Grab bag for the new year

Here are a few things to keep an eye out for early next year:

January 5: The return of Dancing With The Stars at 7:00 pm Central time. This time around there will be 10 contestants, up from 6 last time. Four of the professionals will be returning: Ashley, Louis, Jonathan, and Edyta. (Hmm, none of them were finalists. Is that a good thing?)

January 18: The Fox network premiers a reality show that is ice skating's answer to DWTS. It's called (wait for it) Skating With Celebrities. Hosted by Scott Hamilton! From the commercials, it looks a lot more dangerous than ballroom. I wonder if they picked celebrities with some ice skating experience; it's strikes me that it's a lot easier to do a mediocre job of dancing than it is skating. Ah - the celebrities include Bruce Jenner, so I'm guessing they picked people who were on average more athletic than those on DWTS.

February 1 and 8 (possibly): Houston PBS may or may not show America's Ballroom Challenge, which is some sort of mini-competition filmed at the 2005 Ohio Star Ball. (Why they couldn't just show the OSB competition, I don't know.) Houston PBS doesn't have their February schedule available online yet, so I'm not sure on the dates. As they say, check your local listings.

February 17: Ballets Russes, a documentary about the two companies of the same name in early twentieth century, opens at River Oaks Theater. If you didn't understand all the fuss about Les Ballet Trockaderos, go see this film.

Maybe Never: Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet is another documentary that came and went about two years ago, apparently without much fanfare. You can get it on DVD at the link.

Happy Birthday to Silver Slippers!

Exactly a year ago today Silver Slippers was born! What started as an exercise to keep myself from going insane has turned into something far more rewarding than I expected. (BTW, everyone in my head agrees that it worked.) I don't have any idea how many people read this blog, but if you're reading it right now, thank you!

By the numbers: number of posts (not including this one): 72 number of reviews of live performances: 26 number of comments: 9 (Come on, people, you can do better than that!) number of posts on "Dancing With The Stars": 9 number of reviews of movies: 5 number of reviews of dance made for video: 1 number of posts not about dance: 2

number of posts not about dance or my dog: 0 That comes out to about 1 1/3 posts per week (with a dog-to-dance ratio of 1 to 35) and attending one performance every two weeks. No wonder Mr. Silvershoes complains I'm never home!

A recital

I recently dragged Mr. Silvershoes to a show at the dance studio at which I've been studying ballroom. It was basically an adult recital, primarily with teachers partnered with students. The range of abilities varied from not so much to phenomenal, and we didn't even stay for the whole show. A few notables:

• A lady who looked a great deal like my 80-year-old grandmother and performed not one but two dances, Tango and Swing. Her movement was restricted, but the spirit was there, and the crowd loved it. She had great legs, too. When she started into the Swing you could almost see her back in the 40's. (Someone in the audience actually called out "You go, girl!")
• A Cha Cha and Rumba in the International style by a great young couple. Oddly, although the lady looked quite good in the Rumba, I got the impression that she was far less comfortable performing it than the Cha Cha.
• An International Waltz by a male student and a professional, Milana Pliner. Ms. Pliner was lovely in the waltz, but she very much had the look of a Latin dancer doing Standard.
• Another International Waltz by a male student and a professional, this time with Viktoria Belova. Although standing next to each other Ms. Belova and Ms. Pliner have similar styles (clothing choices, hairstyles), they dance quite differently. Ms. Belova was sublime in the waltz, smooth, flowing, and totally without affectation. She and her partner Eddie Stutts recently placed 6th in International Standard at the Ohio Star Ball, so we should get to see them when that event is televised on PBS in early February 2006.

Watching all the dancers made me itch to be up there performing. I haven't performed since August, and I'm not currently in rehearsal for anything. I think I'm suffering from withdrawal....

Damn, it's hard to stayed seated when "Great Balls of Fire" comes on.

