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Jonathan Marion, whom I can pretend to know because he is a frequent flyer on Dance Forums, published this interesting article about “the translocal culture of competitive ballroom dance” in Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement.  The article does a nice job explaining that competitive dancers not only take the extensive travel associated with training and competition in stride but actually expect it and rely on it as part of the overall dance experience.  Travel, Marion argues, is a sign of belonging to the competitive dance culture for dancers, instructors, judges, and the retailers who serve all of them.  The article is easy to follow, not too long, usefully illustrated with graphs and diagrams, and includes a great picture of Iveta Lukosiute with a huge pile of suitcases.  Good stuff.

While you’re up, this is also a fun read.  Makes me wonder if the Macon State dance club knows what they’d be getting into by entering the world of collegiate competitions!

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We had to go over to the Alzheimer’s Association office this afternoon to return some stuff.  Once we finished walking right into the middle of a committee meeting because someone (DANIEL J. BOUDREAULT) did not heed the “Please use front door” sign, we had a nice chat with the staff.  Karen K. asked “Are you still reeling from the event or have you recovered?”  I told her we’d had to jump right in to rehearsing for the Madison Studio annual recital, which will be Thursday, May 31, 6:30 p.m. at Porter Auditorium on the Wesleyan College campus (details here).  Our Stars were supposed to dance with us in the recital but both of them are out of commission–Jack is off being a movie star and Ashley tore 3 ligaments in her ankle playing tennis!  We had to scratch Jack’s and my number but Ashley has provided us with a stand-in, her friend Kathryn, who is a former dancer and a very quick study.  She and Daniel practiced for the first time today and she learned almost the whole routine in under an hour.  Not bad, huh?  Plus Daniel and I have been freshening up the rumba routine we’ll be performing and adding a couple of new tricks.  We are dancing to Enrique Iglesias’s “Ring My Bells.”  Woo!  I think it’s gonna be HOT.

Sunday is the last studio recital before rehearsal and is also group photo day for each recital number.  We’ll have time for 1-2 run-throughs in costume for each routine, then into the small studio where Mr. Haley will be taking pictures.  I have to go over there with 3 outfits including the one I’m taking for Kathryn to try, plus I’m picking up a dress I’m borrowing from a fellow dancer once I get there.  Multiply that times all the dancers in the studio and it could become a major troop movement but I know Ms. Madison will make it work.  Then we have dress rehearsal on the 30th and the recital on the 31st.  Exciting!

If you couldn’t make it to Dancing Stars, you can attend the recital and see us in action. Tickets are $10 in advance (let us know if you want ‘em) or $12 at the door on the day of the show.  It would be great to have a cheering section on hand.

Hey, it’s time to get ready and go dancing!  What am I doing sitting here?

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Dancing Stars of Central Georgia is the gift that keeps on giving! Yesterday evening we all got emailed a YouTube link for this “Thank You” ad that WGXA created:

The little clips in the ad look so good that we can’t wait to see the DVDs with the complete video of our performances. We’re supposed to receive those at the cast party the first week of June, so stay tuned!

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My Twitter-mate Caitlin Doran posted a link earlier today to this article in Canada’s National Post.  The article reports an incident in which a woman was asked to leave a jive class after trying to switch to the leader’s role and “lead her male partner.”  The instructor contends that the student was asked to leave because “she disrupted the class” and that changing roles would “complicate things” for her fellow dancers.

As presented, this story is confusing to me.  The instructor quoted in the article is not incorrect when she talks about the traditionally gendered roles in ballroom dancing.  As everyone knows, men lead and women follow.  Daniel and I have a lot of riffs on this convention, most of which serve the purpose (I’m pretty sure) of adapting it to our more egalitarian age.  How do we square this highly conventional practice rooted in centuries-old norms with the fact that most of us no longer live by those norms when we’re not on the dance floor? I genuinely believe it’s difficult for independent career women of the 21st century to relinquish control, even on the dance floor.  And although men are the traditional leaders in the ballroom, dancing has been so thoroughly skewered as “effeminate” that most men arrive at the dance studio reluctant and uncertain about being there, much less taking charge.  The instructor may have been correct in saying that everyone should stick to and reinforce those conventional positions, since both learning to follow and learning to lead are special skills that don’t come naturally to many of us these days.

At the same time, it’s good for dancers of both genders to learn both roles at some point.  I’ve been working on and off on learning to lead, and it is HARD.  Not only do I have to do all the steps in reverse, I have to reset my brain to “Plan Ahead” instead of “Wait and Pay Attention” (hey, new “Keep Calm” poster idea: “Keep Calm and Wait for the Lead”).  And Daniel has learned to lead a lot of steps better by having Eddie lead him through them while he does the follower’s/woman’s part.  (Eddie: “Here, see what it feels like to dance with a real woman”).  So I’m more than a little surprised that the instructor made such a big deal out of the matter.  If it were a group class with a diversity of levels and this couple felt like they’d thoroughly mastered their own usual parts, why not switch it up and see what else they could learn?

