Tag: Marcelo Gomes

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American Ballet Theater at the Guggenheim!

Tonight I went to another Works & Process event at the Guggenheim museum, this one focusing on the upcoming season of my favorite ballet company in the world, American Ballet Theater 🙂 We were treated to brief excerpts of four of the works they’ll be putting on, including, most excitingly, a brand new ballet choreographed for ABT by New York City Ballet principal dancer Benjamin Millepied called “From Here On Out.” I was hoping Millepied would be there to talk about his work, but he wasn’t; instead the composer commissioned to create the score — prodigy / wunderkind / kid genius Nico Muhly, and ABT’s orchestra conductor Ormsby Wilkins were there. Muhly really cracked me up. He’s 26 years old, recently graduated with his MFA from Juilliard (Columbia undergrad), and is already a highly sought after composer — I mean this is an orchestral work for the largest dance company in the country! He was so cute, so excited about this piece. Since I don’t know much about music, most of what he said was like overhearing a conversation in another language: the piece is a pasacaglia with a baseline melody with repetitions, the variations and entrances of which can be disguised, like a trick, which can be very provocative, etc. etc. He described the musical repetitions with variations as being like several NY city blocks, all of which span the exact same distance but which vary in terms of their flavor depending on neighborhood, which I thought was a nice little analogy. Wilkins, the conductor, told us the music to this piece was so amazing, so compelling, we should make several trips to the ballet this season to see each and every one of its performances. That way, he exclaimed excitedly, we could actually watch the ballet the first time, then the second, third and fourth sit back and listen to the sheer genius of the music! Or, if we preferred, each time we saw it, we could keep one eye on the stage, and both ears on the music!

“Yes!” Muhly shouted, grabbing the air. Since he was so young, he explained further, he was really nervous that this would be the end! Every work his last! “I mean, this may be the last ballet I ever do; I had to put everything I had into it, everything!” he said gesticulating wildly and nearly smacking moderator Wes Chapman right in the face. Anyway, we saw a very brief excerpt of the dancing, and it did look very lovely, with lots of wave-like movements, very watery, flowing, and some beautiful partnering. I can’t wait to see, oh, I mean HEAR it in full!!!

They also had some excerpts from “The Leaves Are Fading” created for ABT in 1975 by Antony Tudor, a ballet comprised of several pas de deux telling the story of a male / female relationship, at various stages. I’ve never seen this one before and I’ll be interested to see what it looks like on the big stage in costume and in full. From the excerpts I saw, it looks pretty, but without a lot of originality in the partnering — a lot of the lifts I’ve seen before and then again and again and again. I guess it is from 1975. Whenever I see a romantic pas de deux, I can’t help but compare it to something by MacMillan, and he always far outshines whatever else I’m watching. To me, he was just the master of the passionate, poetic pas de deux and I fear I’ll never feel so moved by anyone else’s work again. He was so original; no lifts, no movements were repeated, and nothing was something learned in a basic partnering class — everything was completely unique — every shape, every passionate or frenzied embrace an original form. Anyway, the nice thing about this portion of the talk was that they had two of the original dancers from the first ever production discuss what it was like to work with Tudor; they also showed some slides of that 1975 performance. The dancers — John Gardner and Amanda McKerrow — said Tudor wanted them to strive for pureness and simplicity, told them not to “put anything on top of the movement,” to keep it “simple and clean.” I interpreted this as meaning no acting, no passion, no intensity, which is likely one reason it didn’t do much for me. I like passion and drama; I like pieces that mean something and that allow a dancer to make choices that give us an in on that meaning. We’ll see how Marcelo and Julie do with it…

Then there was an excerpt from Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend,” about the tragedy of Lizzie Borden. And last, but the antithesis of least, was an excerpt from Australian choreographer Stanton Welch’s “Clear.” I have to say after Fall For Dance I was getting a bit disillusioned by ballet, thinking it, in comparison to all of the other amazing dance I saw, the form most lacking in relevancy, meaning, urgency and ability to make one think (more on that later). But “Clear” reminded me of what is so compelling about just watching something abstract that is beautiful, even if you can’t decipher the meaning. “Clear” is a male-centric ballet, with only one ballerina who’s only onstage for small portions of the ballet. And the men dance so beautifully. You just get so lost in the sublime movement. I guess you don’t normally think of men as delicate and beautiful — you think of them as virile and daring and strong, carrying a ballerina high above their heads all over stage then doing a bunch of injury-defying twisty leaps, but you don’t often see a group of men dancing together and just looking so beatific. So perhaps there is actually a gender element, a challenging of convention that I’m finding provocative in this piece. But regardless, I can’t wait to see it in full at City Center. I can just watch it again and again and again and get so lost in its beauty.

