Here’s a little thing I wrote for HuffPo on this week’s DWTS. It’s not really what I wrote here though, a run-down of the show, but is more focused on how food and dance just don’t go together, sadly…
Go Rocco, Please!
I don’t know why but I really don’t want him to get the boot! Probably because I’m a pig and want to see what tasty-looking concoctions he’ll come up with each week to feed (the uninterested; she’s a dancer after all) Karina.
Susan and Tony’s Jive: cute, but she looked very stiff up there. She tried hard to get the footwork right but she did miss some steps and had a hard time keeping up and it was obvious. Music was a bit too fast. She had a problem getting into the sailor shuffles for some reason — I don’t know if she forgot the step, and they were separated, so he wasn’t leading her at that point; she could only follow his example, or if she just had a hard time getting into the quick jumpy shuffling rhythm of it, but it was noticeable. Judges were WAY the heck too nice. She’s cute though and I sympathize with her difficulty learning, with her difficulty learning to “think” with your body not your brain.
Lance and Lacey’s Viennese Waltz: aw, sweet, well acted, nice, fluid movement, decent rise and fall but he really didn’t roll through the foot, so it looked a bit forced. Very traditional choreographically, though; Len can’t fault them on that this week. Sometimes his lines were awkward — he kind of threw his arms a bit over-far when they split and opened out to the audience, and toes were pointed oddly inward at points. But everyone does that — at least every man. Everyone needs a beginning ballet class!
Maurice and Cheryl’s Jive: so much fun. He is so rhythmic, great swivels, great jive kicks, perfect mood and musicality. And excellent tricks – -the jumping over her at the beginning, the back and forth through the legs. Cheryl can only get away with that with a real athlete.
Rocco and Karina’s Viennese Waltz: first of all, best practice trick so far: blindfolding him. He was so much better, so much more musical blindfolded. Took away his self-consciousness and his (completely normal) tendency to think with mind over body, to think the steps rather than feel them. The routine: adorable “Pussycat” song — who’d have ever thought of it but Karina? Great footwork on the basics — his basics — the one-two-three forward-side-close-backward-side-crosses were actually really splendid. Good reverse turn, as Len noted. Those aren’t easy. Lovely rise and fall action. And he’s a very strong partner, the way he swung her around on the floor sweep was masterly. In general, he wasn’t really polished and I can see Bruno’s “lump of mashed potatoes” remark, but he’s not a professional dancer for cry-eye! Give him a break. But but but, where was the food?…
Warren and Kym’s Viennese Waltz: ah, so romantic! And who knew the big guy could move so elegantly! I love how he grabbed her skirt at the beginning, pulled her toward him. And so smooth — he was beautiful in all of the partnering, all of the basics. When they split and he moved on his own, he sped it up a little, did a little skip, and overdid it a bit, but on the partnering, in closed position, it was just beautiful. And loved the little R&Bish arm wave at that one point.
Cody and Julianne’s Jive: well, not a whole lot of actual dancing. Mostly cute stylistics (playing the guitar on her leg, twice) and tricks (moving her around the floor in spins and slides, supporting her in cartwheel, etc.). But when he did dance, he was pretty good. He kept up speed-wise and got the footwork all right, though it wasn’t tremendously precise, but it was there. Cute western theme. And he did a lot better than I would have thought from that hilariously bad practice.
Toni and Alec’s Viennese Waltz: Ooh, costumes! Probably controversial, but I loved them. Wow, I didn’t want that to end. Loved the heavy metal-esque “Fur Elise.” No one could have pulled that off but her in that crazy gown, that music. And love his blousy shirt. He kind of looked Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. I was honestly looking at her though — and I always have a hard time focusing on the amateur. Her arms — that free arm on the steps in shadow position, was just like a feathery-tipped little quill pen, a flickering flame. Seriously, perfect line. And that spin was gorgeous. Perfect leg in attitude! Like a ballerina. She is such a pro — I’d never know she wasn’t an experienced dancer. And yet I really believe she isn’t. Thank you Carrie Ann — someone has a sense of humor on that judging panel. The V.W. was scandalous in its day, deliciously so!
