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…
I May Be a Latin Dancer But I am Not a D Cup!!!
Yikes. My showcase is in two days and my dressmaker is just now making the dress. I had wanted a ballet-style dress, much in the style of the gown Alessandra wears in the balcony pas de deux in Romeo and Juliet. But the fabric she chose, while beautiful, does not seem to be conducive to that style – or else she’s not sure exactly how to make it, being a Latin dressmaker. But the weirdest thing is that she seems to want to put these humongous bra cups into it. I told her they were too big – I’m a petite person and a definite B cup and I’ll look like Pamela Anderson. But she insisted they are Latin cups, and are what are used in Latin. The Pamela Anderson look might work if the dancer was staying on the ground and remaining upright, but I’m doing theater arts stuff – I’m going to go shooting right out of that bra during my fish dive. A guy who saw her fitting me said, “Don’t worry, the guys will love it.†Yeah, right. But seriously, she would not put a smaller cup into the bra, said she didn’t have any, this was the smallest a Latin cup came. Then, she said, “And besides, Latin women are proud of their bodies.†What? I’m not not proud – I’m just not a D. She finally said if I found other cups she’d be amenable.
So, next day at work, I called the ballroom dress store LeNique. An Australian guy answered. Embarrassed, I asked him if they sold bra cups. He said no, they had their own supply for their own dresses but didn’t sell them individually, although he thought some place in the Garment District did. I asked him if he knew where that place was, and he began thumbing through a phone book. Very nice guy. I felt badly about asking him to recommend another retailer, so I mumbled, “I’m sorry, it’s just that it’s kind of an emergency.†My office-mate started cracking up, and cried, “Help, I have a blind date tonight and he thinks I’m a double D; I need stuffing fast.†I shushed her, but LeNique guy overheard and started laughing. Anyway, he did end up finding a place for me in the Garment District – so thank you LeNique guy! I went on my lunch hour, and they had every cup size imaginable. Their cups actually looked a bit small. So I bought one B and one C. I mean, one pair of each, of course… I brought them to my dressmaker, and she rolled her eyes, and said they were not the right shape – too circular, instead of demi, and repeated that they weren’t Latin. She finally said she’d use whatever I wanted at this point.
I don’t think the dress is going to work out because the material’s just not right. But I still don’t get the Latin versus ballet thing – every Latin dancer is the same cup size? Stacey Keibler’s cups were smallish, weren’t they?