to everyone who celebrates is. I found this video from my friend, the great writer Michael Northrop 🙂 I love it.
It reminds me of a scene in my favorite novelist Andrei Makine’s Once Upon the River Love, where two Siberian boys wake up to find their entire town covered in snow, as they often do during winter there, and they have a blast burrowing their way up and out.
Photo of our Danny Tidwell (in back middle, obviously) recording the Memphis soundtrack, with the Broadway cast. Photo by Jenny Anderson, from Broadway.com.
There’s an interview with 11-year-old Maria Gorokhov, who dances the part of young Marie in NYCB’s Nutcracker, in the W Magazine blog.
Via Opera Chic.
(photo taken from W blog)
Hi you guys. Sorry I’ve been so bad about posting lately. This book –argh! Took me a ridiculously long time to figure out my Kindle conversion! If I wasn’t so computer dyslexic…. Anyway, Kindle version should be up soon on Amazon. Will post when it is.
I have a few blog posts to write — about Alvin Ailey and about Rasta Thomas’s Rock the Ballet which, okay, I admit — I liked!!! — despite (or perhaps of) Roslyn’s almost hilariously scathing review! I liked it, but can definitely see how others wouldn’t.
And Alvin Ailey — they’re in the midst of their City Center season (which ends January 3rd). I’ve loved most of their season premieres — there are several — namely Hymn and Divining by Judith Jamison, and Dancing Spirit by Ronald K. Brown (photo above of Matthew Rushing in Dancing Spirit, photo by Paul Kolnik). Hymn is a really breathtaking tribute to Alvin Ailey — the man himself. It was made in 1993 right after he passed away. It’s with spoken word by Anna Deavere Smith, based on her interviews with Jamison and the company dancers from that time, and on Ailey’s words themselves; choreography is by Jamison. And, Divining and Dancing Spirit are both part African, part ballet / modern. Dancing Spirit starts slowly, then builds to a really beautiful crescendo. Audience went nuts with applause after it premiered, and justifiably so! Definitely do try to go see it before the season ends.
The “20 years” tribute to Jamison’s time with the company is also a great program. Exposes you to excerpts of many of the ballets she commissioned over the years, which I now want badly to see.
Oh, interesting tidbit: one of my friends told me she sat next to SYTYCD’s Tyce Diorio at one of the Ailey perfs, and he highly recommended to her Hymn and Divining. So, see, I know what I’m talking about 🙂
I also need to blog about Nine, the film, which I saw yesterday. Thought it was okay, not as good as I was expecting. The musical numbers were excellent — especially those led by Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, and Fergie. But the story line is rather boring and slow-moving. And I hate to say this but this is the first thing I haven’t loved Daniel Day Lewis in. He just didn’t become the character to me, like he normally does; just couldn’t inhabit this role. Weird because his Unbearable Lightness of Being character had many of the same flaws, and he was so much more believable as Tomasz than he was here as Guido. Anyone else seen it?
My website (and, thus, this blog) is going to be up and down a bit over the next couple days because I’m having some of the pages re-done. But I will resume blogging very soon. In the meantime, get thee to Alvin Ailey!
Oh, and happy holidays 🙂
Former Royal Ballet ballerina and current American Ballet Theater mistress Georgina Parkinson has died of cancer. She was 71. In addition to her work with ABT, she was apparently coaching Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis for their dance roles in the upcoming film, Black Swan.
Photo above, by Ruby Washington, of Parkinson rehearsing, it appears, Gillian Murphy and Ethan Stiefel, taken from the NY Times.
And I can’t wait to see it.
My novel is finally up on Amazon. Eeek, am kind of freaking out a bit…
Yes! I knew it would come down to Russell Ferguson and Jakob Karr. I loved Jakob, but how absolutely fabulous that a krumper — the first to appear on the show — has won. I’m so happy for Russell! I was so worried, though, that he was going hurt himself worse (he hurt his leg during an encore performance on the show) with all that jumping around when he was announced the champ! And how sweet that he not only thanked God, but pointed his finger up to the sky like that 🙂 What did he say, “God!” and pointed. Like a kind of high-five! Oh, I love him.
I still think Jakob is one of the best contemporary dancers ever to be on the show and he has a huge future in modern ballet, perhaps with a company like Complexions. I’ll definitely be looking for him out in the concert dance world after the SYTYCD tour is over.
I’m so ludicrously weird though. I’d honestly started to worry at the end that if Jakob won last night, well then two male contemporary dancers likely wouldn’t win in a row, and so Billy Bell’s chances for next season might be jeopardized. I know I know: Billy’s only made the top 100 at this point and I need to not get so far ahead of myself 🙂
Anyway, here’s Russell’s solo that first made me fall for him:
Danny Tidwell and some other SLSG male faves — like Marcelo Gomes, and Jamar Roberts of Alvin Ailey — are going to be performing in Dancers Responding to AIDS’ winter 2010 benefit, “Dance From the Heart / Men,” on January 11th at Cedar Lake’s performance space.
