that’s the proper term, but they had a judge walk around the floor while the audience first was completely silent, then on her second walk we all chattered, then on her third we screamed and cheered like a bunch of lunatics. So, when they edited, they took out the fans wildly screaming, “Pasha” “Anya” “Pasha and Anya,” during the comp and replaced it with the quiet sound clip! Anyway, good thing about that competition is that it includes all of the top Latin dancers in the country, such as Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruyshkova, and Yulia Zagoruychenko and Max Kozhevnikov.
Okay, I’ve rambled on long enough. Hope this helps!
Also, don’t forget about the petition 🙂
Life lesson
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
Do not ever board a nyc subway thinking, “hmmm, i kind of have to go to the bathroom …” three hours and two train changes later, i’m actually in my office.
Gave up
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
Have given up on subway am in nearby deli waiting out the sweaty delay. At least i have a d.a.’s response brief to read. I know, what would one do without a juicy brief to read!
These r days i hate ny
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
Bc it’s 90 degrees outside there is the usual extreme chaos of mass power outages. Extremely slow extremely packed trains, sweaty smelly bodies… We just love the subway!
America is Dancin'
I’ve just received word that another new reality-TV show centered on dance is in the works. This one stars Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli, judges from ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” Apparently they will organize groups of amateur dancers (it doesn’t specify ballroom so looks like it’s not limited to just that dance style) to compete against each other, ultimately creating the best dance team. I’m not completely sure how it’s going to work, but for deets, visit their MySpace page. Auditions, which are taking place throughout the country during the month of September, are open to any amateur dancer, at any level and any age over 18. Just like a genuine ballroom comp 🙂 Fun fun fun!
I Am Goin’ to Nationals!
Just got my plane ticket for Nationals, coming up at the beginning of September, in Orlando, Florida, where I’ve never been! I was actually pondering saving money and not going this year, but my friend, Michele, blasted some sense into me: it’s going to be far too exciting a year to miss. Am now trying to fill out above form to reserve my event tickets — $70 for Saturday night comp and $60 for Thursday and Friday night each — I do wish it wasn’t so expensive, but at least they’ve moved the competition to a cheaper hotel; last year it was in swanky Palm Beach, and the only hotel in the vicinity was the, basically, ten–star one in which the competition was held.
So, no alligators this year 🙂 (Last year, I took a brief excursion from competition madness to visit the Everglades)
Anyway, this is going to be a big year. Because of a couple of important retirements, new champions will be crowned in two events: American Rhythm and American Smooth.
I’m hoping Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine, my former teacher and an excellent dancer, will do well in Rhythm. Well, I know he’ll do WELL, but will he win is my big question?!
Or will the king and queen of rhythm be Emmanuel’s former partner, Joanna Zacharewicz and the super cute Jose deCamps?
We’ll know Thursday, September 6th, late late LATE night (these competitions are definitely for night owls)
The highlight for me though is always the International Latin. It’s always a showdown between these two:
current national champs Andrei Gavriline (my favorite American man) and Elena Kruyshkova, and
my favorite American woman, Yulia Zagoruychenko, and her partner Max Kozhevnikov.
They also have an open-to-the-world category, in which dancers who are not American residents or citizens can compete. Last year I was just in heaven — my two favorite Latin dancers in the world competed in that category: Slavik Kryklyvyy, who is just about my favorite dancer period (excepting this one of course of course:) ) (Slavik’s dancing here with Elena Khvorova)
and Sergey Surkov (parterning Melia).
Oh, I hope so so SO much they compete again this year. I’m thinking Slavik may not, may have only competed last year because he’d just broken up with his old partner, Karina Smirnoff and was testing out a new partnership before the really important world comps, but I really do hope he shows at this one. Otherwise, I’m stuck waiting until next May for Blackpool to see him again…
Two people I’m fairly sure who won’t be there are the couple I always long to see of course: Pasha and Anya, who are, sigh, off to bigger and better things these days… Of course I’m so happy for them, but it is sad knowing I’ll likely not see them compete at one of these events again. I’m thrilled though that so many opportunities are opening up for professional ballroom dancers. The same couples win these competitions year after year after year. And, while it’s always fun for us spectators to watch, I can imagine how frustrating it must be to be a professional dancer knowing you’re likely going to place exactly where you have been for the past umpteenth years.