One last thing: afterward, during the reception I met Barbara, who comments frequently on my blog and on The Winger! I’m so glad she came up and introduced herself to me, along with her daughter. It was really fun chatting over wine and little finger foods about such things as how we felt about seeing David Hallberg perform for the first time: Blown Away! She’d gone to see another dancer who was out sick and reliable David took over. She hadn’t known who he was but was immediately was so taken by him that she came right home and Googled him and found our blogs 🙂 And now she’s more hooked on ballet than ever! Yay! We also agreed that Blaine Hoven, who performed in two excerpts tonight, is amazing and is soon going to be promoted. I especially love how he moves his upper body; the way he’ll scoop his shoulders forward and you can see the wave ripple all the way down to his hips. Most ballet dancers with their classical training are so straight in their upper bodies that contemporary moves like that are all but impossible. Blaine definitely has something special. Anyway, it was so great meeting and hanging out with you guys, Barbara! Thanks so much for introducing yourself to me!

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Yay, Christopher Wheeldon Saves Ballet! And Wendy Whelan :) And Pasha!

Okay, Pasha didn’t save ballet; he actually doesn’t have much of anything to do with ballet, other than that he’s touring with Danny Tidwell right now. But he’s on my mind because last night, on my way to Fall For Dance, I stopped by Dance Times Square to pick up my receipt for the long-awaited and highly anticipated “DTS Students And Friends Outing” to the Nassau Coliseum next Tuesday to see Pasha’s tour!!! Er, I mean the So You Think You Can Dance concert tour 🙂 I chatted with Melanie a bit, and she told me that they’re trying hard hard hard, fingers crossed fingers crossed, to get the SYTYCD tour powers that be to allow us all backstage. Apparently they don’t have a problem with a couple of people, but they freaked a bit when she told them we’re a group of, more like … 40. Still! Come on, we’re a bunch of ballroom dancers, how rowdy can we be??? Please SYTYCD people in power, let us in to see our friend and beloved former teacher! We promise to behave! We promise!!

Okay, on to Fall For Dance. This is a most excellent event that’s taken place at City Center in midtown for the past I think three years now. Each night for about two weeks four or five different dance companies perform an excerpt from their repertoire. Tickets are a miraculously low $10 for the whole night. So, audiences — especially young audiences — can be exposed to several new companies for only $10 a night!

Last night marked the very first performance in New York by a promising new ballet company, called Morphoses, whose mission is to bring new life and new audiences to that most poetic of dance forms that many have feared is getting a bit withery and dried up. It’s founded by 34 year-old Christopher Wheeldon, formerly the first-ever resident choreographer at New York City Ballet. Wheeldon doesn’t yet have a permanent group of dancers, but is using guest dancers from several ballet companies, mainly NYC Ballet. I’ve loved so many of Wheeldon’s pieces that I’ve seen at NYCB over the past couple of years, so I have really high hopes, as do, I think, the vast majority of ballet lovers here. Last night the company performed not a brand new work, but one created by Wheeldon a couple of years ago for NYCB, a lovely duet called “After the Rain.” I see it as kind of a bittersweet pas de deux whose theme is a couple’s attempt to patch things up and find some common ground in the aftermath of a bad fight. It was danced by two NYCB dancers, the really cute Craig Hall and celebrated prima ballerina Wendy Whelan, to Arvo Part music composed of a string and piano section, in which the light tapping of high piano keys actually sounds like rain drops. It goes without saying that Wendy is just such an incredible dancer; when I see someone like her perform I realize it’s not just a choreographer who’s responsible for the success of his or her work. She dances with such conviction, with a fully formed thought in her mind of what her movements mean so that even though she dances mostly abstract ballets, as with this one, there’s just such an intensity and drama to her performance, the audience finds a story anyway. Well, listen to her talk about her work herself. I really love that City Center has done this this year — put up these little audiocasts on their website of interviews with several of the artists whose work is being performed at FFD. Go here to see a list of participating companies arranged by date, click on “info” for a breakdown menu of companies performing on that date, then click on that company to be taken to their info page where you can see an interview. Very cool!

