I was already excited about Toy Story 3 (I just love those movies), but after seeing this, I am officially All About It.

Local TV station WMAZ ran their promotion of the “Dancing for our Heroes” event as part of their “Scene 13″ weekend entertainment roundup on last night’s 11:00 news and again on today’s morning news. Here is the story; our event is the first one presented in the package:

Hope to see everyone at the Aviation Museum tomorrow night!

Maconites, tune in to the 11:00 news on WMAZ, channel 13, on Thursday the 27th.  During the “Scene 13″ feature you will see members of the Greater Macon and Houston County USA Dance chapters (including yours truly!) dancing and promoting this coming weekend’s “Dancing for our Heroes” event.  The feature will also be rebroadcast around 6:40 a.m. on Friday the 28th and will be online under the “Entertainment” section of 13WMAZ.com.

As soon as I can get a link or an embeddable video clip, I’ll post it.

Just received via email a link to WMAZ’s video from Friday. Fortunately (since I was exhausted and probably speaking gibberish), they did not use any of the interview clips but instead put together a nice montage of all of us dancing.

I will post this on the Video Gallery page as well.

EDIT: I’ve removed the video from the main page since it auto-plays every time one visits the page, which is not much fun. Check the Video Gallery page to see it.

Photos from the SouthernStar Midsummer Classic competition are now available here.  We are in the American Smooth and American Rhythm divisions.

Also, last night a reporter/cameraman from WMAZ showed up at our First Friday dance at the Sports Hall of Fame.  He took video of us dancing and recorded short interviews with Paula and with me.  I don’t think the video made it on the air but they did put a story on their Web site (those are my feet in the photo slideshow!).  If I can find the video somewhere I’ll post it.

I was not expecting to be interviewed or to stand up in front of the First Friday crowd and tell them about our competition results, as Paula asked me to do.  Thank goodness I had changed clothes and put extra make-up on!  We had come to the dance straight from a lesson in Atlanta with Eddie Ares.  Eddie is a fantastic instructor but he works your tail off.  We worked on waltz and foxtrot and now we have “homework” to practice before our next lesson on Sunday the 16th.  It takes a good teacher to say “You must re-learn the basics” without demoralizing the students.  But in the end, the only demoralizing aspect was Friday afternoon traffic leaving Atlanta.

Via Angela Prince, USA Dance PR Director:  In the coming weeks, Dr. Kay Picart will conduct 2 interviews on her radio show with Peter Pover, USA Dance’s president.  They will discuss the upcoming National DanceSport Championships, the future of ballroom dancing, and USA Dance. 

The first interview segment will air Sunday, March 29 from 12:30-1:00 p.m. EDT and the second will air Sunday, April 5 from 12:30-1:00 p.m. EDT.  The interviews will be carried on WJZT–click the link and then click on “Listen Live.”

As a USA Dance member I received an email this afternoon from the organization announcing that Dancing with the Stars “will not be able to hold the Juniors Competition this season.”  The message says that the producers love the juniors comp. and hope to do it again in the future, but it doesn’t explain why it was dropped this season.  Mysterious!  I feel bad for the kids who tried out–and for my own part, I’m sorry I don’t get to see them dance on the show.  They are amazingly talented and accomplished.

On a happier note, Paula sent me two photos this afternoon from the exhibition that Daniel and I performed in a few months ago.  Her Webmaster, Rick, took and edited the pictures.  You can see them on the Photo Gallery page in the “Exhibitions” album.