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lessons

Black Swan/White Swan

Our own Eddie Ares had a bee in his bonnet about the movie Black Swan on Saturday.  He saw it as a metaphor for different types of people and how easy or difficult it is for a particular type to inhabit the character of a particular dance.  As he explained it, a black swan is a fearless and aggressive performer who will perform any kind of character with no hesitation.  A white swan might be very proficient at technique but is always holding back or maintaining boundaries.  As a result, something might be missing from the character of a dance. The audience might be able to perceive a whiff of self-restraint on the part of the dancer that reads as anxiety.  I remembered an offhand comment from one of Eddie’s dancers when I’d told her about a tough heat that we’d danced in competition.  I’d said that we struggled because Daniel forgot the steps but she said I was the one who looked worried.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true, because I’m a white swan all the way.  Daniel is a total black swan: no boundaries, never gets embarrassed, puts it all out there dialed up to 11.

In Eddie’s philosophy (and I think this is true), black swans can easily pretend to be white swans but white swans have a hard time going over to the dark side. Some dances are easy for white swans like me to characterize because they come from a “happy” or “graceful” or “pretty” place: waltz, foxtrot, swing.  Tango and rumba are hard for white swans because they are more “dark” or “sexy.”  The only one I’m not sure about is cha-cha.  Maybe that’s part of the reason I never feel really proficient at cha-cha: I don’t entirely understand the character of that dance.  People define the cha-cha as “flirty” but I have little notion of how to express that quality.  I also haven’t sussed out why white swans can’t fake the black-swan qualities with 100% success.  It could be different for every swan.  The good news is that in ballroom, you always have two swans together who can balance each other’s shortcomings.  The raw energy of the black swan probably needs some reining in from the boundary-loving white.

…Right?

Confession: I have not yet seen Black Swan despite its being a ballet movie.  Normally I never miss a dance movie and especially not a ballet movie, but I have resisted Black Swan because I am hypersensitive to the type of visually freaky psychological horror that the movie involves.  That is, I have not seen Black Swan because I’m too much of a white swan.  I will probably cowboy-up and see it soon.  But maybe I’ll wait till it comes on pay-per-view and watch it in the daytime with the lights on.

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lessons Uncategorized

The Peter Principle

From Wikipedia: “The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.”

See also: my ability to dance the rumba.  I fear that up until recently I may have been coasting on my previous dance experience plus Daniel’s savant-like ability to remember choreography.  But today we started a new rumba routine, having been competing with the same one for probably a couple of years.  The new routine is gorgeous but it’s a huge jump up in difficulty.  In particular, it contains a lot of turns.  Turns are my nemesis but Eddie is big on rotation as a way of creating impact on the floor, so I will have to get on board.  The new routine contains: one underarm turn, one spiral, one 3-step turn, one telemark, and two or three chainés–and we’re not even finished with it.  Until today, I did not know what a telemark was nor that they were used in the rumba. Eddie also put in an alemana originally, and then took it out for now because I could not get my head around it.  It’s definitely a more challenging application.

I would by no means say that I have failed but since I’m accustomed to things coming somewhat easy, I did get a little impatient.  I know it’ll come; I just wish it would come a little FASTER.  Eddie & Daniel insist on laughing at me when I get impatient, which is (believe it or not) helpful.  Daniel is a big believer in learning the steps and then polishing the technique (sensible!), whereas I want to learn everything at once and do it well right away.  Cases in point:

  • I am dancing with Eddie and he has just corrected my open breaks, which apparently I’ve been doing rather badly for quite some time.  And I am concentrating like anything on doing them really, really well when my attention wanders for .001 second.  I snap back and immediately say “That was terrible,” and Eddie just loses it laughing.  Then I have to laugh because maybe I could stop self-criticizing and just…dance the steps???
  • Having mostly recovered from that one, dancing with Daniel, I 3-step-turn into the telemark and manage to nail Daniel squarely in the forehead with my elbow.  It made a noise!  *klok*  I felt terrible, but he wasn’t hurt, and it was funny.

So today’s lesson was ostensibly about the rumba but really about not taking myself too seriously.  And maybe about wearing safety equipment when learning new choreography.

Categories
behind the curtain

It’s all about the sparkle

I would never accuse our dancers of doing anything as crazy as reading this website, but this week they did seem a lot more keen on the prospect of dressing up and looking flashy for their performance.  One woman brought a selection of sparkly club-wear for me to adjudicate and the other said, unprompted, that she plans to put on eyelashes.  Yes! Come to the dark side, my pretties.  It’s…actually not all that dark over here, on account of all the glitter and rhinestones.

