Tag: Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

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Washington Heights

I spent much of this and last weekend up in Washington Heights / Inwood, the area north of Harlem and just below the Bronx on the west side of Manhattan. I have several friends who live up there and are trying to convince me to move. It’s really beautiful, much of it inhabited by Dominican immigrants. A-Rod was born there and his father once had a shoe store somewhere in that neighborhood – I really wanted to know where that was!

The top photo is taken more from the Inwood area (the northernmost part of Manhattan), and you can see George Washington bridge, which connects Manhattan to New Jersey. The river is the Hudson.

Kids playing baseball in Inwood park. The diamonds were really full and the teams looked serious! Like a training ground for little athletes 🙂

I found the best Mexican restaurant in the city, Papasito, on Dyckman Street, the border between Inwood and Washington Heights. It’s a funny area – there will be a very chi chi block, even a gated community – which I don’t know I’ve seen anywhere else in NYC, and then right across the street a far less privileged area. There was this tiny section of Dyckman with these five-star restaurants, such as this one. And right across Broadway, totally different story. Anyway, I had the best chili relleno I have ever had in my life at Papasito!

Here’s my view from the restaurant.

The restaurant’s the one with the green lettering in the middle of the picture.

And this is down the east side of Dyckman. I met the sweetest Dominican man working in a bodega where I bought a bottle of water. So polite! He kind of reminded me of a Dominican version of Dolores’s father in Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love 🙂

This is Fort Tryon park. Beautiful! Lots of kind of scary-looking cliffs though. It leads up to the Cloisters, an old monastery that houses some of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Medieval collection.

The Cloisters.

Dominican pic-nic-ers in Fort Tryon park, right across the street from Papasito. The Dominicans really know how to throw a party – they had bouquets upon bouquets of colorful balloons everywhere, lots of food, and merengue music!

This is from the southern part of Washington Heights, in Riverbank park, which is actually in Harlem. So many parks in Manhattan along the river that I never knew of.

More parties in the park, back in the upper end of Fort Tyron park.

The Cloisters gardens / lower end of Fort Tryon park.

Staircase with murals and graffiti painted along the side, leading down from Fort Tryon park, lower end, to Broadway.

I found this really cute arty area right underneath George Washington bridge!

Cute little restaurants and wine shops. And books and art for sale outside on the street.

Off the arty street, a staircase leading up to one of the exclusive, gated areas.

One of the “exclusive” buildings – i.e. there were “private” signs everywhere. Beautiful building though.

Another park along the Hudson. Men playing dominoes, others relaxing on park benches.

Children playing in sprinklers.

A nice, middle-class area in the middle of the Heights, around Columbia Medical School.

Ditto.

This is taken back in my current neighborhood. You can see how far up the bridge is, if you can make it out in the distance. Overcast day!

Cute little outdoor cafe I just found right in my area, on the riverfront. Never knew it existed!

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America’s Ballroom Challenge

 

 

So, what did you guys think about the show?

I was worried I’d be mad about the new format but I really ended up thinking this one worked better, at least for TV, even if it is fake. For people who’ve never been to a regular ballroom dance competition before, the competition is really the first parts, the group dances (as shown in the picture above) — that they severly truncated here, showing only a small part of one dance for each of the four categories. But I do think the showdances work so much better for TV. On TV the excitement of the group dances is really lost. But it’s so stunning to see, to feel, all these couples whizzing by you, spinning, shaking their hips at lightening speed, to hear the crowds cheer, scream really, while all the couples try to look so glamorous and graceful, the raucous audience making it seem more like a boxing match. I encourage everyone who hasn’t been to go to a real competition.

Anyway, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko won — they’re second in the world in Latin, and I’m wondering, after watching them in November (which is when this show was taped), if they could overtake the current champs, Poland’s Michael Malitowski and Joanna Leunis, at some point. I loved their Cha Cha tonight (with her in the sizzling red and him in the open tux jacket), their Samba, and their combo routine to the pure percussion (which I love — I love that they’re not afraid to use that kind of music). I love how they vary the rhythms in an often unpredictable way, I love his speed and how she makes original shapes with her body, especially when she tucks in her stomach, rolls her shoulders, and curls her pelvis, looking almost like a cobra. Or is it a python? The snake that lifts its front part and expands its head, ghost-like, before attacking?… (I don’t really want to do a google image search) Anyway, I really really love them– Yulia and Riccardo.

