Woo hoo, my cable is up. At least for these five seconds. Quickly, before it crashes again, here are my Explore Dance articles on Columbia’s Starry Night Winter Showcase and the Dance Times Square in-house comp.
Oooh, maybe I can even get my Ailey review up if I hurry…
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Internet service out for over 24 hours already. Just called and they said it may be another 48 hours. Do they realize how many people rely on internet for work?
Happy night at ailey, bad night at home
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Dead modem. So sick of time warner. Wrote a big alvin ailey post and about to publish when connection bit the dust.
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Aw, it was sweet! And interesting – was just as much about the music – sung live onstage- as the dance if not more. Amos machanic is so good, breaks my heart. Think i saw will from so u think u can dance talking to choreographer hope boykin.
The awesome Deborah Friedes has set up a new dance blog directory here. So, you can find all participating dance blogs in one place. So much easier than going down blogrolls clicking on URLs one by one, and so much more aesthetically inviting than RSS feeds. Thanks Deborah! And, if you write a dance blog, be sure to add yours!
Here’s a lovely set of Flickr photos of Columbia U.’s Starry Night Winter Showcase, taken by someone with a much superior camera to my own! Enjoy!
There’s a good article by Joan Acocella in this week’s New Yorker reviewing a couple of recent dances at Brooklyn Academy of Music. In it, she talks about American choreographers and their uneasiness with ballet, their distrust of the dance form as inherently European (and snobbish). Hence, their need constantly to compare and contrast it with other forms of dance, even to deconstruct it.
Funny, but when I saw Tharp’s Brief Fling recently during American Ballet’s Theater’s City Center season, as much as I liked the fun of it (especially since my favorites Marcelo Gomes and Craig Salstein danced in my program — both of whom really up the drama and humor as far as they can possibly go), I couldn’t help but get annoyed thinking, why do so many choreographers either contrast ballet with other dance forms (with modern, with American social, with aerobics, with tango — in Brief Fling, it was with traditional Celtic or Scottish dance) or try to take it apart and show its underpinnings, to critique it — like early William Forsythe, like Jorma Elo, like even the new piece ABT commissioned by Lauri Stallings? So, I was thankful for Acocella’s little historical discussion of American choreography and ballet. Go here for the article.
She also reviews, Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi and falls for African dance! Yes, Joan 😀
So, on Saturday, because Tony Meredith and Melanie LaPatin are in Canada choreographing for Canadian So You Think You Can Dance, Mercedes Ellington took over emceeing responsibilities at the Dance Times Square student / teacher in-house competition.
It was interesting seeing her emcee since she talked a lot about the various musical pieces played for the comp and ran little trivia contests on who was the singer (Lena Horne, Bobby Darin, Johnny Mathis, etc. I got none right). At one point she asked the crowd what all Broadway shows they’d seen lately. People shouted out various shows. I think Spring Awakening had the most shout-outs. “Well hurry up and go see all these shows before they close,” she said, “so you can tell your ancestors that there was once this great thing called Broadway.” OUCH…
Here are the judges: former champs Vibeke Toft (who also coaches at the studio), Allan Tornsberg (of the always interesting hair, and snarky Blackpool commentary), and current top competitor Plamen Danailov (my friend Mika’s former pro/am partner, who was judging for, I think, the first time).
Hunky new Latin teacher at Dance Times Square, Manuel Favilla, with his students.
Long-time teacher Michael Choi in foreground, with his student.
All students did very well. It’s amazing how fast people improve at that studio. Some of Michael’s students began same time as I did, and they are so amazingly good now…
Yet another TV dance competition show. Read about it here.
Of course we weren’t allowed to take videos of the performances at the Starry Winter Night Showcase (part of Columbia University’s Big Apple Dancesport Challenge, that I went to Saturday night — see post below) but here are some videos of a recent performance by Slavik and Hanna in Greece. The showdances are very similar to the ones I saw. I don’t feel as bad for my thoughts; if you read the YouTube comments, a lot of people felt as I did. Here’s their Rumba, their Samba, the Jive (with the suspenders :)) , the Paso, and the Cha Cha.
Unfortunately, they had the lights turned down so low all my pictures all turned out to be crap. Witness below
Anyway, I’m writing reviews of this event and the Dance Times Square in-house competition (always a blast) for Explore Dance and will link when they’re up.
People are going to hate me for this…
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On a scale of one to ten, Hanna is a ten, Slavik a 20000. In other words, no match. No match at all. I’m seriously depressed.
Update:Â Now that I’m home, I’m re-thinking this. I just think my expectations were so high for a Slavik and Hanna Karttunen partnership because I’ve found her so mesmerizing in her exhibitions. I just felt like her Latin wasn’t all there. Maybe she just had a bad night. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Or maybe good women just tend to suffocate under the weight of great male partners. But why? I think when a woman is dancing with a great man — one who’s both uber-charismatic and technically excellent with mind-boggling speed and precision of movement — she really needs to find herself, to bring out her artistry. We’re never going to be as good as the men in the athletic department, so we need to excel in other ways. I think I remember Melia saying something like that during her and Sergey’s Blackpool Congress lecture — she had to work hard to find her own “voice” to keep from getting lost under Sergey’s strength.
I just felt like even though she has great flexibility and has lovely extensions, etc., Hanna was really just all but invisible tonight.
On the other hand, Slavik! Slavik had people screaming. This girl next to me moaned loudly in ecstasy when he started to play with his suspenders, and she got so embarrassed her head practically ended up in my lap, but how much could I relate 😀 I realized this is actually the first time I’ve ever actually seen him perform live. I’ve only ever seen him compete before. He is a performer beyond any other I’ve ever seen — and I mean any — ballet (Marcelo Gomes, Angel Corella), modern, flamenco (Joaquin Cortes) — I mean everyone and every kind of dance included. It’s quite impossible to exaggerate the man’s performance ability.
And, among other things, I really don’t see how it’s humanly possible for anyone’s pelvis to move as fast as that man’s does…
And then, at one point he took the microphone and gave a little speech. Said he lived and worked in New York for a few years, back when he was competing for the United States (with Karina Smirnoff) — everyone cheered like nuts — and that New York and the U.S. in general occupied a special place in his heart, it’s “part of my soul.” A bunch of people went “ooooooh, aaaaawww,” and he looked out and smiled and said something that made people nearly fling themselves to the floor. I wish I could have heard what he said — his Russian accent is pretty strong.
Anyway, more thoughts on this later. It’s been a long day and I’m tired…
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There’s a Sikh guy warming for tonight’s after-show comp. Never seen that before. College ballroom’s so different, so open. Wish it existed when I was in school.