The edge of security

Last night in ballroom class the instructor used me to demonstrate a throwaway. (See this page for examples of the throwaway position, including the picture at left.) He's done this before, and I like to think that he chooses me because I'm comfortable doing the position, it looks right when I do it (with him, anyway), and I trust him. This is the trust that you have to give your partner in order to dance successfully. If you don't trust your partner, it's likely that you'll move more tentatively or offer more resistance. There are some moves that simply don't work if you do that, but that work rather easily if you throw yourself into them, and I mean that literally. Of course, you sometimes get dropped on your head whether you trust your partner or not, but that's where you gain advantage being a ballet dancer - that bun serves as a pretty good shock absorber.

Anyway, the teacher was trying to make a point about the man's position in the throwaway and how to support the woman. I went into the throwaway, and he put me lower. And lower. And lower. It got to the point where I felt if I went just a little further, I'd fall over, and my instinct was to resist it. Instead, I decided to trust him, and I let him take me just that little bit further. It was the most extraordinary feeling - he had taken me just to the brink. I was perfectly balanced, not falling backwards, but no longer leaning into him. This guy really knows what he's doing. What made it so satisfying was the soft collective gasp the class let out when I went that last bit, which totally surprised me. Now if only someone'd had a camera so I'd know just how far you have to go to get that gasp.

Skiagraph, December 10, 2005, Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex

This new production by Suchu was like one long dream - a pleasant dream, but a long one. Choreographed by Jennifer Wood, it was somewhat arbitrarily split into two halves to allow for an intermission. Eight hardworking dancers were onstage for almost the entire show. There were brief sections when fewer dancers were onstage, but no one dancer was dominant. Like a Dali painting, surrealism pervaded this work; it was not meant to be understood per se, merely experienced. Ms. Wood made great use of a sturdy farmhouse kitchen table and eight chairs which featured prominently in a great deal of the dancing, including the most surreal section at the beginning of the second half. This scene consisted of several tableaux across the stage, including an art lecturer and three observers, a man at a restaurant that served bowls of dry cereal, and a dancer riding a bicycle through it all. The man at the restaurant went through several cycles of eating the cereal (Fruit Loops I think), getting the check, and paying the bill. Each time he would use a large spoon to toss the cereal out of an oversized bowl towards his mouth, with most of the cereal ending up on the floor. As a dancer, my first thought was, "How are they going to dance on that for the rest of the show?" (They didn't - it got swept up by other dancers.)

In addition to the surreal was the whimsical. In the first half, the dancers came out two at a time and danced with a chair (one each) as if it were a person. Sometimes they rocked the chair like a baby, sometimes like a lover. I never knew one could have such an intimate relationship with furniture, although the relationship between my dog and my couch comes close. The second half contained a skit in which the dancers started by huddling around a suitcase, acting as though they were taking something out. Given the show to this point, I expected them to turn around with nothing in their hands. I was therefore surprised when they popped up with hand puppets! Three of the dancers sat at the table with one rooster puppet each, the "lead singers" of an instrumental pop song that somehow sounded Asian. The other five dancers were the backup with two puppets apiece of various animals. It was equally amusing to watch the dancers' faces and their puppets as they "sang" along with serious but lighthearted intensity.

The music for the show, about which I can't give details because I no longer have the program, was a collection of electronic instrumentals. Some of the songs consisted of not much more than various eletronic pops and hisses. Normally I wouldn't listen to music like that for any length of time, so I was impressed to find that Ms. Wood made the movement compelling enough to keep my interest, but it also contributed to my sense that some sections were too long. The lighting design was excellent, creating a mood without being intrusive. The costumes were simple pants and layered short-sleeved shirts. The eight dancers were Daniel Adame, Chad Chasteen, Dana Wessale Crawford, Jenny de Vega Haines, Jessi Harper, Aileen Mapes, Tina Shariffskul, and Lindsey Thompson.

"Skiagraph" is defined as "see radiograph." A radiograph is what your radiologist reads: x-rays, CT scans, and the like. "Skia" is Greek for shadow.