Since the two top Standard couples — Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova and Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed — were at another competition (I think in the U.K.) at the same time as the Ohio Star Ball and didn’t compete, it was really a toss up who would win. I thought Linas Koreiva and Liene Apale would win — I thought they danced the best — though I loved the balletic look to Mikhail Avdeev and Anastasia’s beautiful waltz. I love how in all their routines

— oooh, Oscar Hijuelos (one of my favorite writers, author of Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love) is on Larry King, PBS! He is WAY the hell younger than I thought… —

sorry,  just had to say that. 🙂 Anyway, I love how Mikhail and Anastasia’s dances were all basic, yet so well done, so beautifully executed. Shows how dance is more about excellent technique and lush, expansive movement than tricks. And I love that they used classical music instead of going for the modern and poppy.

Totally predictable of course that Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose DeCamps would win Rhythm — and how much do I love that there are Joses in the world — how hot was that mambo! And that John Travolta! He is truly one of the most charismatic dancers in all of ballroom.

And Jonathan Roberts and Valentina were lovely. I do believe she is the powerhouse of that partnership. She really shines and her form is so splendid. His is less so (and I caught him pigeon-toed a few times), though he is a solid support for her, which is mainly what the man is supposed to be. I liked J.T. Thomas and Tomasz Mielnicki’s snazzy Foxtrot, though I’ve seen both couples in competition before and can see how Jonathan and Valentina took the whole without winning the showdance portion.

Oh, before I forget, what did you guys think of that Swan Lake dance at the beginning of the program, by Mikhail Zharinov and Galina Detkina in the American Smooth division? It was one of the very first ones, if you can remember. If you didn’t notice — and the announcers didn’t point it out — she was wearing a long white glove on her right arm, with a swan’s face and beak painted on the thumb and fingers. So, the way she was holding that arm up and bending her wrist like she did, when you see it up close (as I did at Champions of the Dance recently here in NY at Town Hall), her whole body really does look like a swan, with her hand the head, her arm the neck, and her skirt — when pulled out and held to the back (either by him or by her) — the body. I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it when I saw it live — whether I thought it was cheesy or pretty, and, after seeing it from further afar, on TV, I choose the latter.

Other things: I love my Vaidotas Skimelis 🙂 Dressed as Mozart! Or was it Louis the XVI and Jurga Pupelyte Marie Antoinette? What a big fun charming goof. But an excellent dancer. Their dance was rather humorous but they still had very nice form and some creative choreography and he had some jumps and stylized runs that showed he really could be a balletic, graceful dancer, large as he is.

And why do I have no problem envisioning Boriana Deltcheva as a cat! She’s so feline already; I love the way she climbed on Delyan’s back and wrapped her legs around his waist. She’s such a tall, thin thing, she looked just like a sleek black catwoman. She has the ideal body. She put a note up on Facebook a while ago advertising that she was selling some of her costumes and I had to laugh — like everyone the planet over wishes they could fit into them 🙂

Another highlight: Gherman Mustuc and Iveta Lukosiute’s Carmen tango in the Standard. They always come up with such creative showdance ideas. Such great music, and her red dress was gorgeous.

Pavlo Barsuk and Anna Trebunskaya: how insanely intense was that Paso! I love intense Pasos! And he is the ultimate in the intensity department, believe me – -if you even see him dance live, he does this thing where his eyes grow really wide; he looks like he could devour you for lunch — or his competition anyway. Such a funny contrast to her sweet face and toothy chipmunk smile.

And of course Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova — sorry, I’m really into the Latins, obviously. They recently danced at the Dance Times Square showcase and I totally fell for them. He is so damn fast and slick and precise. And they ended one of their dances at the DTS show with that ending trick they did tonight in the Cha Cha, if you remember it — where he flips and drops her, catching her right before she’s about to hit the floor, face down. DTS audience went WILD.

Anyway, enough from me. What did you guys think?