Year: 2010

Gratuitous post featuring SNO!

Post author By lauraet
Post date December 22, 2010
2 Comments on Gratuitous post featuring SNO!

It’s snowing over at Slim Paley’s site today; turns out that the snow is a WordPress feature so I had to put up a post here just to make it snow on DLDancers as well! WordPress-hosted blogs can turn on the snow by going to Appearance –> Extras and clicking “Show snow” or some such; we self-hosted blogs have to download a plugin. I think WordPress’s snow will automatically stop falling on a given date but since ours is plugin snow, someone may have to remind me to turn it off! (“Uh, Laura, it’s still snowing on your Web site, and it’s JUNE.”) Out-of-date snow would be right up there with leaving your Christmas lights up till St. Patrick’s Day.

Meanwhile, our year of dancing is winding down. We danced with Madison Studio at Pinegate and John-Wesley Villas on Saturday (video coming soon), taught our last group lesson of 2010 on Monday, and finally decided not to compete at Savannah Dance Festival, although we may go as spectators. In the interim we are heading to Missouri for a little holiday visit and still trying to figure out where to ring in the New Year. We may be popping champagne and dancing around our own living room! There’s lots of good stuff on tap for 2011: our group class will resume on January 3 and the class is leaning in favor of dancing in the spring recital, so choreographing a formation routine could be in our future. Stay tuned, and let it snow!

dancing in the media Uncategorized

Video stars, YA RLY

Everybody remembers this, right? No? Okay, to recap: back in late September we were asked to take part in a video shoot that would become part of a big promotional effort for the city of Macon. We spent a jolly few hours feeling like movie stars but then we had no proof that the whole thing had even happened or was real, because the producers were keeping it so tightly under wraps. The photographer who shot the stills wouldn’t even sneak us a peek or two via Facebook. We just had to wait along with the rest of the city, until…

…a few photos came out on Gateway Macon’s Facebook page…

…Then they released the song (free download! get it!)…

…and then I got a message from a friend today “You all look great dancing by the riverfront!”

I fell over myself (in cyberspace? IDK.) going to the Web site to see the video. We are only in it for a few seconds but we are incredibly pleased and proud all the same. They have embedding disabled so you have to click up there where it says “the video” or go to gatewaymacon.org or ItsHotterHere.com.

Super exciting!

teaching

How NOT to succeed on the dancefloor

Post author By lauraet
Post date November 26, 2010
No Comments on How NOT to succeed on the dancefloor

Facebook message from the female half of our wedding couple, whose marriage–and dance début–will take place a week from tomorrow:

“Just want you to know, [Groom] has not been practicing this week because he can’t stop playing Angry Birds!!!!”

If you don’t know what Angry Birds is, you may be better off not knowing. But if you have a smartphone and a lot of free time, click here at your own risk. Groom did not know about Angry Birds till we mentioned it (for reasons that must have made sense at the time) during the couple’s lesson this past Monday. So now it is really our fault if he makes any mistakes next Saturday. Bad Teachers! Bad Teachers!

dancing in the media

This makes me happy

First Lady Michelle Obama dancing at a Diwali celebration:

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

If one of the most photographed, observed, and scrutinized women in the world is willing to get up in front of cameras and try out some dance steps that she’s never done before, what’s holding back the rest of us? I heard another famous woman, Nora Ephron, on the radio yesterday promoting her new book I Remember Nothing. She described talking with friends about what they wanted to eat for their last meals before they died. Unfortunately, one friend died of throat cancer and, while she was dying, remarked to the rest of the group that she couldn’t even have her last meal. The moral, of course, is that if you want to do something, you should do it NOW.

It makes me a little sad when someone tells me “Oh, I’ve always wanted to learn to dance!” Dance has brought so much enjoyment, friendship, love, and contentment into my life that when I hear that sentence, I think “What are you waiting for?” Michelle Obama can do it and so can you.

in other news Uncategorized

Save the Halls!

