Dance life

My neck is stiff, my back is hurting, my legs are sore, and my feet feel swollen.  That’s right; I just got back from the weekend dance convention, Coastal Dance Rage with some of the most popular former dancers and choreographers from So You Think You Can Dance. 

Our first class was with Nico, Canada’s first SYTYCD winner, and he taught us contemporary jazz.  In all honesty I remember liking him and enjoying his dance, but I can’t remember much about his class because it was at eight in the morning and we’ve learned almost ten dances since then.  I loved Nico, and voted for him all the time last season, but he never had the same friendly and lovable personality some of the other dancers/choreographers had so he’s easy to forget sometimes. 

Blake is unforgettable on the other hand.  His dance, and the song we danced to, keep replaying in my mind.  He has an in your face attitude, and he can come off a bit strong sometimes, but if your keep trying, you’ll get it.  Blake walked into the room, got on stage and started teaching.  Even though it was fast, and hard to keep up with, in the end his dance was our favorite.  As soon as the song came on, I took the night by Chelley, we all just got it.  

Bobby Newberry, our next choreographer, has a very similar style, only his choreography was a lot more intricate.  After struggling for a while most of us managed to get the gist of it, and it ended up being a really fun class as soon as we stopped thinking bout the details and just had fun.

Shannon, Blake’s sister, was our contemporary teacher, and she likes to throw her head around a lot.  The entire ballroom seemed to be in pain the day after her intense head rolling choreography, but asides from the pain it was a really great piece.  I loved doing it, even though I knew I looked like an idiot it just felt nice to throw myself around and be emotional because it’s something I don’t do a lot.  

Twitch, runner up in season four’s SYTYCD was the best teacher of the weekend, and I’m so happy to see that his personality is just as personable and genuine as it appeared on TV.  He went really slowly with us, and broke each movement down, so we could get his hip hop routine even if (like me) we weren’t very gangster. 

Benji on the other hand…the winner of season two’s American SYTYCD, was my least favorite teacher.  He had great personality on the show, and even though I didn’t like him and was upset he won, I respect his dancing and I knew he won because of his great personality. He has a great personality, and every time he wasn’t teaching he was funny, and nice, and charming, but as soon as he started teaching he was harsh and aggressive and too fast, especially since the style he was teaching was completely unfamiliar to all of us.

Francisco, an amazing ballet dancer, taught us ballet the second day.  I feel a little bad for him because people don’t want to be doing ballet in a convention, but he’s an unbelievable dancer and I’ll never forget his tour jete. 

Asides from the celebrity teachers we had a few famous assistants in a few of our class, including Cody and Taylor, two of the dancers from this season’s Canadian version of SYTYCD who’d been eliminated.  There was also Melanie M who’d been eliminated just last week from the show assisting too, but she never assisted any of our classes. 

Even though I’m in a lot of pain the weekend was unbelievably fun and it’s worth the stiff neck.   

My mom sent this video to me in an email and it was hard to believe what I was watching.  This is what the email said:

Recently, in a televised modern dance competition in China - a very unique couple won one of the top prizes and received the longest standing ovation.

She was a dancer, who had trained since she was a child.  Tragically, she lost her entire left arm in an accident and fell into a state of depression; so she decided to coach a children’s dancing group.  From that point on, she realized she could not forget dancing. She still loved to dance and wanted to dance again. She tried to do some of her former routines but without her arm she had difficulty maintaining balance. She practiced strenuously and developed a dance routine - always dancing alone in her studio.

He was not a dancer. He lost a leg in an accident and he had fallen into a deep state of depression. They met - and her goal immediately became to help him become positive about life again. She taught him to dance and in her studio they danced together and developed a routine as their lives and friendship became closer.

Their life together, behind the closed doors of the dance studio - was one creativity, challenge, determination, practice and sometimes failure. Their focus was on doing what others said would be impossible. Several times it became so difficult and frustrating for them that they gave up, broke up. But life alone, without each other, brought them back together again and they became even more determined to perfect a dance routine to a point where they might try to dance outside the studio to see what friends and family thought about what they were doing all that time inside the studio.