So last night was actually my second night at FFD. I went Wednesday night as well but didn’t have time to blog about it yesterday. Highlights for me have been, in addition to Wheeldon, Keigwin + Company, a rather hip, young modern dance ensemble. I really wish Larry Keigwin, the company’s choreographer, would do a piece or two for SYTYCD. He’s so much fun. They performed “Love Songs” — several humorous duets performed by three different couples, pieces of which I’ve seen before. Each couple had its own distinct ‘couple personality,’ and told its own humorous story of relationship angst. On first and last was a youngish charmingly awkward pair who were obviously trying rather desperately to get to know each other better. They danced to a set of Neil Diamond songs. In another set, a more sophisticated couple, danced by Keigwin himself and one of my favorite modern dancers Nicole Wolcott, performed a voluptuous witty tango-y pas de deux to clever-sounding French music. And the third couple, the most wickedly funny imo, evoked, to Aretha Franklin music, the classic struggle between male and female for the upper hand in the relationship, rendered all the cuter by their mismatched sizes — fleshy woman (Liz Riga, my second favorite female modern dancer), smaller man. At times, when the woman wore the pants, she would drag her beau around, at times lifting and carrying him around the floor, and, when Franklin belted out some of her “let me tell you how it is” lyrics, she’d bop her head at him right along with the words. Then the reverse would happen; he’d have her begging. Then tables would turn, she’d have him back in the palm of her hands (literally with those crazy lifts), but he’d become too needy; she realized she should be careful what she wished for. It was so fun, funny, evocative, and very relatable.

The other one I loved Wednesday night (along with the crowd) was Urban Bush Women‘s performance of its most famous piece “Batty Moves.” They tell you in the program notes that Batty is a Caribbean word for rear end, and the piece is a rather fun, raucous celebration of the African-American female form. The women sang rap lyrics, called out to the audience encouraging proud black women to rise, then launched into solo after solo of amazing combination African / modern dance. The audience was on its feet; a perfect ending to Wednesday night’s show.

Unfortunately, I felt really badly for ballet Wednesday night. The audience was filled with young and /or newcomers to dance and people related so much more to Keigwin and Urban Bush Women. The two ballets performed — one by Royal Ballet of Flanders — was a very abstract and rather slow-moving meditation on the passage of time and consisted of four couples dressed in generic pink leotards and white shorts doing abstract movements center stage while others dressed in black simply walked slowly around the stage’s perimeter.

The other ballet performed Wednesday night was NYCB’s small-scale one-man performance of Jerome Robbins’s “A Suite of Dances,” in which a male dancer interacts with an onstage violinist, at times almost cutely competitively. Robbins is my favorite “old time” choreographer, but he did most of his great work in the 1940s and 50s. And even though this particular piece had its premiere in 1994, the movement still had a very 50s feel to it, like Fancy Free. I love many of his ballets (particularly Fancy Free, as it’s often performed by my favorites like him and him), but I feel like every time I go to the ballet nine times out of ten they’re putting on something decades or centuries old. The audience was so much more into the aforementioned two pieces, not the ballet. I left with the feeling that ballet is encountering some serious relevancy problems. Kristin Sloan and I had an interesting little back and forth regarding “Suite” in the comments section on this post. I understand what she is saying, that’s it’s a softer sale, but I don’t know if the audience is really automatically pulled into a man’s own playful encounter with music. At least it doesn’t have the same urgency or speak to the human condition in the same way that glorifying a body Western Culture has long deemed “other” does. I don’t know, perhaps I would have had a different reaction if one of my favorites had performed the piece. There’s something about Marcelo‘s very being that is somehow always contemporary and relatable. It’s an extremely interesting discussion, though, classical ballet’s ability to speak to modern audiences, and I’m very interested to know what others think.

Anyway, that’s why I was so happy last night to see the Wheeldon. It was contemporary, meaningful, relatable, and gorgeously, poetically danced. Also standing out to me in last night’s program was the piece immediately preceding Wheeldon’s, “Inventing Pookie Jenkins” by Kyle Abraham. It began with Abraham, an African American man, sitting in a pile of white tulle, which, when he stood, was revealed to be a long skirt reminiscient to me of Matthew Bourne’s all-male Swan Lake. He moved about, first on the ground, then standing, at times jerky, at times with beautiful lyric fluidity, to a soundtrack of gunshots and ambulance or police sirens. Then the soundtrack changed to a provocative / celebratory hip hop song, “Respect Me” by Dizzee Rascal. Abraham’s movements alternated between hip hop and lyrical modern, as he seemingly tried to break free of … of what? A policeman’s custody, stereotypes superimposed on him, even his own self-image — which took on both a racial and gender significance. It really just blew me away and if you ever get a chance to see him perform, by all means do!

Tomorrow night is, sadly, the last night of the festival. I’ll be looking forward to “Quick” by Indian company Srishti, in which several ‘London businessmen’ use classical Bharantanatyam technique and South Indian rhythms to deal with today’s cut-throat corporate climate. Interesting! I’ll also be looking forward to “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine” by Camille A. Brown, which I’m dying to see just because of its name alone! (go here for Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s audio interview with Brown), Jorma Elo’s Brake the Eyes, which I blogged about before, and South African troupe Via Katlehong Dance.