Cloris and Corky’s Jive: Okay, so basically the youngest and the oldest contestants didn’t do much dancing. Although in Cloris’s case, it was understandable. I wondered how she was going to keep up to speed on Jive. So, a lot of running around the floor, and some basics, but in single Swing steps not triple, which is fine with Swing, and fine really, just not … Jive. But, you know… She’s cute. And they really had some fun and surprisingly well-executed tricks — when she managed to spin him around on one leg, and those ending crab-crawl things? Very good! I think I missed what happened with the wig though…
Brooke and Derek’s Viennese Waltz: Wow, bad fight in practice. I’ve so been there. Younger male dancer (male or female actually) who’s been dancing from age two and doesn’t understand how you can’t remember something he thinks simple so he basically calls you stupid. Not good, and I think I’ve lost some respect for Derek. I know he’s under pressure but that’s no excuse for saying she has a “lazy mind.” Anyway, very nice dance. She’s a natural in everything so far. She was so fluid, so lyrical. I love the close, almost Argentine-tango-like hand-hold at the beginning. I haven’t seen that with the Waltz. Splendid levity, rise and fall, she was really nearly perfect. At some points I think she rushed it a slight bit, with the openings out, and her lines didn’t have quite the clarity of Toni’s, but it was almost unnoticeable. She didn’t look as happy as before — there was something missing on her face, a spark was gone, likely from that nasty fight. But she held in there like a pro and was really just luminous.
Aw, poor Misty. She sounded like she was going to cry. Imagine being an Olympic gold-winning athlete, never seriously hurting yourself, only to shatter your achilles tendon doing the Lindy Hop. See, ballroom dancing is most definitely a serious sport!
So, overall, my favorite of the night: Toni and Alec’s VW.
DWTS: Brooke, Toni, Warren & Cody R My Faves This Wk
Okay, I almost just spit out my wine when Cody looked all innocently at the camera and said of the Rhumba, “This dance is about sensuality, sex, passion, and to be honest,” cute shrug and conscious laugh here, “I don’t have all that much life experience.” He’s too funny! He did really well — the attitude was there, he supported her very well in all of those rather complicated (for a beginner) tricks, and his hips while not completely correct were a good try. Cute cucharachas 😀
Haha –Maks did not look so happy about being in the middle… That was actually rather funny; wonder if he knew the camera was on him…
Other favorites this week: Warren. I’d like to see someone other than a footballer win it again, but I have to say, big guy though he is, he is really good. That Paso was right on. And Toni and Brooke are damn good. Brooke: whoa! Perfect lines, perfect shaping, gorgeous ronde, great arms, steps completely polished. Holy crap! At this point I’m rooting for Brooke because she’s kind of the underdog, is probably the least well known, yet she’s very, very, surprisingly good. I’d like to see the person who no one knows take the trophy, if she continues to deserve it that is…
My little foodie man didn’t do so hot this week 🙁 I did love his comparison of risotto with rhumba (both the basics of their respective disciplines, romantic and seductive, like “cashmere on the lips” — mmmm) and his whipping up that dish for Karina, who finally seemed to appreciate it. I do hope he’s given another chance to improve next week.
Poor Cloris. She behaves this week and the judges are all confused, tell her they miss the wackiness. What’s a girl to do?
DWTS HuffPo Piece Up
Here.
Hehehe, I already “tweeted” Sharon, who runs the BDC discussion of the show that I was kidding about the little remark at the beginning of my Cloris Leachman assessment. I’d gone to bed Wednesday night, only to have my cell phone start beeping off the hook with angry tweets from West Coast BDCers annoyed about McGinley getting the boot over Leachman. Very 21st Century 🙂
Anyway, happy Friday everyone!
