Continue reading »]]>

With less than a week to go (eeeeee!), it seems like a good time for Exhaustive Pre-Dancing Stars To-Do List and its little buddy, Exhaustive Pre-Dancing Stars Packing list.  Here goes!

To do before Friday dress rehearsal

• Book spray-tan
• Get hair cut & colored
• Get spray-tanned
• Do nails
• Test makeup
• Rehearse
• Replace Velcro on dress with hook-and-eye or snap
• Try shoes with fishnets
• Buy earrings
• Pack my stuff
• Write check to Karen
• Get flyers copied
• Get other flyers copied
• Fix broken strap on dress (argh)

To pack:

• Performance dress
• Cocktail dress
• Performance shoes
• Evening shoes
• Earrings for cocktail dress
• Makeup: foundation, concealer, powder, eyeliner, eyeshadow, shimmer powder/bronzer, blush, eyeshadow, lipstick, lip gloss, eyelashes, mascara
• Extra eyelashes
• Fishnets
• Briefs
• Camera
• Hoodie
• Legwarmers
• Practice shoes

We are so close now.  I can’t wait for Saturday night!

Continue reading »]]>

Last night at our dance a young lady asked me how to buckle ballroom shoes.  ”I Googled it,” said the young lady, “and I couldn’t find anything!”  She had a pair of shoes that had been sitting in her closet for at least a year, unworn, because she wasn’t sure how to operate the buckle.  A lot of ballroom shoes come with this nifty (but not self-evident) quick-release buckle mechanism.  If you know how to use it, you will become resentful of ballroom shoes with regular buckles.  If you don’t know how to use it, your shoes will languish in neglect and you will be sad.  To address these problems (baffling buckles and their apparent absence from The Google), I have made my first-ever instructional video, How to Buckle Ballroom Shoes.  Its subtitle is “How to Look Washed-Out in a Webcam Video.” Enjoy! And please send blush & eyeliner.

Continue reading »]]>

Well, sports fans, it’s spring break at the Madison Studio and my parents are in town this week (Hi, Mom & Dad! See you again in June!), so not much dancing going on here at DLDancers HQ.  Nevertheless, because I am just that kind of hard-working bloggiste, I am bringing you some updates.  With Dancing Stars of Central Georgia just under a month away, preparations are going forward even when rehearsals are not.

First, can I show you Jack’s and my Dancing Stars rehearsal video?

. . . Also starring my Lauren-Bacall-style laryngitis voice.  Until I saw it, I’d forgotten that I was sick the day they recorded it.  The show must go on!

On Wednesday we had a production meeting for Dancing Stars at the show venue, Macon’s City Auditorium.  The City Auditorium is the same lovely neoclassical edifice that hosts the Cherry Blossom Gala each year.  We dancers found out that if we sell it out, we’ll have an audience of about 700.  Glory hounds that we are, we immediately set our sights on a sellout–if we can pull it off we’ll be the first Dancing Stars show to sell out the first year’s event.  This is the part where you go visit Jack’s page on the site and buy your ticket.  It’s okay, I’ll wait.

I took some pics at the City Auditorium during the production meeting:

The organizers are still working on getting the stage floor in dance-worthy condition but I’m sure it will be perfect on May 12.  The more Daniel and I see of the stars and pros in action, the more we realize this is going to be an incredibly exciting show.  Click through from Jack’s video and watch some of the other couples: Karla Redding-Andrews, Portia Lake, Mary Perdue, Steve Welsh, Jim Elliot, Elbert McQueen, Terrell Sandefur, Courtney Swift.  Everyone is pulling out these dynamic, high-level, polished routines.  I can’t wait to see them all on the stage!

I also did the only thing a dancer really can do on days off: stretching & flexibility cardio strength training buying shoes.  Got a new pair of pointe shoes, which are still waiting to be sewn (see 1:50) and my shoes for Dancing Stars which are these.  They look amazing.  Now I am just waiting for my dress to arrive. *taps nails*

Continue reading »]]>

Dear readers, I have a secret.

I am not a professional dancer.

In fact, because of USA Dance’s rules about amateur competitions, I am explicitly, stridently, and vocally Not A Professional Dancer. But lately I’ve been impersonating one for a couple of days each week and here’s what I’ve learned: being a professional dancer is HARD.

Today I got to the studio at 2:15 and left early, i.e., about 7:15.  That’s an hour and a half of tango rehearsal with Jack, a 45-minute break, an hour of modern, and what would have been an hour and a half of ballet if I’d stayed till the end.  Same thing last Tuesday.  Same thing on Thursday minus the modern class.  It’s awesome, but boy,  I can tell I’ve been working.  Real pros are my new personal heroes.  I’m having tons of fun, just need to build my stamina a little more. And adjust my diet.  Today I ran out of gas because I had virtually no protein.  I can run for a long time on pure carbs but apparently not at this level of activity.  Duly noted, metabolism.  Here, have these mixed nuts and this yogurt.

It’s amazing how dance has taken over my life lately, and I don’t mind at all.

Continue reading »]]>

This question has come up 3-4 times in the past 24 hours or less, so I figure it needs its own post.  [Warning: contains a Rude Word!]

Dancers–specifically those who come out of a performing tradition such as ballet, jazz, tap, etc.–are a subset of theatre people.  And theatre people are very superstitious, right up there with sports people.  Here are some things that theatre and dance people do not do because they are bad luck:

• speak the name of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth while in the theatre–they call it “the Scottish play”
• whistle onstage or backstage
• leave a stage completely dark (a single “ghost light” is always left on to appease or prevent ghosts)
• wish each other “good luck”–this is the important one for our purposes.