The article also addresses the traditional heteronormativity of ballroom dancing and the ways in which various organizations and governing bodies deal with that fact–broadly, by either enforcing it or throwing it out the window.  It’s an interesting window into the possible future(s) of our art/sport.

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Our friend Jamie Wyatt of Dancing on the Journey took videos of our performances on Saturday night.  Hooray!  I think our performances look great (if I do say so myself)–check ‘em out, and please visit Jamie’s blog and Pinterest boards.

Ashley & Daniel:

Jack & Laura:

Jamie also got video of our fellow USA Dance members Dianne Kent and Carl Candiano dancing with their “stars” that night.  Thanks, Jamie!

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The first Dancing Stars of Central Georgia was a huge success for the DLDancers team!  We didn’t bring home all the trophies but Team Dashley crushed their fundraising goal and thereby won the People’s Choice award–Ashley raised over $100,000 all by herself, making a huge contribution to the overall total of $205,962!  Everybody was amazed when that final number came up on the screens last night.  The total is incredible in itself, but even more so considering that this is the first time Alzheimer’s Association of Georgia has done a Dancing Stars event in this region.  We are the first in the state to sell out the inaugural event and to exceed our fundraising goal the first year.  Now my only thought is “How are we going to top it next year?”

Daniel and I got to the City Auditorium at 4:00 to meet up with our partners, do a little practicing, and get dressed and made up (not necessarily in that order) before cocktail hour at 6:00.  The organizers did a beautiful job setting up the dressing room with flowers and balloons, tables and mirrors, chairs, snacks, drinks, and decorations.  Plus we had a closed-circuit video feed so we could watch the show, at least while we weren’t busy being in the show!

I can’t speak for the guys’ side of the dressing room but all the ladies hauled in a crazy amount of stuff: at least 2 dresses and 2 pairs of shoes each, plus makeup, jewelry, hair stuff, cell phones, and the kitchen sink.  Then the hair and makeup people showed up with about 4 more huge cases.  It was like Macon’s most glamorous slumber party.  Jack was running behind–working hard on  last-minute fundraising–so I did my makeup while Daniel and Ashley were practicing.  On a run to the restroom I helped Ashley with her bow; she was pretty nervous but they were making it work.  When Jack arrived he was already dressed for the cocktail hour (Me: “Your hair is doing something weird.”  Him: “Yeah, I was fundraising till 3:45, took a shower and came straight here.”) so we still had time to mark through the routine and go over some final corrections before I had to get dressed.  We had made 2 changes to the routine on Thursday so we practiced those a few times, then marked the routine for Daniel and got his feedback.  He gave Jack one small correction; we did that part of the routine once more; and Daniel gave it his seal of approval.

Then it was time to go out to the patio for the cocktail hour.  The City Auditorium has a great patio on 2 sides and the weather last night was perfect: a little overcast, breezy, not too hot but not raining.  Everybody in Macon (seemingly) packed onto the patio, drinks in hand, hugging and shaking hands and taking pictures.  My cheering section from Macon State and Madison Studio were all on hand and I got to meet Jack’s parents, sister, and friends as well as seeing his wife and 2 of their kids again.  Ashley had vast numbers of supporters there to see her too.  It was a slightly rowdier, dressed-down version of the Oscars red carpet.  I was glad I at least got to say hello to most of “our” people, because once everyone went in to dinner we became THE PERFORMERS and had to be sequestered accordingly.  Back downstairs to the dressing room, out of our cocktail attire, into our costumes and on standby.

The show started about 20 minutes late because the dinner service ran behind, but once it got under way, it seemed to go by in a flash. From the basement dressing room our volunteer liaisons (students from Stratford Academy, incredibly sweet and hard-working kids) took us up in the slightly terrifying elevator to the green room to await our turn.  Jack and I were couple number 5 out of 10 and Daniel and Ashley were number 6.  The nerves kind of hit Jack in the elevator so once we got upstairs I started talking him through the stuff I’d promised to remind him of right before show time: count the slows and quicks, talk yourself through it, listen to the music, stay down in your knees.  Then we were on deck watching the first few seconds of Jack’s promotional video, Sylvia told us to take our positions, the video ended, and I heard her say “Go lights. . . go music.”

Neither of us remember much about the routine (going back down in elevator afterward, me: “I don’t know what happened up there . . . ” Him: “Me either . . . ” Me: “But I think it was pretty good”).  We did it about as well as we ever have; there was one tiny stumble that I’m pretty sure wasn’t visible.  The lift got a huge cheer and afterwards everyone, including the judges, talked about how sexy and intense the whole routine was.  We were the first couple to get three perfect 10s from the judges, plus the “Mystery Paddle” (which had a question mark on it) from the 4th judge–they did this to keep people from figuring out in advance who the winner would be.  Daniel and Ashley were yelling their heads off from the wings.  It was their turn next so we dashed to the elevator and back downstairs in time to catch most of their routine on the video feed.  At the last minute Daniel had found out he couldn’t wear his hilarious disco wig but the entertainment value of the dance was undamaged.  It was a total disco inferno and, as one judge put it, Ashley “did great things for fringe!”  The best part was seeing her smile and really get into it after having been so nervous in the afternoon.  We all cheered hugely when they came back downstairs.