DWTS Season Premiere
What did you guys think? I actually haven’t finished watching it yet! I got home from North Carolina late in the afternoon then had to go to a dance /fashion event at the Guggenheim (which I’ll write about later today), and arrived a bit early for the unveiling of the building’s restored facade. When I got home I was too tired to watch all of DWTS and only watched the tail end and about the first quarter of the tape. I loved the last guy on though (Warren Sapp?), and I also liked Maurice Greene, and Toni Braxton, and thought Rocco DiSpirito was a little cutie with an adorable personality. And who doesn’t love a man who can cook 🙂 I love his attempted bribe… I haven’t yet seen Cloris! How did she do??!! Will write more when I’ve seen it all.
Update: Okay, now that I’ve seen the whole thing, I want to add Lance Bass to my list of favorites. I thought Kim did better than expected, judging from the practice clips. Latin will probably be the real test for her though, balance-wise and all. I thought Cloris did well (particularly with the turns and pivots), particularly taking into account her age (which is part of what makes this show so different from SYTYCD, and so much harder to judge). And I agree with you guys (see comments) that she went a bit too far after dancing, though I can’t help but still love her! Len was so good-humored about it though — I sometimes just want to squeeze him he’s so cute 🙂 And so sweet of him to say, “Everyone who comes on this show is a winner,” after the comedian danced. I think he’s going to be the first to go tonight…
DWTS Fall 2008 Season Contestants
1) Grammy winner Lance Bass;
2) TV Chef Rocco DiSpirito;
3) Olympic Gold Medalist (just crowned) Misty May Treanor;
4) Gold medalist sprinter Maurice Green;
5) Broadway star and singer Toni Braxton;
6) Reality TV star Kim Kardashian (who seems to have just injured her foot);
7) Hannah Montana star (and youngest ever to be on the show; will be paired with Julianne Hough) Cody Linley;
8) * Actress (fabulous, I might add, and excellent comedian, and the oldest star ever on the show) Cloris Leachman;
9) Actor Ted McGinley (to be paired with new dancer Inna Brayer);
10) “Everything woman” (whatever that means) Brooke Burke;
11) Supposedly more raucous than Adam Carolla, Comedian Jeffrey Ross (who will be paired with Edyta Sliwinska);
12) Footballer Warren Sapp (paired with Kym Johnson, whom the annoyingly ingratiating Good Morning America host kept pronouncing “gorgeous, gorgeous”); and
13) (first time contestants number over 12 btw), the most famous actress in all of daytime, Susan Lucci. After making a big deal of her numerous unsuccessful Emmy nominations, said annoying GMA host pronounced being accepted to DWTS “better than any award.” Yeah, okay…
Anyway, it appears DWTS producers have tried to cover every demographic base conceivable: young Hannah Montana guy should appeal to the teenagers, while Leachman and Lucci older women (though Leachman really should appeal to EVERYONE — for people who may not know her, the woman quite simply rocks). And with the football and Olympic stars they’ve got the sports fans covered. Braxton appeals to Broadway lovers, the reality TV stars to the twenty-something crowd. And, in an attempt at creating nostalgic continuity, McGinley should remind viewers of Steve Guttenberg and Ross, the lovely Carolla.
Best thing about the Good Morning America broadcast by far: the mention of Maks Chmerkovskiy’s return. At least the silly TV talking heads haven’t forgotten the pro dancers make this show.
The new season begins September 22nd, the day after the Emmys in which host Tom Bergeron is apparently nominated for an award in the newly-created category of reality TV show host.
Well Wishes to Liu Yan
One of China’s most revered classical dancers was seriously injured during rehearsals for Olympics opening night ceremonies when she leaped onto a floorboard that collapsed. She’s currently in the hospital unable to feel anything below her chest and is told she may never walk again. Here’s the Times article. (via Jolene)
On a side note, the NYTimes website can be rather ridiculous at times. They seem to have a policy that their writers are supposed to link only to articles within the Times’ own site. So, when this writer, David Barboza, tells you Liu Yan has become very popular on YouTube, you click on his (or his editor’s) link thinking you’re going to be led to a YouTube clip of her performing. But what do you get instead: a completely irrelevant article from the Times’ Business archive on the YouTube phenomenon. Why even link if it has nothing to do with the issue? I’m pretty sure everyone knows what YouTube is by now.