Anyway, unrelated to the USDSC, here’s some interesting stuff I found on the net:
1) Boris Willis has created a funny little “manly dance” for me, apropos of all my blogging on Bad Boys of Dance and Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers, etc. etc. etc. Thanks Boris!
2) The artist David Michalek, who made those Slow Dancing films I was going on about forever, has linked on his site to a bunch of us bloggers who covered the exhibit. So very cool to see artists taking bloggers so seriously and considering us to be our own little form of press! And, I noticed by reading down his list of bloggers that Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, posted a couple of pictures of the event on his blog, one of which intentionally includes both Midsummer Night Swing and Slow Dancing together like many of mine do. I’m glad someone else found the two events coinciding with each other interesting. He describes them, though, as “juxtaposed surreally” with each other in the photo. I’m still interested in why people think it’s odd that an exhibit of filmed dancers should coexist with people actually dancing, that people could enjoy both the physical experience of dancing themselves and of watching dance. To me it seems ideal, not surreal, to have these two events co-occur.
3) Root Magazine, based in San Francisco, is having a little thing on burlesque right now. There’s a write-up on a group that has its origins in Samba, which I found interesting. Root’s editor also deals with the feminist issue, which makes me happy.
4) And, finally, as I’m sure most people already know but I was a bit late to discover (oops 🙂 ), there’s a blog devoted to SYTYCD called, appropriately, Blogging So You Think You Can Dance. It’s really pretty good: they have links to practically everything extant on the internet dealing with the show, and they give detailed, fairly objective write-ups of what happened each night (which is great for me since I’m always out and missing it!) Thanks guys 🙂
Belly dance clothes
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
This is the first time i think i’ve seen dance attire at a street fair like this. People are eating it right up!
Funnel cake!
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
I love this stuff – except in phoenix it was called “indian fry bread.” i assumed it was made by native americans?
Street fair!
Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.
One of the good things about new york – on a hot lazy boring dead august day, you can walk out your door to this!
Que Si, Que No, Que Si Que No QueSi QueNo QueSiQueNoQueSiQueNoWAAAAA
Hehe. I’m having fun trying to set up my Swan Lake Samba Girl MySpace page. Fun, but not without a little frustration music-wise… I want to add some songs to my profile, but I’m one of those extremely elderly pathetic people born way back, and still living helplessly, in the Dark Ages who still buys cds (mainly at Ballroom dancing competitions), and none of these Latin Ballroom cds list the names of the bands anywhere on their back covers or insides flaps. Grrrrr….
I did manage to find one of the songs I greatly enjoy — or rather, can’t stop laughing myself silly every time I hear (in a good way –it’s slightly corny, but if you’re a bit down you absolutely cannot remain depressed upon hearing this song!) It’s called Nunca Te Decides on my cd but Que Si Que No on the band’s (El Simbolo) profile page. And I found this one as well by a band from Singapore called Wicked Aura Batucada. It sounds a lot like Quenia Ribeiro‘s band who plays for my samba classes at Ailey. Very street, and very what I imagine Carnival samba to sound like. So, I added those to my profile, which I assume MySpace will automatically alternate? I also found this song whose name is listed on one of my cds, by Ara Ketu, but cannot seem to get the blasted thing to play. If anyone can, is it good? I thought of adding this ever-fun one by Bellini, which I nearly seriously hurt myself once trying to dance to at full speed 🙂 Can’t figure out if it’s too cheesy 🙂 I do so love it though!
Anyway, here is my page thus far. Please feel free to add me as a friend if you have one too!
OMG: In the Pages of the Wall Street Journal!!!!!
I received an email today from a man, Doug, telling me he found my blog from “the Wall Street Journal article a couple of days ago.” I was like, Wall Street Journal article??? I (and my office) am too poor to afford a WSJ subscription 🙂 , so I ran next door to a trading firm and sure enough they had a copy from the magic date: 7/30/07. Indeed, editor Beckey Bright gave my little blog a little shout-out, along with two of my fellow Latin dance bloggers: Salsa Dude and Tango Bliss; and three trucking blogs: Adventures in Trucking, The Trucking Blog, and Truck Driver Blog.
Of my blog Ms. Bright said, “Ms. Plank offers a lot of information on the leading Latin ballroom dancers. Her posts include details of the different classes she takes, as well as many photos and videos demonstrating forms of dance, including some from dance performances and competitions she attends.” The article can be found here, although you have to be a paid subscriber to access it in full.
This is so beyond exciting!! Thank you so much, Ms. Bright!