The next topic of discussion to arise was that of legwear.  The ladies will be wearing black shoes, black practice skirts, and solid-colored tops with some kind of sparkly embellishment.  But what to put on our legs?  I ran down the options:

  • Nothing. Advantages: inexpensive, convenient. Disadvantages: my legs, at least, are the color of Coffee-Mate.
  • Tan fishnets. Advantages: easy fake tan, jiggle control (irrelevant in our group but still reassuring). Disadvantages: Waffle Butt.
  • Black fishnets.  See above, except for the “easy fake tan” part.  I think black fishnets are a little Halloweeny for real life, but for stage wear, anything can be excused, justified, or accepted.

Then I remembered that Capezio makes black fishnets with rhinestones up the back seam.  There was definitely an air of excitement in the room when I brought up that possibility.  Unfortunately, the excitement was dampened (at least for me) when I checked online and found that they cost more than $40!  Another brand is available for much less, but there’s an obvious difference in quality.

Now I am thinking we can buy plain fishnets and do the stoning ourselves.  This idea is a very “ballroom” idea.  I’ve come to believe that left to her own devices, a ballroom dancer will glue rhinestones to anything that sits still long enough.  10 gross of Swarovski is around $40 depending on the exact size of the stones.  That’s more than enough to do 3 pairs of fishnets with extra stones left over to glue to our outfits, shoes, hair, faces…Wonder if I can get WordPress’s snow plugin to rain rhinestones on DLDancers.com instead?

Categories
competitions friends & family teaching

Break it down and sleaze it up!

Our ballroom class is learning a rumba routine for performance in the Madison Studio’s recital at the beginning of June.  These four dancers are superstars: all adults with little or no dance or performing experience but they have agreed to get on stage just a few months from now.  So we’ve gone from learning basic steps to mixing in a few more showy, exhibition-type moves.  Nothing complex, but stuff that requires commitment on the dancer’s part: arm styling, hip motion, flared fingers–in short, all the gateway drugs that lead straight to shimmying and butt-drumming.  Last night they learned a few new moves (breaking it down) and then we did some work on making those moves look good (sleazing it up!). We came up with some useful mnemonics including “hot steering wheel” (for flared fingers),  “I’m a bird!” (for raising arms elbows-first), and “My hair is pretty! My dress is pretty!” (arm motion that sweeps around head and down one side).  Ridonkulous, but it makes it fun and (I hope) less scary.

When you’re used to moseying through life in khakis and a sweater, trying not to make waves, it’s challenging to suddenly be asked to show off.  But showing off is part of what makes ballroom dancing look exciting for other people to watch.  I mentioned offhandedly (and partly in jest) to the two ladies in the class that we’d all be putting on false eyelashes for the recital.  They reacted with a mixture of amusement, amazement, and shock.  Of course, nobody has to wear any eyelashes, but for me, putting on the costumes and shoes and makeup and spray tan and all that stuff that I don’t touch in my day-to-day life makes it more exciting and makes it easier to do the showing off.  Your “ballroom self” is related to your “real self,” of course, but they don’t have to be exactly the same person.  Just don’t be surprised when you start standing up straighter, dressing brighter, and putting on a little more eyeshadow for an average Tuesday at the office.  Ballroom Self is tenacious and contagious.

In other news, our ballroom selves will be put to the test again soon.  We are planning on competing at the Garden City Dance Challenge at the end of March and my parents are coming out to watch us compete!  How exciting is that?  They have seen us dance, of course, but never in competition.  I’m looking forward to having them there and showing them the ropes.  It’s always such a fun atmosphere.  Here’s hoping we get at least one first place so they will be really impressed.  A scholarship would be even better… Hmm…

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behind the curtain Uncategorized

Beauty vs. Athleticism

The walls of my childhood ballet studio were decorated with several posters by Harvey Edwards, including one close-up of a man doing a détiré en avant, sweat beaded on his face and hair.  The caption: “Dance is work.”  Eddie Ares’s studio offers this quotation on its website: “Dancers are the athletes of God.”  Even for casual social dancers, ballroom dancing is widely touted as an enjoyable way to get some exercise.

On the other hand, a fair amount of current dance marketing emphasizes the beauty and glamour of dance over its atheticism.  Ballet studios offer “princess camp” or “a visit to Fairyland” summer programs for little girls.  A ballroom studio in Laguna Hills, CA offers “personal instruction and an elegant air. There are fresh roses on the tables and sliced strawberries in the water” (full article here).  The studio hopes to distinguish itself and succeed in a difficult economy by presenting itself as a luxury service provider.