Their friends and family were so supportive they encouraged the couple to enter a dance competition, which they finally agreed to do. Only later did they realize the competition was to be televised locally. We will now see the first - and to date only televised performance of their dance…

It took a lot of courage for these two to perform, but what amazes me is the strength they each have while performing the dance.  They male dancer is unimaginably strong and he not only holds himself up with perfect posture but he lifts his partner better than some able-bodied dancers can.

Good for them!

Today, my close friend Tanya Perks is having an operation.  While she’s lying in bed still groggy from the medication I want to remind her, and let everyone else know, what an amazing person she is.

Tanya is a great dancer (who’d been on the Junior Funk team longer than anyone else) and an even better friend.  I’ve never met someone so open and sharing. Tanya is dedicated and devoted to her friends and dance, and her compassionate personality is a source of happiness and comfort to the entire dance team. 

Tanya is getting an operation today to remove her bunions.  I guess all of Tanya’s dance and tight point shoe work didn’t help her feet.  Today, at the age of nineteen,  Tanya has painful bunions on both feet.  When she began experiencing severe discomfort she stopped wearing her pointe shoes in ballet.  Even though she had been off pointe the entire year at dance, for some reason Tanya wanted to wear her pointe shoes at the big end of the year shoe.  A mix of determination and denial took over Tanya, and let’s just say that she was in a lot of pain at the end of the dance.  Even though she knew it would hurt her, she wanted to be strong and push past the pain to dance with all she had. 

Tanya is inspirational.  She’s is always there for everyone, when they’re down or when they just need a laugh or a place to hang out on the weekend.   

I’m glad Tanya is finally doing something for herself and fixing her problem.  I wish her the best of luck on her road to recovery and I know myself and all her other friend will be there by her side everyday.  She won’t be dancing for several weeks, but I know she’ll be the life of the team as per usual when she’s back at dance and feeling better.    

Every dancer knows that it’s not just about the moves, it’s about personality and there’s one thing that distinguishes a dancer from someone who dances, ‘swagga’.  Swagga is defined (on urban dictionary) as “one’s own unique style or personality that sets them apart from anyone else,” so you can see how appropriate it is for dancers. 

When you are taught moves, first you learn them, and then you add your own interpretation to what you’ve learned. For hip hop dancing it’s almost impossible not to incorporate your own signature movement into the choreography because of all the freedom you’re given with the moves.  Dances like ballet or tap on the other hand make it harder to translate your personality into the movement because each move is so precise.

You know you are a good dancer when you have ‘swagga’ as a ballerina or tap dancer, and my best friend Michelle has just that.  She was in a big tap number at one of our past competitions, Superstar, and I was constantly drawn to her.  She added something special to the movements, whether it was in her smile or her shoulder swaying, she entertained me in a way tap usually doesn’t.  She really stood out, and although it may seem like a bad thing to stand out in a dance that’s dependant on uniform synchronization, it’s really not.  At 5678 they were awarding dancers with dance bursaries and Miles had been attracted to a dancer who constantly stood out in her group dances.  He didn’t know her name and he barely knew which dance she was from, but he walked around the competition looking for this mystery girl (it seemed like something straight out of Cinderella the dance version).  As a dancer you need to stand out to be noticed, and the only way to do that is to show off your swagga.  So watch out dance world, “cause no one on the corner have swagga like us.”

like us

This is for everyone who doesn’t know what I look like in my lovely Cameron costumes:

This first picture is me in my ballet costume. The second picture, which I know you all enjoy, is me as Nathaniel.This last picture is an action shot of me dancing…

Anyways hope you enjoyed this guys!

