This has nothing to do with dance, but I just saw the most amazing little film at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was included in a group of short films by very young (ie: teenage) filmmakers in New York. The last one was about African American girls’ standards of beauty, questioning the extent to which they are still defining themselves by white standards. The filmmaker decided to re-perform the study used by Thurgood Marshall in the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Ed. supporting his argument for desegregation. It was so incredibly upsetting to see these African American children all point to the white doll when asked by the filmmaker which doll they would rather play with. These children were far too young to have been “acting.” The last little girl, barely four years old, after choosing the white doll as a playmate was asked which one most resembled her, and her tiny face turned so angry as she shoved the black doll at the filmmaker. That image stayed with me all night. It made me think the study should be performed on a larger scale. It was so amazing to be so struck by such a young director — Tribeca rocks!
Take That Back, Performance WAS Heinous!
DVDs from the school of the March performance just came out and I saw myself dance. Ewwwwwwwwww! I look like a spaghetti. Seriously. My arms are flapping madly about; I look like I have no skeleton whatsoever. And I was so scared, I had this look on my face like I’d just received shock therapy and my shoulders were hunched straight up to my ears throughout the entire three minutes. And I looked truly horrified whenever I looked out into the audience – -and blinded; now I do remember the lights being so bright, I got really distracted looking out. I’m never ever ever looking at the audience again; if Pasha makes me face front, I’ll still crock my head and focus my gaze on him — I am dancing with him after all. And in our little Romeo and Juliet pose I look like I’m casting a spell on him not looking down adoringly.
A co-worker friend wanted to see the tape, since he couldn’t make the performance (thankfully), but no way is anyone seeing this. I agreed to show him the the still pictures, which somehow didn’t turn out quite as horrid. But when he saw the carryoff lift I told him I took from the Lavery R&J, he said, “Oh yeah, this is after you’re dead, right.”
“No,” I said. “Romeo predeceases Juliet. She takes drugs at one point and he does a quite beautiful dance with her looking like a rag doll, but this isn’t that scene. This is from the balcony scene and I’m being swept off my feet. Are you sure it doesn’t look like I’m being swept off my feet?”
He scrutinized the picture again. “Nah, you look dead.”
Ugh!
Blackpool!!!
Very excited! I just received an email from one of the Blackpool B&Bs I’d queried weeks ago asking if they still had a room available for the dance festival in late May / early June, and the last one just responded with a “yes!” So, I quickly called the Winter Gardens and confirmed that they still have standing room season tickets available, made a plane reservation to Manchester, and, except for the train tickets between Manchester and Blackpool, I’m all set! Now I can’t get that “Manchester England England” song from “Hair” out of my head… I’m so excited — my first year there! I can’t wait to see the beautiful flowing ballgowns encompass the entire floor during the Standard comp — especially the Quickstep when the dancers are just flying — ah, such a fairytale…
I Can Never Be a Ballerina Because…
… not because they can do about 3,645 fouettés in a row or chaîné all the way across a football field-sized floor or balance their entire weight on a point about the width of a dime on their big toe. I can never be a real ballet dancer because I can’t sew. Seriously and sadly. Not that I could ever do the other abovementioned things of course, but you’d think sewing would be pretty basic. Not for me. The clerks at Bloch’s honestly laughed at me when they sold me the shoes and sewing kit and elastics and I insisted I’m a lawyer and will never be able to do it myself and please just tell me where I can find a good ballet shoe sewer, assuring me it would be no problem, they had faith, everyone can do it, children can do it for gods’ sakes… I was up all last night with the damn things. The supposedly handy dandy little Bunheads kit did not explain how to thread the needle, make knots, make the closure, and stitch through the tough tough TOUGH leather. It took me hours, and though I did it, I don’t at all trust my work. I’m sure tonight in class my elastics will go shooting and hit some poor student or teacher in the eye or something.