The Illumination Project, December 1, 2005, Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall

The dance community has been particularly hard-hit by AIDS. Several dancers whom I've known personally are either fighting the disease or have died from it, including one of Mr. Silvershoes's cousins. A few years ago I met a man who danced with Houston Ballet when the disease was first emerging. He said that seeing so many of his colleagues suffering and dying from AIDS played a large part in his decision to find another career. It's a shame then that more of the Houston dance community, by which I mean both dancers and audience members, doesn't come out to this annual performance to raise awareness about World AIDS Day and the ongoing fight against this disease. First, because it's an important cause, and second, because they're missing some wonderful performances. This project is co-produced by Dominic Walsh Dance Theater and Hope Stone Dance. The theater space was donated by the Hobby Center, and the stage crew and some (probably all) of the performers volunteered their services. This year marked the fourth year for the project, with this year's proceeds going to the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and Bering Omega Community Services. The program was an eclectic mix of live dance, dance made for video, and theater arts. I saw the first piece on the program, Duo, back in May, but performed by two women, both on pointe. (I didn't write about it in my post, but here's a link anyway.) On Thursday it was performed by Lindsey McGill (in May also, still on pointe) and Dominic Walsh. It may have been because I was a lot closer to the performers this time, but the dynamic between the two dancers seemed different, with more playful back-and-forth. It was also interesting to see the differences in the way the two dancers danced the same movement, particularly with one on pointe and one not. It's Gonna Rain was a fascinating study in repetition. The music was crafted by Steve Reich from a short sound clip of a southern preacher. We heard the clip in its entirety three times at the beginning of the piece - I (mis?)remember something about Moses and a flood, although Noah and a flood would make more sense. Regardless, the bulk of the music was snippets of the phrase "it's gonna rain," repeated at about 1 Hz and evolving slightly each time. It sounded as though Mr. Reich had kept the duration of the snippet constant but shifted the starting point. The repetition provided a beat of sorts, and the tempo varied occasionally as the snippet was stretched or contracted. The movement, choreographed and performed by David Neumann, paralleled the music, repeating but evolving. Mr. Neumann danced in a bright white special at the front of the stage, with the rest of the stage dark. To my eyes the quick movement against the dark background often appeared as a long-exposure photo, lending additional dimension. Rounding out the dance pieces were Rosa...48 Hours... by Paoli Georgudis and Glass Half Full by Jane Weiner. In Rosa Ms. Georgudis and Mr. Walsh moved with excrutiating slowness to music provided live by Mercury Baroque. I didn't get it until after the show one of the people I was with suggested that it evoked the feeling of frustration and helplessness experienced by people watching their bodies slowly fail. Duh... wish I'd thought of that. Glass Half Full was an ensemble piece for six dancers and had lovely flow and energy. It made me think that there is too little of this kind of choreography in "contemporary" performances; so much of it is solos and duets. On the theater side was a monologue from The Laramie Project, a play about how the town of Laramie responded to the murder of Matthew Shepherd. It was movingly performed by Rutherford Cravens, who is, by the way, one of the voices in the video game Axis & Allies. Apprentices from the Theater Under The Stars conservatory sang and signed "Love & Love Alone." There was one video, a "dance made for video" called Outside In choreographed by Victoria Marks and directed by Margaret Williams. This work was remarkable for many reasons, the foremost being that half of the six dancers had significant physical disabilities. The interaction between the dancers was warm and affectionate and served to humanize people whose disabilities often make us feel uncomfortable. One man, who had no legs whatsoever, was phenomenal. Ms. Marks's choreography demonstrated his broad range of movement; in fact, when he mirrored the movements of a dancer with legs, it became clear that he could do some things that a leggy dancer could not. Several elements reminded me of Reines d'un Jour from the Big Range video night: dancing in a green field, a succession of people passing on a kiss.

My blog is a googlewhack

Got this as a comment last week on my May 20, 2005 post:

tib catania said... did you know that your website is a googlewhack?! a google search for 'arthropodic underpants' returned only your website. Sorry to pester you but i was bored and stared 'whacking' see http://www.googlewhack.com/rules.htm for more info. Cheers Tib - UK

And it's actually true! Hey, my first international comment!