Anyway, since I’m a blogger and can link to websites other than my own, here, here, and here are some YouTube clips I found of her performing. And she’s listed as the main soloist in this beautiful piece. There are many more. Hopefully she’ll recover.
The Olympics, Men's Versus Women's Gymnastics, Sexism, Age, Athleticism, Country Bias, Etc. Etc.
There’s a really good discussion going on over at Claudia La Rocco’s The Culturist about the Olympic coverage — people are even likening it to porn!
I couldn’t help get off on a tangent about male versus female gymnastics. During the last Olympics I remember going out to dinner with a group of my feminist friends and they were bemoaning how women’s sports are taken so unseriously by the public, giving as an example the prominence of the ‘silly’ ‘girl-child’ sport of female gymnastics over the more ‘real’ sports of women’s softball, etc. — the team sports. I thought the criticism was so unfair given how incredibly hard those gymnasts work, and I couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t be in absolute awe of them as they did those impossible-looking tumbling passes and balance beam maneouvers and flying-through-the-air vaults. On the other hand, I’d played girls softball when I was young and felt there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do that the women players were doing without practice. So, why were they privileging team sports — so popular in men’s athletics — over individual sports, which women tend toward?
These friends were all lawyers and feminist legal scholars and I thought it was in large part my love of ballet and dance that made me at odds with them over this, so when I read Claudia (NYTimes dance critic, if you don’t know her) liken the female gymnasts to Jean Benet Ramsey, I thought, oh no!
After watching the women’s gymnastics last night in comparison to the men’s the night before, I did see a difference. The men do tend to be older (20-25), the women younger (16-20). And of course for anyone who watched last night, there seems to be a controversy over the actual ages of the Chinese female gymnasts. The cut-off age is 16 in the Olympic year (so you can be 15 now as long as you turn 16 by December 31, 2008), but no younger, and Bela Karolyi, among others, is questioning that some of those Chinese girls are that old. They did look quite young, but Asians are generally smaller-boned than Caucasians, and, as commenter Meg on Claudia’s blog pointed out, intense athletic training can delay the onset of puberty.
Of course the issue with the delayed onset of puberty caused by intense athletic training (which I hadn’t thought of) is an issue in itself. I’d think that’d be the case with any sport though, including Ballet. Maybe that’s one reason why ballerinas tend to be so thin, and not anorexia… And of course you don’t want to discourage female athleticism; wouldn’t that be sexist if you didn’t say the same for males? Does intense athleticism delay puberty for males though?…
And why favor female athletes so young anyway? Because they’re smaller and won’t go out of bounds on the tumbling passes? Because smaller bodies can tumble higher and get around those uneven bars at more astounding speeds, without fear of hitting the floor? Because as Karolyi said last night, youth doesn’t have as much fear of failure? Why isn’t all this the same for the men then?
The Chinese girls did seem to have more makeup on than the Americans, and they did seem to be jutting their hips and pelvises out and making poses on the floor that we might deem too sexy for their young-looking ages. But Jolene pointed out that that may be a cultural bias, and I agree. I went to an African dance performance with a Ballet friend the other night and she couldn’t stop laughing embarrasingly at the hip and pelvic movement; she’d never seen African before and didn’t know what to make of it, other than laugh at it and feel embarrassment for the dancers. Maybe their style just isn’t something we’re used to. Jolene also pointed out that the makeup seems to be an American thing, and I agree. I rarely see Asian women wearing that harsh bright aqua eyeshadow, yet that was a real fashion statement here in prior decades. They know they’re on TV, the Olympics are heavily dominated by the American press, and they’re trying to be like us. Ironically, it’s backfiring.
Finally, we’re also hearing all these stories about how awful the Chinese are to their children — forcing them into the sport, making them stay away from their families when the little girls really just want to come home, in comparison to the American stories, where the families always insist they’ve let their children decide how much dedication they wanted to give to their sport. Let’s just keep in mind that we’re hearing this all from the perspective of the American press. They assume we’ll feel better about ourselves, about our losing gold medals to the Chinese if we believe our society is so much more just. Not that I don’t believe in being critical at all of other governments; I didn’t have time to write about it, but I attended a reading organized by the PEN American Center of works by imprisoned Chinese dissident writers on the night before the Olympics began. But let’s just remember that our press exercises its own form of propaganda.