So, my favorite dance of the night, not surprisingly, was the Dwight Rhoden / Desmond Richardson-choreographed contemporary routine for Jakob and Kathryn. It was very Dwight Rhoden — with the passionate intensity, the movements that are so real-life: her jumping on his back and clawing at him; him falling to the ground and pounding the floor in desperation. But the choreography was very athletic and required a lot of intense concentration, particularly for Jakob who had all those jumps — and he really wanted to nail each with perfect lines — which could have taken away from the drama required to fully pull the piece off, but really didn’t.
Photo taken from rickey.org, who already has the vids posted.
Love the audience’s standing ovation, and how all the judges were so overwhelmed they could hardly speak. And love how Adam went on and on about the importance of live dance and how it needs to be supported, and Nigel telling Jakob that he absolutely must go to work for a company, perhaps one like Complexions. And so we didn’t get to see Desmond perform; we still saw him and Dwight stand up and cheer the dancers from the aud 🙂
Anyway, I really really really hope the show encourages more people to attend live dance performances.
My second favorite of the night was the very last piece, the Tabitha and Napoleon hip hop / krump for Russell and Kathryn.
I thought they nailed it, and that was one of the best hip hops I think I’ve seen on the show — a lot of bravado posturing and hard, driving, pounding footwork, yet still sweet and humorous in places. And they had such chemistry together, I thought. She looked at him like she had so much respect and admiration for him when she started kind of touching his feet in the air as he made his way around on those flips. She really looked like she was dancing with him, whereas I thought when she and Jakob danced together it seemed they were each trying to do their own athletic feats as well as possible, like they weren’t really emotionally connecting with each other as strongly.
Yeah, Nigel and Adam are right about Kathryn — she’s really excelled at everything, particularly toward the end of this season. I can see her winning.
Again, see Rickey for their hip hop video.
I have to say, regarding Jakob, I don’t remember seeing him dance much, if any at all, hip hop or Latin ballroom throughout the season? Did he? He’s a miraculous contemporary dancer, and it’s a given he’ll excel at contemporary-like dances, like jazz, theater, and standard ballroom. But he didn’t seem to be given much of a chance to demonstrate range, the same as Kathryn.
At first when I saw Ryan and Kathryn open the show with Jason Gilkison’s samba I mistook Ryan for Jakob and thought, whoa, he can really do those body rolls, he has such movement in his torso (unusual for someone trained intensively in ballet). Then when I realized it was Ryan I was pretty disappointed. We already know Ryan can do Latin — why didn’t they give Jakob the samba? Then, I thought how interesting it would be to have each couple perform the same exact routines. Then you could really compare. Hey, seriously, why don’t they do that? Because at a certain point, it seems like you can’t help but judge the choreography more than the dancing.
None of the other routines really blew me away tonight. The Travis Wall contemporary for Ashleigh and Ryan was lovely, but it lacked a certain power, as did her Foxtrot with Jakob. Oh I did like the Sonya Tayeh lyrical jazz for Ashleigh and Russell.
I just love Russell. He has such charisma, such an endearing dancer persona that peeks through with everything he does. Such a sweet guy. And he introduced me to a new style of dance for me, made me aware of the power and brilliance of krumping. I’m rooting for him or Jakob. Or, now, Kathryn.
Rasta Thomas’ new Bad Boys of Dance show, “Rock the Ballet,” opens tonight at the Joyce Theater. I’ll be there later in the week. Here’s what I wrote last time I saw Bad Boys; below is a video of some footage of the current show, in Barcelona, interspersed with audience interviews (in Spanish).
And here’s one from the group’s performance on a Spanish TV show:
It looks like they’re including women this time (at least one, at least one human 🙂 ). I can never tell if he’s being ironic or not with the choreography… In any event, the reason to see this show is the man himself, Rasta Thomas, brilliant brilliant dancer.
Above image taken from here.
Oh cool — Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, founders of Complexions Contemporary Ballet, are returning to So You Think You Can Dance for this Tuesday’s finale. They’re to choreograph a piece for one set of finalists (press release doesn’t say who). Exciting! Press release doesn’t say Desmond will dance, like last time, but who knows!?
Well, if not, here’s a vid of him in Episodes (which, coincidentally, Alvin Ailey is also performing this season at City Center, and which members of that company performed earlier this season on this show).
Photo above by Heidi Schumann, from NY Times.