Finally, I’m very excited about the illustrious Vanity Fair contributing editor James Wolcott’s commenting on my last post on Nureyev!!! Apropos of that post, apparently there was a big book party for author Kavanagh, which he attended and wrote about on his blog. Sounds fun, albeit a bit nerve-wracking! There were many members of the ‘glitterati’ there, including Jay McInerney, an abundance of “New Yorker” people, and even our favorite Sir Alastair 🙂 It made me think of the book parties I’ve been to — only two: one for my former Feminist Jurisprudence professor, Drucilla Cornell, a comparably very academic, toned-down affair, and one for a friend of a friend, Ben Schrank, at which I made a flaming fool of myself in front of favorite author Colson Whitehead, a story which I’ll have to save for another day since this post is now 500,000 words long.

Anyway, while I’m kind of on the subject, for reasons that are too ridiculously complicated to explain, I haven’t been able to set up a “recent comments” column here yet, so just want to point out that artist Bill Shannon whose work “Window” I reviewed earlier, left a comment on that post, along with a YouTube link; and Ruth left a comment on my Suzanne Farrell post inviting interested people to participate in a Farrell fan site she’s set up.

Okay, I’m finally done blabbering. More on my final FFD later this weekend 🙂

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Only Three Weeks Now!

Until City Center season!!! Yay 🙂

friend Alyssa, who is a grad student at Columbia and also has a part time job as a receptionist. She revealed to me that a few days ago, he came into the place where she was recepting. She wasn’t sure if it was him, having seen him only once, with me last year at Martha’s Vineyard, so she didn’t say anything to him. But she whispered to the person he came to see that she thought he was a dancer. The person mentioned it to him, telling him the receptionist recognized him. She said his face was aglow; he was very excited about being recognized! And that he was very warm and nice and a lovely person. I knew Marcelo was warm and nice and lovely! And I knew he appreciated his fans! I love him so 🙂 I should be his publicist…

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Sir Alastair Speaks!

But he didn’t say much. And I should probably stop calling our new(ish) Chief Dance Critic ‘Sir Alastair’ and come up with a different nickname; he came across more as a jolly, down-to-earth commoner than a lord. Anyway Mr. Macaulay, along with dance writer and professor Mindy Aloff, addressed a crowd of mainly students, critics, and dance insiders last night at Barnard College. He spoke of: his move to New York (he’s still not completely moved into his new apartment and has no television, allowing him neatly to evade the question of the moment — what about all this dance stuff on tv?); what he misses about London (his garden, the West End’s plethora of Shakespeare plays); how he felt about becoming the NY Times’ chief dance critic (it was a welcome mid-life change, he and his audience at the Financial Times in London had grown a bit tired of each other, he was worried his appointment wouldn’t be well taken since he was from out of town — and rightly so, why should a critic not be homegrown?– people laughed at this, not sure why); his most trying life moments (serving jury duty and having to announce the verdict to a raucous courtroom, being charged with taking indecent pictures of minors after an officer saw him photographing frolicking children on a beach– don’t worry, it all worked out well as charges were eventually dropped); his dance training (ballroom, reading ballet technique books and sitting in on ballet classes); his favorite artists (Shakespeare and Mozart), etc. etc. — things on that level. It was nice to see his face and hear his voice, and it did make you realize he was human despite his sometimes harsh reviews, which was probably the point of the whole thing, but it was hardly the in-depth discussion of issues important to the dance world that I was hoping for.

During the Q & A, a student asked him if he felt that bad reviews played any part in declining dance audiences. He thought for a moment and answered that he didn’t know how much of an effect reviews really had on audiences. He thought his reviews had absolutely no effect on that of American Ballet Theater, as the Met Opera House was far from packed each week during the their summer season regardless of what he’d said in his most recent review. He also felt as a critic a certain degree of harshness was necessary, as it was the critic’s responsibility to “hav(e) a passionate subjective response” to a work. Wendy Perron, editor in chief of Dance Magazine, after noting that he’d largely written subjective reviews frequently inserting his own voice, asked if he’d ever taken a more objective tone. He responded that he wasn’t sure of the difference between subjective and objective with respect to criticism, but felt that his writing was a combination of the two. He viewed the objective part as describing what he saw, the subjective to tell why it mattered.

