Tag: New York

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Hey Man, Where Are My Peeps Tonight???

Okay, I guess I should check my local Fox listings more often 🙂 I specifically came home from work early tonight (8 p.m. — eh) to watch my favorite show and instead there are all of these men grunting like beasts and ramming their helmeted heads into each other’s bodies??? Where’s my dance!!!

Haha, it’s funny though, because the advertising is sooo different. Has anyone noticed? I don’t know what the commercials during SYTYCD usually consist of because I’ve never really paid much attention, but I know there aren’t all of these bikini-clad women and Bud adverts that seem to me to appeal to the lowest common denominator! It’s kind of sad; I guess there are real gender differences between men and women, or at least the kind of men and women who watch these respective shows. But also interesting to me is that the Fox people seem to know that most SYTYCD-watchers are women and arty, intellectual-type men, no?

Anyway, I was going to blog about this last night but got lazy and tired and had to go to bed after the show, but I’m just so proud of Pasha. I just think he’s doing so well. My favorite Latin dancer in the world has long been Slavik Kryklyvyy — and during my lessons with Pasha, I’d always bring tapes of Slavik dancing with his former partner, Karina, to the studio and ask Pasha if we could try to re-enact some of their lifts and fancy dips. He’d always be the sport and say sure, but I could tell inside he was kind of rolling his eyes — either because they were far above me and he knew he’d be struggling to hold me up 🙂 or because it’s probably just annoying for any dancer to hear how someone worships another 🙂 Pasha’s so great though for letting me drool on and on over Slavik!

Anyway, last night, during the very beginning of the show when they did their little opening half-of-a-second solos, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. He moved just like Slavik. I really think this competition has improved his dancing so much. He’s worked so hard to master all the different kinds of dance styles and choreography to the best of his ability and he now moves in ways that are just breathtaking, so beyond what he did before. I’m just so floored. And, I mean, last night’s hip hop just looked so cute on him. He’s not going to ever be some down-home, bad-ass, hipper than thou, totally hot African-American guy doing hip-hop, but he did his own cute Pasha thing with it, and it was so him and so sweet and so brilliant. And that’s what dance is all about: interpreting something in your own way, adding your style and technique, doing it to the best of your ability, and just owning it. The waltz, as well, was beautiful, as expected. And his solo: I mean, people are saying it was weird (see the comments to this post), and I totally understand what they mean, but I think it was rather ironic: I think he was saying to the judges, “Okay, you say Latin ballroom dancers suck at solos because we’re essentially partner-dancers, so here, here’s a partner-dance for you — I’ll dance with a damn mannequin.” That’s my take anyway…

And, you just never know how someone is going to hold up under pressure. Ballroom dancers dance to normally relatively small audiences — I think the biggest — definitely at Blackpool — must consist of a couple thousand??? I mean, nowhere near the millions who are scrutinizing his every move now. So, I just worry that someone will just crack under the pressure. But not any of these pros 🙂

Okay, I’m done fawning! Oh, but just one more thing: Claudia sent a link to the Blogging SYTYCD blog to some pics she found of Pasha and Anya — these are the photos of them dancing at Blackpool 2005 that I was referring to earlier! Is Anya not absolutely gorgeous!! How much do I want that black dress! Yes, Anya used to have blonde hair 🙂 She looks just bewitching with any color though, if you ask me.

Okay, in other news: I’m excited because I just received in the mail a flyer for the Martha Graham Dance Company, who will perform at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea in a couple of weeks.

I’ve only seen this company a couple of times, but what is so cool is that on the flyer is a picture of Miki Orihara, a newish contributor to my favorite dance blog, The Winger. I’m so excited to see her perform! I personally think blogs are a great way for dancers to communicate with audiences and make new fans. From her Winger posts, Miki seems so incredibly sweet. So, I can’t wait!

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I Am Goin’ to Nationals!