It’s well known that instead of “good luck,” actors say “break a leg.”  But for obvious reasons, you don’t say “break a leg” to a dancer.  Dancers say “Merde,” which is the French word for “shit.”  I’ve always assumed that the choice of “Merde” is just another reflection of the “it’s bad luck to say ‘good luck’” superstition.  What could be farther from good luck?  If you want a good story, though, Wikipedia explains that “Merde” goes back to the days when people arrived at the theatre in horse-drawn carriages.  Lots of merde de cheval (horse shit) in front of the theatre indicated big crowds and thus a successful show; ergo, merde is good luck!

Regardless of its origins, I love this tradition.  Partially because it makes me feel like a Theatre Person and/or Real Dancer, and partly because it is fun to have a license to use bad language in public.  At our recital today, as at all of our studio’s recitals and performances, we had a “Merde Circle” in which all the dancers, even the tiny 4-year-olds, join hands and say “Merde!” to each other.  Ms. Madison tells them that it’s not a very nice word to say but that it’s okay to say in dance because it means “good luck.”  It probably takes them years to find out what it really means–last year, one of the high school girls didn’t know till I told her.

Now you know what to say to a dancer for good luck.  I think we should make it our business to spread this tradition among ballroom dancers.

Continue reading »]]>

First of all, let me say thank you once again to everybody who came out to our monthly-dance-turned-Daniel’s-birthday-party last night.  It was a ton of fun, Daniel was delighted, and we will be eating the leftover snacks for days!  Extra shout-outs to one couple (you know who you are) for bravely attending your first social dance EVER.  It only gets easier from here!

Now, then (weird transition phrase, that).  After finally watching Monday’s Dancing with the Stars sometime around Wednesday night–DVR is a necessity for the overscheduled–and seeing Kirstie Alley’s much-discussed fall, I realized I didn’t want to be the only dance blogger not to, well, discuss it.  So: my thoughts, let me show you them.

I thought Maks was incredibly professional in the way he handled the whole thing.  He immediately cued Kirstie back into the routine by listening to the music and taking a position that told her where they would pick up in the choreography.  Then, once it was over, he took full responsibility for the fall–although Kirstie chimed in on Twitter and said “Maks is too humble; we all know it takes two to tango.”  But as Daniel always reminds beginner gentlemen, the man is in charge on the dance floor but that means he has to take the blame if something goes wrong.

As for Kirstie, I’ve been impressed by her performances anyway, but the way she rose to the occasion of dancing the rest of her routine really knocked my socks off.  That’s where her professionalism–born, I assume, of a long show-business career–stood her in good stead.  Adrenaline can sometimes be your friend too: the worst has already happened, your body is buzzing from dealing with the sudden and unexpected, and stopping is not really an option, so why bother being cautious or anxious through the rest of the routine?

I worry that some people will look at the fall, think “Oh, that happened because Kirstie is too fat” and conclude that people who are not already at a healthy weight shouldn’t be dancing.  Granted, Kirstie is not a 90-pound sylph, but few people are.  Kirstie’s weight cannot have been an issue in that move, which (as she and Maks pointed out later in the “celebriquarium”) they had rehearsed a million times.  Maks wouldn’t have put it in the choreography if he didn’t think they could both accomplish it.  Ballroom dancing is impressively adaptable to people of all shapes and sizes; you don’t have to already be skinny and fit to start dancing or even to dance at quite a high level.  It is also–as DWTS has shown repeatedly–an excellent way to get in shape and lose weight if that’s your goal.

People forget, when they see dance performances in their final state, that hours of blood, toil, tears, and sweat go into perfecting those performances.  To me, Kirstie’s fall was merely an instance in which that hard work momentarily became visible in the final product.  No one wants that to happen, but in a way I think it’s beneficial when it does.  Dancing seems to intimidate a lot of people because they think of it as a product of talent rather than effort.  I’ll give you a hint: it’s mostly effort.  Which is why, in the course of learning the rumba routine we danced for everybody last night, I elbowed Daniel in the forehead hard enough to make a sound (“thwock!”) and Daniel once snorted (by accident) right behind my head and made me burst out laughing.  Fortunately, those things happened in lessons and not in a performance.  Kirstie and Maks did exactly the right thing when they just got up and kept going as if nothing had happened.  That’s the part we could learn from.  Daniel and I are both guilty of letting minor mishaps show on our faces when they would probably have gone unnoticed otherwise.  It’s something we should work on so that if we ever have a major mishap on the floor, we have the wherewithal to follow Kirstie & Maks’s example and just keep going.

Continue reading »]]>

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?

Continue reading »]]>

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.

Continue reading »]]>

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!

Continue reading »]]>

As you all know, Daniel has numerous outstanding qualities: twinkly blue eyes, charming accent, uncanny ability to fix anything–and that’s not even to mention his dance skills.  However, he is terrible with names.  We have a grand total of TWO couples in our group class right now and he can never remember anyone’s name other than mine.  Better yet, he has actually renamed one of the men.  The gentleman’s name is (let’s say) Alan but Daniel called him “Andy” every time.  The first time, I corrected him.  The second time, I corrected him.  The third time, Alan’s wife and I corrected him in unison:

Him: “That was much better, Andy.”

Wife and me: “ALAN.”

We all cracked up.  Dancing is fun but the relationships among the dancers are at least as much fun as the dancing itself.  It is, after all, called social dancing.  And maybe next week, Daniel will get Alan’s name right.