Eva sweetly asked him in her beautifully mellifluous voice whether he was going to explore the entire New York City dance scene and all the wonderful things it has to offer. He brightened considerably and said he’d just discovered “downtown” and had gone to a performance entitled something like “Accounting” and really liked it. He sounded authentic and it was actually rather cute. I don’t think he knows he got reemed for his review of that 🙂 Countercritic guy asked him something along the lines of whether he had to consider something beautiful in order to value it. I thought it was an interesting question and Macaulay did too, and even said so. “But I’m not sure how to answer it,” he replied. He said he liked it when a choreographer challenged his notion of beauty as Mark Morris has on occasion. Which I thought was a good answer. He mentioned other such choreographers, but I’ve forgotten who– I’d put my notebook away by then and was packing to go.

Hmm, what else do I have in that notebook?… He takes a few notes during performances but usually they don’t amount to much. He was first seriously impressed with the New York Times when he picked up a copy of the paper in London and saw a review of a classical dance performance on the front page. Such a thing would never have happened in a London paper, he said, as concert dance wasn’t considered “sexy.” He doesn’t regularly read others’ reviews of a piece because he doesn’t want them to influence his own, although his favorite critics are the New Yorker’s Joan Acocella (who has an “engaging” “shrewd” voice that, even if you disagree with, “you really want to spend time with”) and Wall Street Journal’s Robert Greskovic, who has a gift for detailed description (and is his good friend and sends him copies of his reviews). He said dance and music criticism were very challenging because the dialog one had with the piece was not a direct or natural one (as with a play) but forced the critic to translate from one language into another. I thought that was nicely stated.

That’s all. It was about an hour and twenty minutes altogether. It was okay, just wish the discussion would have gone deeper.

I came home and watched the video I’d taped of Dancing With the Stars. I’ll blog about it more tomorrow — am too tired now — but, very briefly: ridiculously, he hasn’t even danced yet and I am totally in love with Helio 😀 Does Marcelo have that same accent 🙂 🙂 😀 Am also in dancerly love with Mark Ballas 😀 How great were the perfs by those “girls” — Cheetah and Spice?! Whoa! And that opening pro number: you can’t say the ballroom dancing, despite Pasha and Anya, is better on So You Think You Can Dance! I wish there were more pro numbers like that! You can tell how different the demographic is for this show as compared with SYTYCD though — they have a lot of older contestants here. I thought Marie Osmond was a bit of a goof, but charming in her own way, and Jane Seymour was sweetheart 🙂 Could some ballroom insider please smack Chmerkovskiy for me for that self-description: “I’m known as the bad boy of the ballroom. But how can I be so bad when it feels so good?” 🙂 Okay, more tomorrow, I’m off to bed…

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"The New York City Dance Community"

dance community NY group photo in bryant park

I don’t know who in the dance community annoys me more: those who consider themselves hipper than thou and call themselves “downtown,” or those who consider Ballet the only form of dance.

Spurred by Eva’s suggestion, I went to Bryant Park this afternoon to take part in the first ever group photograph of the New York dance community, organized by Belgian online dance initiative Sarma and local dance collective Chez Bushwick. Everyone who considered themselves part of the dance community was invited. Since I’m a dance blogger, ballet and modern fan and amateur ballroom dancer, I decided that included me.

When I arrived I spotted a robust, jovial-looking, curly-haired man wearing a t-shirt that announced he was a member of the photo op, and headed toward him. I kind of look like Sylvia Plath but shorter and with darker hair, or maybe Suzanne Farrell but not anywhere near as pretty 🙂 I have long hair and was wearing a ballet-y black bouncy-skirted sundress bow-tied at the waist by a red silk scarf, and sandals whose straps were topped with embroidered flowers. I was carrying an oversized pink bag bearing books. After making brief eye contact with me, the man peered around me to another woman and began greeting her, until I stopped right in front of him.

“Oh hi,” he said to me, surprised. “Um, we’re actually taking a photograph of the New York dance community here. Would you like to participate?” he asked hesitantly.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I’m here for,” I said.

“Oh. Oh good,” he said handing me a piece of paper announcing the rules (you gave them permission to use the photos of you on the internet and in magazines, yadda yadda). He also told me after the picture was taken, I was to sign my name on a roster of attendees and would receive a sticker entitling me to a free drink at one of the concession stands. He then told me they were running a little behind schedule and directed me to take a seat at one of the tables in an adjacent elevated area along the path.

I did as he suggested. Turned out to be the perfect little perch for me since its elevation gave me a good view of the crowd. I enjoy being an observer. Plus, I was having a bad hair day and was a little worried of running into Marcelo or David or one of my ballet heartthrobs, so could be on the lookout and duck for cover if need be. I had nothing to worry about as it turned out: there wasn’t a soul from the ballet world there.