Things got pretty crazy after Daniel and Ashley’s performance because they sent all the couples back up to the green room at once to await a final bow.  Here’s a tip: if you want to keep a room quiet, do NOT fill it with dancers.  We couldn’t stop talking, congratulating each other, and comparing notes.  Downstairs, we’d all fallen prey to a brief adrenaline crash post-performance but everyone got a second wind in the runup to learning the results.  We took our final bow on the dance floor in front of the stage, hitting our marks TV-style and waving to everyone like pageant contestants.  Then we dispersed through the crowd to work the room for a few minutes before reconvening backstage one more time.  It was a bit of a crush but very gratifying; I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve been utterly spoiled by these interludes of celebrity!

Finally the moment of truth was before us.  Who had won People’s Choice (top fundraiser) and Judges’ Choice (best dance routine)?  All of us already knew that Ashley was a lock for People’s Choice but we didn’t know till we were up on the stage that her total was over 6 figures.  Amazing!  Courtney Swift and Richard Frazier’s tap routine must have been amazing as well–they were last, so we didn’t see it–because they took home the Judges’ Choice award.  Must confess I was a little sad not to have won but mostly just delighted at how well everything went and how successful the event was.  Also, as I told Daniel, I might have burst into tears if we’d won Judges’ Choice (I am sappy), and that would have been embarrassing, not to mention cosmetically catastrophic.

After the awards, the hard work was over and we were free to celebrate.  Jack and family had to leave early, so we collected hugs and congratulations from them and sent them on their way, then hogged the dance floor with Ashley, her kids, and their friends until they kicked us out close to midnight.  We packed up our 2,000 pounds of stuff, with the addition of three trophies (we each got a small mirror ball as a thank-you in addition to Daniel’s big trophy for People’s Choice), and headed home in triumph with visions of next year already dancing in our heads (haha, see what I did there?).

My friends who had free hands and free time to take pictures have already posted some great ones to Facebook.  I tried to tag myself, Jack, Daniel, and Ashley in as many as I could find, so if you are FB friends with any of us, you can see ‘em.  I’ve already gotten a thrill from seeing the final pose of our routine for the very first time–never saw it before because I was always busy doing it!  We have been promised DVDs, so I hope to be able to upload videos in a week or two.  Should have some good “official” photos to post also: Walter Mallard’s camera loves us!  So . . . stay tuned for more Dancing Stars media blitz to come!

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Fox24, presenting sponsor for Dancing Stars of Central Georgia, has been doing profiles of the “stars” in Dancing Stars for the past several Fridays. Jack’s turn came yesterday:

We also got this incredibly moving video emailed to us as an important reminder of what this event is really all about:

No matter who wins the trophies tonight, we will all go home knowing we made a difference! The event is sold out and we’ve already raised over $148,000 but it’s not too late to donate. Every dollar is needed and every dollar helps! You can still vote for Jackson and me (support the underdog) or vote for Daniel and Ashley (back a winner)!

Last-minute prep is under way here at DLDancers HQ.  Daniel has gone out to buy a belt; I’m about to fix some loose stitching on my costume and then paint my nails.  We are heading to the City Auditorium at 4:00 for a final practice, then hair & makeup, a quick appearance at the cocktail hour, and SHOWTIME!  Everybody wish us merde!

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Jack and I have been kicking butt with our dance routine, enjoying every minute of our rehearsals, and being really excited to support the Alzheimer’s Association of Georgia.  But he is busy with running a business, shooting approximately 400 movie and TV projects, and hanging out with his gorgeous wife and 4 adorable kids, in addition to working on his mad tango skillz.  Not much time left to shake the money tree!  He was discouraged to find last week that he is in last place in the fundraising for Dancing Stars of Central Georgia.  We want to make sure we hold up our end both on and off the dance floor.  So at the end of rehearsal today we made a little video appeal:

Maybe the reason Jack is last in fundraising is that he can’t get the website URL right?  That’s www.dancingstarsofcentralgeorgia.com, people!  Click on “Vote for Jackson Walker” and donate the amount that’s right for you (as they say on public radio).  How can you say no to those faces?

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Check it out, dear readers! Last Friday I was on NewsCentral “Live @ 5″ with host Kenny B and fellow guests Karen Kinsler (development director for Alzheimer’s Association of Central Georgia) and Portia Lake (NewsCentral anchor and “star” dancer for Dancing Stars) talking about Dancing Stars of Central Georgia. Be sure to watch all the way to the end when I lay some trash talk on Portia!

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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!