Today I had dance exams, and at first I thought I was hesitant about blogging about it because I was stressed about school and my upcoming competition this weekend, but then I realized that I didn’t feel like blogging about the exams because I wasn’t sure how I had felt about them. When I was trying to describe my experience to my boyfriend on the phone just now it was a lot of stammering and useless humming and hawing about nothing. I wasn’t sure about how I think I did and I wasn’t sure if I enjoyed the overall experience or not…

I’ll try and elaborate like I did on the phone and make some sense out of my feelings:

The whole dance atmosphere was different this time around. When I think of dance exams I don’t think of those ten minutes in front of the examiner, I think of those two hours waiting in the changing room anxiously with my friends. It’s usually a small room crowded with people all talking to distract themselves from their nerves. This time we were in a big empty room without the typical dance talk (asides from a few minutes in front of the bathrooms where we talked about flushing the toilet.) I wasn’t as nervous this exam either, it as more of an unsettling anxiety…like a sick feeling.  I felt bad about missing school when I’m usually so excited to skip class for the dance exams.

Before I did my exams I was watching the group doing their Ballet exam. My friend’s were doing their mime (it’s exactly what it sounds like – acting something out without sound).  One of my friends, Erin, was so funny I was practically crying. From that point on I felt better about the whole exam experience. Thanks Erin!

I was excited and ready to dance when it came time for my exam. I remember standing their in my leotard and white gloves thinking “I know this dance.” I started dancing and I felt great. I was hitting all my moves and expressing to the degree of creepiness (like usual), but I never got that eye contact with the examiner. When I’m dancing and I’m really feeling it I need that connection with the audience to boost my confidence and dance that much harder. I didn’t get that, instead the only time I saw the judge look directly at me was when I made that one obvious mistake. Opps.  The examiner was really nice, and I know that did well, but there’s still that last bit of anxiety before I get my marks…that sick feeling is coming back…

I just finished watching Center Stage.  This dance movie came out before dance movies were cool and before it was acceptable to make sequels for every movie that became popular…this unmemorable time was 2000.  let me try to explain how I feel about this movie…not only is Center Stage a good dance movie (a movie with dancers instead of actors), it is a dance movie that is so good it could pass for a regular movie.  The reason: all the dancer who play the main roles in the film are beginning actors.  They all continue to act after this film, they weren’t just a bunch of good dancers being filmed; they were genuinely good actors who were putting together an interesting story. 

This movie has some classic scenes.  The point shoe scene, where all the ballerinas are breaking in their new shoes, is one that always scared me.  You see girls burning, banging, and ripping up their shoes so they fit better, but even as a dancer it seemed a bit extreme to me.  Cooper Neilson’s motorcycle is hilarious, it’s reappearance in the sequel which just came out was priceless.  But this movie is really about the dancing, and it has the best ballet dancing of any dance movie.  All the scenes of class rehearsals are unbelievable.  I’ve never seen jumps to high, I’ve never seen flexibility like that, and I’ve never ever seen more turns in a movie than in Center Stage.        

Although the story of the love triangle and the dancer who comes out on top despite the fact that she was told she wasn’t good enough seems pretty redundant for a dance movie, but it was original when it came out.  This movie rises above the rest because of the side stories.  I love Eva with her cigarettes, her swearing and her attitude. I love Cooper Neilson because his package always seems to be right in your face.  Maureen, the bulimic one’s boyfriend, is so hot and they are so cute together.  The gay guy is such a sweetie, but not as sweet as the guy Jody ends up with. 

The best pert of the movie, by far, is the final performance.  No other movie has such a well put together final dance sequence.  There were so many dancers to look out for during the finale, not just the typical lead guy and girl like most dance movies.  The finale performance seems to last forever because, there are difference dances, different scenes, and different costumes (at one point Jody’s toe shoes even change color and become red).  Ballet is such a mechanical but graceful and elegant dance and in this last performance the twists and meanings behind the movements made the dances that much more interesting.  Basically…it’s a fantastic movie, with incredible dancing…watch it.