Many people began arriving, and I didn’t know anyone. Finally, I spotted a fellow blogger in the crowd. As he was making his way to the tabled area after receiving his instruction paper, I waved to him.

“What are you doing all the way over here?” he said as he approached. I didn’t really understand the question so responded with a quizzical look.

“We don’t ever see each other,” he then announced, “because you’re a snobby elitist who only goes to uptown things. I go to all the cool downtown things.”

I just stared at him, not really knowing what to say. He laughed. Apparently I was supposed to take it as a joke.

“Well, I’m going to go around and meet new people while you sit here like a wallflower.” And he was off.

I kind of sat there stupefied. I think I saw Eva, but after that didn’t feel like getting up to say hello. Maybe some other time. I saw Jonah Bokaer, one of the organizers of the event and a dancer with Merce Cunningham. He’s rather cute in person 🙂 He was going around giving people who looked like they belonged small bottles of water. That didn’t include me. He looked right through me when he passed directly in front of my table even though I had my piece of paper with the instructions prominently displayed. A twenty-something woman with dark hair bearing a green “press pass” around her neck was going around with a notepad. She stopped at a table in front of me at which sat a man and two women with really cool-looking dreadlocks. I overheard them tell her they were retired dancers, now choreographers. I wondered if the interviewer was Gia.

About half an hour later, an announcer muttered something over a microphone that barely worked. From the crowd’s actions, I figured he was telling people to line up to his left. I followed suit, but kind of wish I’d just have stayed where I was to take pictures. I got a space all the way in the back of the crowd. I could hear him now telling taller people to move to the back, but apparently the average man over six feet either doesn’t understand English or has no sense of his size in comparison to others. Or else “downtown” male dancers are just rude. Some tiny women in the back brought over some chairs and stood on them. Soon, a security guard was in on the action ordering the people to get off the chairs. They paid him no mind. He yelled louder. They continued to ignore him. I couldn’t believe their audacity. And it did look dangerous: the plastic chairs were very insubstantial and the ground was really rocky and unstable. I wouldn’t stand on such a thing and these were dancers. He walked right up to one of them and yelled in her face to get off the chair or else. This was far more exciting than the photographer up front!

“Oh come on, officer” she whined like a character in Rent. Thankfully the last picture was snapped and the whole experience over, so there was no further trouble.

Good thing about being in the back was I was first in line to record my name. That of course didn’t mean I was actually first to do so. As the man handed me pen and paper, someone reached over my head and snatched the whole right out of my fingers, bumping me on the crown with the back board. Other pens and rosters were handed about, arms flying feet stomping everywhere. About fifteen minutes later I was finally able to scribble my name, identity (blogger), place of birth and email address, and receive my sticker, which I promptly took to the nearest concession stand.

“What’s this thing?” the clerk snapped.

“We’re supposed to get a free drink?” I said.

She laughed shaking her head. “I don’t know nothin’ about this.”

“The dance community gathering, over there,” I pointed to the raucous crowd bombarding the man with the rosters and stickers.

“I don’t know and I don’t wanna know,” she spit.

I guess it was a fitting end to a discomfiting experience. Weird, I was just saying how good it felt to be part of the dance community.

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Doh!

Celebrity sighting, celebrity sighting! Of course I would have to be looking like a complete dumbass. I’d just been at the street fair and was making a quick run to the drug store a few blocks away. It was the first coldish day of the not-yet-fall and a bit windy out, so I had a runny nose and hair flying out of my ponytail and scattered haphazardly all over my face and head. Hadn’t washed my hair this morning because wasn’t planning a big day and so make that greasy hair scattered all over face and head… Plus, I’d just finished eating some street food bought at the local Italian restaurant’s stand, so likely had Alfredo sauce somewhere on my cheek, and perhaps a mashed pea too… Thank God it wasn’t Marcelo!!!

And dancers — at least the principals — always know when you recognize them. You look at them and they look right back at you, and you try to look away but you can’t help doing a double-take and they lock eyes with you again on the double! So embarrassing when you’re shy and too timid to say hello, and especially at a time when you look like a total dumbass.

Anyway, he has really beautiful eyes. But really kind of frighteningly intense, but in a beautiful way.

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Ohhh, Vaidotas Vaidotas Vaidotas!