When I called my mom to enlist her help, I could hear her eyes rolling. She’s long given up telling me that my lack of traditional female skills are at least partly responsible for you know what. Nope, I have none and never have. For the past six months Con Ed has been sending me warning notices that my meter may not be properly connected since it shows no gas usage whatsoever. And I remember in grad school my boyfriend was always expressing disgust with the sloppy apartments maintained by both me and my best friend and fellow female grad student. Many of my current female friends – most of whom are lawyers or other professionals – are just as hideously lacking. Yet, the single men I know, not so much. Not at all really. Do we just not have the time for such trifles, or are subconsciously acting out against a stereotype that’s really pretty much defunct now anyway.
And, now that I think of it, at one ballet studio I go to, most of whose patrons I think I can assume are professional women, I regularly see shoes with only one side of the elastic sewn, the other dangling, causing the foot to lift out of the shoe and the student obviously to lose balance, or one side of the elastic sewn horrendously crookedly, one end attached mid-foot, the other at, like, the heel, etc. You definitely don’t see such things at, for example, Broadway Dance Center. And, one of the reasons I like the first studio is that the students are like me – i.e.: not professional dancers, unlike those who, for example, take Ballet for Absolute Beginners at Steps, either for practice, or to freak out people like me. But, as I’ve always been told from the time I first began applying to college, it’s largely your fellow students who will make your education.
Ugh, so I guess if well-sewn shoe equates with real dancer, I will have to overcome my probable subconscious-reaction-against-a-now-defunct-stereotype. There’s a time for learning everything…
Wait, Melanie LaPatin Was on What Show!
After sending out an email about my not completely horrible performance in Long Island and my excitement over being able to wear Melanie LaPatin’s dress, one of my smart-ass former West Coast Swing teammates wrote back that she was on some show called “What Not to Wear†where they criticize your wardrobe? I don’t have cable since if I gave myself any more reason to watch t.v. I’d get even less done than I do now, so I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked him what they criticized her for and he said he didn’t remember but thought it was for wearing too much black. Which is of course the color of the dress I wore… Well, hey, I mean, this is New York! If we wore any other color, it’d turn black anyway from taxi and bus exhaust and newspaper ink left on subway seats, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Anyway, I’m standing up for my sweet, short, sexy, ruffly-bottomed champion-worn borrowed dress!
Performance Was Not Heinous!
Yes – I did it. I performed in front of three people and I didn’t fall! No, seriously, there were more than three people there and I did lose my balance a bit at the beginning, on a completely easy step, though I didn’t fall. I think it was because of the lights – they were so bright. It always looks like performers are looking at you – how do they do that? Even though we had a dress rehearsal with the lights, I was still a bit disoriented, and I lost my footing on a step that required me to face toward the audience, rather than Pasha. Thankfully, he was holding on to me. And it was at the beginning, before all of our lifts and tricks, so hopefully people didn’t remember 🙂 After that, I just tried to focus on Pasha, even when I was to face front. Everything went okay; it wasn’t my best run-through of the routine, but wasn’t my worst. And I think my nerves about performing were overtaken with nerves about the dress working out. But very very cool thing: because the studio co-owner felt badly for me because of my costume fiasco, she ended up letting me wear one of her old costumes. So, I got to wear a dress formerly worn by the 1995 national Latin champion! Sweet end to a screwed-up ordeal!
Oh, and I realized the coach was right when he reminded me that the audience is largely comprised of regular people, not professional dancers. We got applause for all of our lifts – even the ones where I couldn’t hoist myself up as far as I wanted to or forgot to point my toe or didn’t get my back leg into a perfect attitude position – basically had a problem with each one, but still cheers… And, we got applause for my dip / spin / lift thingy that I worked so hard to do properly and wanted in the routine so badly – well, dancer Karina Smirnoff’s dip / spin / lift thingy. And many many many thanks to Pasha for letting me practice it over and over, seeing as how it’s hard not to knee the guy on your way toward him and into the trick. Anyway, this whole thing taught me that maybe I have a choreographic sense of what audiences like – even if said audience is just being nice to the dancer me by applauding my screw-ups. I wanna be a choreographer now! Although since I wasn’t a real dancer first, maybe that wouldn’t work too well… I’d be asking dancers to do things that were physically impossible or something…