Reading the article, I immediately wondered if the strategy would work.  I also wondered if it should work.  The athleticism of dance is, for me, one of its signal attributes and one of the main things that draws me to it.  Will the little girls who sign up for the visit to Fairyland be disillusioned when they are expected to stand quietly at the barre and follow instructions?  Could new dancers be surprised when they discover that the roses on the tables might be flecked with beads of their sweat at the end of an hour-long lesson?

I love a good workout and I’m always proud to be sweating and sore when my lesson is over.  Do dancers respond more to a physical challenge or to the promise of grace and elegance?  What about people who don’t know yet that they are dancers?  It’s by no means an either/or question; the two qualities reinforce one another.  But I wonder how other dancers see their dancing.  I appreciate the aesthetic aspect but I think I am really addicted to the physical demands and challenges.  Of course, those demands and challenges exist in the service of creating a certain look, and I know I’ve met the challenge when I have the look.

I am going in circles here.  Which reminds me that I need to practice my spiral turns for cha-cha during tonight’s break between classes.

Categories
Ballerina Corner

Waiting for things to happen

After dancing at the Sports Hall of Fame last night and being interviewed by the Fox/ABC news team, we are waiting for the video to show up online so I can post it here.

We are waiting for construction to be done at Academy Ballroom so we can get another lesson with Eddie.  Best not to breathe paint fumes and drywall dust while learning the mambo.  Oxygen intake is key for that one, I can tell you.

I am also waiting for my pointe shoes to wear out so I can buy a new pair.  When I danced en pointe the first time around, approximately 25 years ago (holy crap!), there were not nearly as many styles of pointe shoes available as there are now.  At least, they weren’t available in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma where I lived.  Everyone wore one of approximately four styles made by Capezio.  By contrast, our local dance store here carries at least 5 brands that I know of.  And I just looked on Discount Dance Supply (don’t even click that link if you like dancewear; you’ll be there all day) and they have 57 styles of shoes from 11 different brands.  It’s a buffet of pointe shoe choice delights!

I got Bloch Serenades for my first pointes of the 21st century.  They are not a terrible fit for my foot, but I’m starting to see that they are not ideal, either.   I’ve started to notice that my feet sink down in the shoes and the front of the box puts pressure on the front of my big toe.  It absolutely kills.  I talked to my teacher about it and she said I should feel like I’m pulling up out of the shoe rather than sinking into it.  She thinks I need a shoe with a shorter, more V-shaped vamp.  So I have been looking at Russian brands since they build more shoes that way.  I’m looking at Grishko 2007; the reviews say they are good for tapered toes and the Internet seems to love them.

I also (eventually) want to try a pair of Gaynor Minden just to see what all the fuss is about.  Gaynors are, as crazy as this sounds, very controversial pointe shoes.  Instead of having boxes (the hard, flat part of the shoe that enables the dancer to stand en pointe) built out of layers of glue-stiffened paper or similar (called “paste”), they are made of some kind of space-age polymers.  They are supposed to require no breaking in and little or no padding worn inside the shoe, and they are supposed to last longer while preventing injury.  That all sounds good, right?  Well, in the tradition-driven ballet world, they have been greeted with tremendous interest and tremendous suspicion.  Some studios apparently require them for dancers beginning en pointe while others forbid them.  Read the reviews on Discount Dance and you’ll see some people singing their praises and some people calling them “cheating shoes” that let you go en pointe without requiring as much foot strength and proper technique as a paste shoe.

Dare I admit that at this stage of life, I am not against a little cheating?  No, that’s not quite true.  I want my feet to be as strong as possible and my technique as correct as possible, but I also want to be as comfortable as possible. If I am miserable, I can’t work as hard.  We are pushing ahead in my class with more pointe work and I want to be able to do every repetition of every exercise without feeling like my toes are on fire.  So stay tuned while I work on wearing out my Blochs so I can justify buying my next pair.  I told my teacher on Wednesday that even though my feet are hurting right now, I can’t quit.  My legs have never been so toned in all my life!

Categories
dancing in the media

Go, Paula!

Paula East welcomed me into her class when I moved here in 2006; I met Daniel in her class; Macon’s USA Dance chapter, which she co-founded, hosted our wedding reception. She is a dancing machine! Here she is in a “Southern Lifestyle” feature from our local Fox affiliate:

[Funny that the anchor introducing the segment says “It’s an age-old art form.”  Compared to, e.g., poetry, ballroom dancing is a Johnny-come-lately.  But that’s a quibble.]