I know, it doesn’t exactly have the ring of “Oh, Marcelo Marcelo Marcelo!” does it? Hehe, oh we so love our Eastern European dancers and their ever so fun names (and their ingenuousness at not even thinking to Americanize them…)! But, though he looks nothing like him, Vaidotas Skimelis (whom I’ve been on about here and there throughout the comp) actually kind of reminds me of my favorite ballet dancer, mainly because of their large sizes and the kind of virility that almost naturally entails. I mean, large bone structure is difficult with Latin because speed is so important to the style — and certainly Vaidotas’s jive will never look anything like winner Max Kozhevnikov’s. But still, I like his size — as I do Marcelo’s — there’s something so sexy and romantic about a big hunk of a guy, right 🙂 Plus, difference is good! Who wants all the dancers to look the same whether it’s Latin or ballet — boring, I say!

One of the not horrible things about Pasha and Anya leaving (at least for now) the competition world is that it made room for Vaidotas and his lovely plum-haired partner, Jurga Pupelyte, to be seen, to make it to the top ranks, where they most definitely belong. I only wish he didn’t live in California! As one of the only non-tiny Latin dancers, he’d be perfect size-wise for me as a teacher. But of course I shouldn’t even be thinking of private lessons because they are too expensive! So, good rather that he lives all the way out in California…

Anyway, here are a few more pics of my favorite couples and other stuff I did in Florida:

Emmanuel Pierre Antoine and Julia Gorchakova, a super fun couple with creative routines and great show quality whom I wanted to take American Rhythm, but who ended up placing third.

Matt and Karen Hauer, semifinalists in American Rhythm and second-place finishers in the National Mambo championships, who teach at my former studio. He does do a mean Mambo, I think second only to Jose DeCamps’s, and they’re young and in love and cute and their dancing reflects all that 🙂

America’s sweethearts, Anna Mikhed and Victor Fung, second-place, as always, in International Standard. Okay, they may not be as perfect technique-wise as Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova, but they’re the king and queen of charm, those two.

The adorable Anna Trebunskaya (from Dancing W/ Stars) and her new partner, Pavlo Barsuk. They placed sixth in the finals, which is excellent for them.

Hehe, am I a paparazzi in the making or what? Here’s her hubby Jonathan Roberts (the brown-haired guy here, also of DWTS) intently watching her. She’d look out in the audience for him and he’d give her a little wave and a wink and she’d smile like she was on cloud nine. So cute!

Very sexy Latin couple that I like a lot, Nikolai Shpakov and Tatiana Banko. Friends keep telling me Nikolai (who resides in NY) would be a good teacher for me … But of course I am not listening since I can’t afford ballroom lessons anymore…

Aw, the just-displaced now former National Latin champs Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruychkova. They are an immensely good couple and no one flies across that dance floor like Andrei. He’s truly beautiful to watch; so slender and light-footed his feet sometimes look inches above the parkay. And I certainly don’t think it’s impossible for them to get their title back at some point in the future; I just think others need to be given a chance as well. And this was simply Max and Yulia’s year.


Speaking of the new champs… look at Yulia’s gorgeous arch! How is she even supporting herself like that?

An American Smooth couple I like, Eulia Baranovsky and Stephen Dougherty. I actually thought they’d win, but they placed fourth or fifth. So, I was off on that! I think that couples like these two and the winners J.T. Damalas and Tomasz Mielnicki are bringing the life back into what was becoming a rather staid and boring style. The Smooth championships, placed between Latin heats though they were, were actually really exciting to me for once.

Another Latin couple, Andrei Strinedko and Olga Kinnard, who caught my eye big time this comp. A lot of women wearing these shiny gold dresses this year… What I really love about this photo though is that they are doing my very favorite Latin dance step in all of life, a Samba roll in shadow position. From here, they’ll arch far back together in beautiful unison, then they’ll bend way forward from the waist and then back again making a circle with their upper bodies while doing a hip-rolling side step across the dance floor. It’s hard because you have to be in perfect harmony or you’ll step all over each other’s feet or bop him in the crotch with your butt or whack him upside the face with your arm (I know all of this because…) , but gorgeous when done properly 🙂

Another proud paparazzi photo of mine 🙂 This is Nick Kosovich who designs the dresses for Dancing W/ Stars (and he appeared in the show a couple of seasons ago — partnered Tatum O’Neal). When he was on the show I thought he was a bit nerdy-looking, but after seeing him in person at the last few competitions, I realized how good-looking this man actually is. Tall dark and handsome Aussie! He’s retired from competition but at Blackpool did this James Bond-styled showcase with his partner, who I’m pretty sure is his wife 🙁 and they really blew me away, which is highly odd since they’re Standard dancers. Anyway, the fact that he is so gorgeous makes my former stupid “breast” experience with him all the more embarrassing… (he was the “Austrailian guy” / “LeNique guy” — as I later found out — in this post).