The Georgia Sports Hall of Fame and Music Hall of Fame, both mainstays of tourism and history in downtown Macon for over 10 years, are in danger of closing and moving to other cities. The state of Georgia plans to phase out funding for the halls over the next few years, requiring them to become self-sufficient or to receive funding from other sources. The Georgia General Assembly is requesting bids from cities on both halls, opening the possibility that one or both will leave Macon and move to another city. Meanwhile, a group called Halls of Fame, Inc. is bidding to keep both halls in Macon and a petition drive has started at SavetheHalls.com.

As ballroom dancers in Macon, Daniel and I are most familiar with the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, where USA Dance Greater Macon Chapter #6059 has hosted dances on First Fridays for the last several years. The first dance event I ever attended in Macon was at the Sports Hall of Fame. The connection between our chapter and that venue seems to me like an obvious choice for promoting dancesport toward its eventual recognition as an Olympic event, which is one of the goals of USA Dance. The Sports Hall of Fame has been extremely generous toward our chapter and I hope we can repay that generosity by joining in the effort to keep it and the Music Hall of Fame here in Macon.

We want to keep the Halls of Fame in Macon as part of the city’s overall effort toward growth and renewal. The presence of the Halls of Fame here gives visitors to Georgia another reason to explore beyond Atlanta, Savannah, or other typical tourist destinations. It also provides an anchor for the expansion of downtown commerce into tourism and after-hours nightlife. AND it gives dancers a place to dance. So…

Save the Halls!

dance events dancing in the media

“A Halloween Highlight”

The Macon Telegraph reports on last weekend’s downtown “Thriller” show here. I was particularly glad that Pilar Wilder (director of Hayiya Dance Theatre and organizer of the event) said this: “Most are not professional dancers; they’re doctors, teachers, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, everyday people,” she said. “This is not a new idea and we try to add something new each year, but the fun will always remain the same.”

As glad as I am that we can do as much dancing as we do, we are FAR from being able to dance for a living. But one of the great things about dancing–especially ballroom, in my opinion–is that people can do it without being professionals or having even remotely professional ambitions. Even beginners can compete or perform if they want to. It’s also possible to have fun just being a social dancer, and you really don’t need to know much to get started. What could be better?

competitions

Videos are here!

Okay, YouTube has sorted itself out. Click through for videos. Feel free to play “Spot the Technique Error.”

competitions

Watching the Carolina Fall Classic videos

Post author By lauraet
Post date October 31, 2010
No Comments on Watching the Carolina Fall Classic videos

N.B.: I am uploading the videos from last weekend as we speak but getting “unknown errors” from YouTube. Video links coming as soon as I can get them working.

Just finished watching a couple of heats’ worth of video of us from the Carolina Fall Classic last weekend. Good news: we do not look as bad as I feared we might. In particular, I do not look as lumpy and saggy in my JulioJulio dress as one unlucky still photo from Baton Rouge had led me to believe. More good news: neither of our kamikaze-style Viennese Waltz attempts was captured on video.

Now for the bad news. Looking at these videos, I can see why we didn’t get good marks. Our routines are interesting, but our fundamentals aren’t good:

Footwork is steppy and tentative instead of smooth and strong.
Posture is bad–Daniel’s forehead is way up by my ear.
Contact isn’t consistent in hold–in one shot you can clearly see daylight between our hip bones.
Transitions in & out of hold are sloppy.
I’m dancing into the floor rather than across it–my steps look stompy.
We are not aggressive enough and therefore not covering floor as we should.
Tango is too bouncy.
Foxtrot is not bouncy enough.
I was so glad we got the choreography right that I didn’t even notice rise & fall in waltz, which probably means it wasn’t there.
Relatedly, we are failing to use our knees in any of the dances.
We are clearly neither dancing our routines smoothly as written nor improvising believably.

Adequate practice–the one thing we haven’t had in the past–is the only cure.