Okay, I’m done blabbering! Have a look at Claudia’s post and the responses.
Yay!!!!!
I won’t spoil it for people on the west coast, but I’m so immensely over-the-top ecstatically thrilled for that one 😀
Update: My HuffPost piece on the finale is now up.
Except for "Trepak" Pretty Blah Finale…
I thought tonight’s finale was rather eh. Nothing blew me away; last week was so much better. Well, that’s not entirely true — I loved Twitch and Joshua’s Hip Hop / Russian thing choreographed by Youri Nelzine. At first I thought the choreographer was calling it a Chekhov dance; I was like, Chekhov choreographed? Then I realized he was saying “Trepak,” as in the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker. I thought it was actually pretty ingenious of him to combine Russian folk and Hip Hop like that, playing on both dancers’ strengths — Twitch’s amazing thigh muscles and all that movement close to the floor, and Joshua’s crazy jumps. Loved the splits jumps, that twisting corkscrew of a jump. I wonder if we’re going to see a Nutcracker this year somewhere with those two performing that dance, like we saw Sabra and Neil do last winter…
Anyway, too much fun, those guys. I really want one of them to win. Twitch grew on me this week, so now I’m divided between him and Josh.
I was also impressed by Courtney, who I think has improved tremendously. She’s standing out so much more now. She really has become so theatrical. She’s become a real actor, and her movements are so much sharper than before. I don’t think she’ll win — I think the others still have more overall clout by this point, but I think she should be very proud of herself.
The two last dances were the worst, unfortunately. The Jive totally lacked energy and bounce and height. The kicks and the sailor shuffles, and just all the fancy footwork — not there at all. That’s what’s so fantastic about jive — the lightening-fast footwork, the crazy fun, the electric charge of the dance, not the aerials — which were excellent by the way, but it’s like they saved their energy for those. And what was that Mia Michaels number in the end? It looked like Shakers who’ve been kept from society for a little too long and have gone a bit haywire. I liked the very beginning though, with the unfolding of the satiny-looking crimson sheets. But that’s the only part I liked…
Anyway, my post on the results should be up on HuffPost on Friday.
Who do you guys think will win??? I predict Josh or Katee.
SYTYCD Gets Better Each Flipping Week!
Damn, this show is crazy amazing! Every single dance tonight I thought was some of the best choreography for that particular style I’ve ever seen. How much does that Aussie guy, Jason Gilkinson, rock! No wonder the show’s so popular down there. Best Paso I’ve ever seen on this show, and his Viennese Waltz was gorgeous too. And for once I loved Tyce Diorio. Gorgeous contemporary piece. I love Adam Shankman as a judge; he says basically everything I feel, calling Tyce, Katee and Joshua the holy trinity of SYTYCD!The man’s enthusiasm is just contagious. And Tony and Melanie’s Mambo was sexy fun, although Twitch’s performance in that was just about the only thing not completely perfect on the show. His nerves and confusion over the counts showed. And Sonya and Mark are on the same wavelength; how fun to see her create on him… I loved everything about tonight; honestly don’t want a single one of them to go home, but I especially don’t want Mark going and I’m afraid the man leaving may be him. Please not Mark, please not Mark…
Will in the Bottom Two? And Ballet?!
No way!
How cute was Mark when he found out he was safe 😀 Yay, my little one-man Pilobolus is in the semis! Or is next week the semi-semifinals?
Ballet?!?! Balanchine?!?! Los Angeles Ballet?! Am I dreaming? What did you guys think? This is the first I’ve seen Ballet on any of these shows. Was “Who Cares” wondrous enough? I love how people scream whenever there’s a lift or hyper-extended arabesque penchee 🙂
No frigging way! No way! You guys, no way! Ugh.
Update: here’s my HuffPo post on this week’s shows.