I don’t think I’m going to have much time to write about season two of Oxygen Network’s Dance Your Ass Off (Spice Girl Mel B is hosting this time around; she competed on Dancing With the Stars a couple seasons ago with Maks), but I invite you to keep up with the show by reading my friend Marie’s detailed BDC re-caps.
CONGRATS TO RUBEN, THE FIRST WINNER OF DANCE YOUR ASS OFF
Congrats to Ruben, the 43-year-old Las Vegas wardrobe designer who last night became the first winner of the popular Oxygen network show Dance Your Ass Off. I wasn’t able to tune in every week, but whenever I did, I loved this guy, and so am not surprised he won.
Contestants were judged on their dance skills (they performed a different dance, with a pro partner, every week) as well as their weight loss. Ruben wasn’t “the biggest loser” weight-wise, but that person — Alicia — was invited back for the finale to be recognized, and given an award, for losing the most weight — 18.71 percent of her body weight — throughout the course of the show.
Here is my friend Marie’s review of the finale, for the Ballroom Dance Channel.
The show is a superb idea of course — what better way to lose weight than to dance it off? I’ve received several emails and comments on prior posts asking how to become a contestant on the show and I’m looking into it and will certainly let you know when I do!
Also, if you missed out on any of the season, there will be a first-cast reunion broadcast on Monday, September 7th.
Update: You can put your name on a list to be notified of any upcoming casting calls for the next season. Go here to do that.
DANCE YOUR ASS OFF PREMIERES
Okay, fabulous as the new Dance Your Ass Off sounds (like a Dancing With the Stars, but with “real” people, and hosted by the always entertaining Marissa Jaret Winokur), there’s simply no way I can finish ballet season and cover So You Think You Can Dance and cover the new Oxygen Network show as well. So, I’m referring you all to wonderful writer Marie at the Ballroom Dance Channel for DYAO recaps. Enjoy!
DANCING WITH THE STARS: IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND SHARON BALIK
Yesterday afternoon, I received some shocking news: that a reader and frequent commenter here, Sharon Balik, had passed away that morning suddenly and unexpectedly. She commented here under the name BDC_Sharon and had just left a message over the weekend on my most recent SYTYCD post.
I’m still in shock and can’t stop thinking about her. She found my blog a couple of years ago and we’d become very good friends. She became enamored of ballroom dancing after Dancing With the Stars premiered. She began taking lessons with her husband, Tim, and when DWTS pro dancers Maks Chmerkovskiy, Elena Grinenko, and Tony Dovolani founded the Ballroom Dance Channel website, she began to work for them, researching and writing articles about various aspects ballroom dance, writing recaps of the dance shows on TV, leading discussions about such issues as whether DanceSport should become an Olympic sport, and helping to promote the website’s online ballroom dance lessons. She kindly linked to my blog and my HuffPo reviews, and brought me a load of new readers. She really became a tireless promoter of all things ballroom.
When she began writing for BDC, she’d email to ask me questions about the ballroom competition scene since she knew I had experience with that. And we just became friends. She was one of those people who’s so easy to befriend, who’ll listen to you go on and on and will end up offering you all this really well thought-out, sound advice. Whenever I had a problem with dance or with a heckler here or an angry artist writing me nasty emails about a critical review, she naturally became one of the people I’d send my “Help!” email to 🙂 And of course she always had such funny, clever, thought-provoking, opionionated things to say — both in response to those emails and here on the blog. I am going to miss her so much.
It’s funny how close you can become to someone you’ve never met in person. People who say you only make superficial connections on the internet are so wrong. I am really going to miss you, Sharon.
Read the tribute to her on TVGrapevine, where she posted frequently as well, here.
BALLROOM DANCE CHANNEL’S ONLINE DANCE LESSONS
For people who are interested in learning ballroom dance and don’t have access to a studio (or do have access but would rather learn in the privacy of your home), the Ballroom Dance Channel (a website begun by several Dancing Wtih the Stars pro dancers) is offering downloadable lessons that you can watch via computer, or, apparently now via an iphone as well. I was given a little preview of two of the basic lessons: the samba and the salsa.
Continue reading “BALLROOM DANCE CHANNEL’S ONLINE DANCE LESSONS”
Anyone Want to Sponsor a Dance Category in Shorty (Twitter) Awards?
So, the first ever “Shorty Awards”, for the best Twitter microbloggers, is underway. This competition has actually received a bit of attention — in NYTimes, BBC, and MediaBistro, as well as a bunch of techie mags. According to Shorty stats, more than 23,000 nominations have taken place in the past two weeks, since the competition was launched.
The competition is broken down into several categories. Of course there wasn’t a Dance category (or a Performing Arts category, or an Arts category), but, unlike with the Bloggies and other big blog awards, the Shorties allows users to create their own. So a few of us (and there really aren’t many; most dance people are still on Facebook only and don’t use Twitter) created a dance category and then nominated each other within it. According to Shorty rules, if there aren’t enough nominees, the category will be eliminated. But they don’t define “enough.” Not that it’s an enormous deal, but it’s always nice to put dance on the map, and Twitter does seem to be the next big thing.
Anyway, according to an email I just received from the Shorty people, Epicurious is sponsoring a food category. They asked if anyone out there was interested in sponsoring any other categories, to let them know. I have no idea what all is involved in sponsoring a category, but if any big, Epicurious-style magazine (Dance, Dance Spirit, Pointe, Ballroom Dance Channel, etc. etc.) is interested, you can email them at: info at shortyawards dot com. Just thought I’d put it out there. Nominations close at midnight on December 31st. Noms are followed by a round of voting and then an awards ceremony in NYC.