Just got my plane ticket for Nationals, coming up at the beginning of September, in Orlando, Florida, where I’ve never been! I was actually pondering saving money and not going this year, but my friend, Michele, blasted some sense into me: it’s going to be far too exciting a year to miss. Am now trying to fill out above form to reserve my event tickets — $70 for Saturday night comp and $60 for Thursday and Friday night each — I do wish it wasn’t so expensive, but at least they’ve moved the competition to a cheaper hotel; last year it was in swanky Palm Beach, and the only hotel in the vicinity was the, basically, ten–star one in which the competition was held.

So, no alligators this year 🙂 (Last year, I took a brief excursion from competition madness to visit the Everglades)

Anyway, this is going to be a big year. Because of a couple of important retirements, new champions will be crowned in two events: American Rhythm and American Smooth.

I’m hoping Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine, my former teacher and an excellent dancer, will do well in Rhythm. Well, I know he’ll do WELL, but will he win is my big question?!

 

Or will the king and queen of rhythm be Emmanuel’s former partner, Joanna Zacharewicz and the super cute Jose deCamps?

 

We’ll know Thursday, September 6th, late late LATE night (these competitions are definitely for night owls)

The highlight for me though is always the International Latin. It’s always a showdown between these two:

current national champs Andrei Gavriline (my favorite American man) and Elena Kruyshkova, and

 

my favorite American woman, Yulia Zagoruychenko, and her partner Max Kozhevnikov.

They also have an open-to-the-world category, in which dancers who are not American residents or citizens can compete. Last year I was just in heaven — my two favorite Latin dancers in the world competed in that category: Slavik Kryklyvyy, who is just about my favorite dancer period (excepting this one of course of course:) ) (Slavik’s dancing here with Elena Khvorova)

and Sergey Surkov (parterning Melia).

 

Oh, I hope so so SO much they compete again this year. I’m thinking Slavik may not, may have only competed last year because he’d just broken up with his old partner, Karina Smirnoff and was testing out a new partnership before the really important world comps, but I really do hope he shows at this one. Otherwise, I’m stuck waiting until next May for Blackpool to see him again…

Two people I’m fairly sure who won’t be there are the couple I always long to see of course: Pasha and Anya, who are, sigh, off to bigger and better things these days… Of course I’m so happy for them, but it is sad knowing I’ll likely not see them compete at one of these events again. I’m thrilled though that so many opportunities are opening up for professional ballroom dancers. The same couples win these competitions year after year after year. And, while it’s always fun for us spectators to watch, I can imagine how frustrating it must be to be a professional dancer knowing you’re likely going to place exactly where you have been for the past umpteenth years.

Anyway, unrelated to the USDSC, here’s some interesting stuff I found on the net:

1) Boris Willis has created a funny little “manly dance” for me, apropos of all my blogging on Bad Boys of Dance and Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers, etc. etc. etc. Thanks Boris!

2) The artist David Michalek, who made those Slow Dancing films I was going on about forever, has linked on his site to a bunch of us bloggers who covered the exhibit. So very cool to see artists taking bloggers so seriously and considering us to be our own little form of press! And, I noticed by reading down his list of bloggers that Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, posted a couple of pictures of the event on his blog, one of which intentionally includes both Midsummer Night Swing and Slow Dancing together like many of mine do. I’m glad someone else found the two events coinciding with each other interesting. He describes them, though, as “juxtaposed surreally” with each other in the photo. I’m still interested in why people think it’s odd that an exhibit of filmed dancers should coexist with people actually dancing, that people could enjoy both the physical experience of dancing themselves and of watching dance. To me it seems ideal, not surreal, to have these two events co-occur.

3) Root Magazine, based in San Francisco, is having a little thing on burlesque right now. There’s a write-up on a group that has its origins in Samba, which I found interesting. Root’s editor also deals with the feminist issue, which makes me happy.

4) And, finally, as I’m sure most people already know but I was a bit late to discover (oops 🙂 ), there’s a blog devoted to SYTYCD called, appropriately, Blogging So You Think You Can Dance. It’s really pretty good: they have links to practically everything extant on the internet dealing with the show, and they give detailed, fairly objective write-ups of what happened each night (which is great for me since I’m always out and missing it!) Thanks guys 🙂