More Latin favorites of mine — Delyan Terziev and Boriana Deltcheva, who placed third, moving up a whole three notches from last year! Good for them; they’ve been working very hard and they deserve it. To me, this couple is one of the most artistic. She moves just like a spider and she’s just bewitching. She kind of reminds me of a Latin, raven-haired version of ballerina Janie Taylor, with her kind of ethereal, goddess-like sexiness.

Andrej Skufca and Katarina Venturini from Slovenia who competed in the Open-to-the-World Latin category on Saturday night. This is the competition I was hoping my favorites Slavik Kryklyvyy and Sergey Surkov would participate in, as they did last year, but oh well. Andrej and Katarina (4th in the world in Latin, right behind Slavik & partner Elena) were the only top couple to compete, so it was rather boring; they easily took first. For some reason, Max & Yulia didn’t stay and compete in this category, like they did last year. Not sure what happened. Maybe they were too tired. I hope no one was injured … that’s happened before in competition, couples injured during last-minute practice. Anyway, I loved Katarina’s bright emerald dress. Looked spectacular with her carrotty hair (which I personally love, though I know that opinion is most definitely not shared by all 🙂 )


Look who this is!! They had the hallway leading down to the ballroom lined with blown-up pictures of former champions. This one’s of Tony Meredith and Melanie Lapatin (choreographers from SYTYCD) in their heyday, circa 1995! Look how young he is — such a little cutie!


Ewwwwww!!!! It was some ungodly hour of the morning and comps were still going on (judging by the rows behind us, I think many departed the ballroom already, save us insane diehards) and I, not being a late night owl, am half dead here, no makeup and flat as a pancake hair thanks to the lovely Florida humidity. Plus the angle gives me a quintuple chin. Oh well. Michele, my roommate for the comp, is being herself 🙂

Okay, I am almost done, I swear. I took one day off from comp-spectating and went to Epcot Center. I’ve never been to Disney World though, growing up in Phoenix, went often to nearbyish Disneyland as a child. So, of all of the parks, I chose Epcot because I figured, not to sound like a dork, but I so loved the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney as a kid, I figured I’d have the most patience and respect for one that introduces children to the world beyond our borders. But I found it disappointing, and this picture epitomized why. It was so Disney-fied — the cartoons completely overtook the exhibits. Everything was so cheesy, not at all educational. “Viva Donald”?? Great way to introduce kids to a foreign language. Maybe I’m misremembering things and my child’s mind over-glorified them, but, a bunch of silly dolls though they were, that Small World ride really made me promise myself that I’d go to Argentina, Holland, Spain, etc. one day. The dolls were so sweet and their costumes so beautiful. And everyone singing that song in their native language sounding so mellifluous — definitely made me so curious to hear more (and I did take a ridiculous amount of foreign language classes in high school and college). And who wouldn’t be enthralled with Africa by that nutty laughing hyena! I don’t know, maybe if I went on that ride again, I’d feel differently, but it definitely gave me an appreciation for foreign culture as a child. I can’t imagine this doing the same at all. Kids are too busy laughing at the stupid cartoon characters, and the adults buying all the horrendously cheesy souvenirs.

A great celebration of Italian culture for sale. It was like you paid $75 just to be able to buy a bunch of souvenirs. I don’t get it…
This guy demonstrating how to extract pearls from oysters in the Japanese souvenir shop was okay. Demo was interesting and the guy pretty flamboyant.

Returning to NY. Could they have blurted over the loudspeaker one more time at the Orlando airport that the alert level had been raised to orange / four, and we were all to exercise great caution in leaving bags unattended, etc. And then there had to be some crazy hurricane off the coast of North Carolina. I’m a nervous flyer man! Fellow fearful flyers have recommended Valium, but I don’t like drugs. I much prefer alcohol. In case of emergency, you can always talk yourself out of being drunk; not the same if knocked out cold by prescription medication! This wine, by Best Cellars, was pretty good.

Anyway, okay I’m done, I’m done! Thanks for humoring me and my ballroom fetish, you guys 🙂

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A Little Overwhelmed!

Each day yet more of the splendid Fall Season’s offerings flood my mailbox. So exciting! But a little nervewracking, given all the things I have to order tickets for! This is why I so love NY though — that unique combination of intoxicating stimulation and potentially migraine-inducing excess… (or in my case, TAC-headache-inducing excess … am trying to tell myself I do NOT feel one coming on, but am armed with meds just in case…)

Well, I guess this is what the holiday is for, to breathe deeply, lounge around, rest up for the happy hubbub to come 🙂 Happy Labor Day, everyone, have a long and relaxing weekend!