Dance life

So I was right, Zac Efron danced within the first five minutes of the movie ‘17 Again’.  Technically it was cheering, because he was with a bunch of cheerleaders, but it looked like dancing to me.  As soon as I saw him dance I thought, oh good, this will be just another amazing Zac Efron movie with dance, basketball and romance…but it was so much more than that.  The basic premise of the movie has been done before (to an extent), but this movie was funnier and more emotional. 

So the movie started off typically…nothing really special.  The movie really picked up when Zac finally embraced his hotness.  First Zac had long hair, then he was wearing a dirty oversized suit, then he was wearing his K Fed outfit. These weren’t the most attractive costumes for him, but when he gets out of his car in the following scene with his sunglasses leather jacket and plain white t-shirt I literally squealed.  I was dying, his hotness was overwhelming me.  I love Twilight, but I have to admit that this getting out of the car in the school parking lot wearing sunglasses scene was 10 times better than when Robert Pattinson did it. 

Zac Efron’s character wasn’t just physically hot but he also had a hot personality.  He kept standing up in front of the school making these big speeches about bullies and abstinence and self respect.  God it was hot! 

There was another dancing scene where Zac and his wife we slow dancing.  It was so cute yet slightly weird and creepy since Zac is 17 and she’s in her mid 30s.  He was such a sweetie I just wanted them to kiss.  At the end of the dance he had her in his arms and they were looking into each others eyes…I was at the edge of my seat and I could barely breathe.  I would have kissed him, even if he was less than half my age. He’s tantalizingly sexy…

The best part of the movie was when Zac went to court for the divorce settlement with his wife.  He read her a letter which was so moving and powerful and romantic I started to cry.  Tears we streaming down my face as tears rolled down Zac’s cheek.  I couldn’t belive how realistic he was.  He was way more than a hot heartthrob, he was a passionate actor.  I know it sounds cheesy, but I was blown away by the sincerity of that speech. 

The movie had a perfect cyclical ending.  Everything was tied up so perfectly that it  didn’t even matter that it was cliché.  Please see this movie.  See it even if you hate Zac Efron or Matthew Perry.  This movie is really sweet, and Zac Efrom played a character who was more than just a romantic dancer/basketball player.  

So this weekend the new Zac Efron movie, 17 again, is coming out.  I hope there’s some dancing in this one, I have a good feeling they’ll slip some in since Zac Efron is such a good dancer.  Even though High School Musical was kind of cheesy, it gets credit for having some really entertaining singing and dancing scenes. 

My favorite scene from High School Musical 3 is a dance number to the song “the boys are back”.  Troy and Chad are in a junk yard and they break into dance while reminiscing about their childhood.  I loved it! It was really creative but it still had the perfect amount of cheesiness. The guys were so hot and they didn’t even have to take their shirts off…they should have though.

Although the weird monster car bit is a little uncomfortable, but around two minutes into the dance it picks up and you forget about the previous weirdness.  It looks amazing when all the back up dancers join them because they’re all moving together perfectly in sync.  The dancing itself is really ‘butch’ in a sense.  The choreographer must have tried to make the guys look really manly, so the moves, which are a lot of fist punching and chest bumping, are executed with a lot of force. At 2:41 Troy and Chad turn into themselves as kids, and it’s so CUTE! They are such adorable little dancers; more little boys should take up dancing.  When Troy and Chad go back to their normal ages (and hotness), the dancing gets even better. They start doing a lot of tricks and they do some really cool moves with props.  Some guy does a flip off a car, and another is doing quadruple turns…there are so many cool things happening it’s hard to keep your attention on Troy and Chad, despite their hotness.

I remember watching this scene in the theaters and I just turned to my friend and said, “That was really good.”  It was better in the context of the movie, but I hope you can still appreciate it now.

Can’t wait for 17 again, better be some dancing…

Every year my dance school puts on a big show at the beginning of May.  There is usually some sort of theme, like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ or ‘Peter Pan’ (generally the theme is some sort of Disney movie because we have a lot of young kids in our school.)  This year our theme is ‘Enchanted’, which is that new-ish movie that came out with Patrick Dempsey that’s half cartoons half actors.

We did something different this year with our theme.  Instead of just giving the roles to the most expressive or most technical dancers in our school we held auditions to see what undiscovered talent there was.  At first my friends and I were hesitant on trying out, because we weren’t sure what to expect.  The whole competitive team showed up and it was a really relaxed and friendly process.  There was no pressure. 

I’ll just say it; I’m a pretty big creep. I used to try to be cool, back when I thought being cool was cool…then I realized I’m a lot more interesting when I let my inner creepiness shine through.  This being said I let my inner creepiness show like I never had before at the auditions and I got the part of Nathaniel…the biggest creeper in the show. 

It may seem strange to want a potentially embarrassing role in the school’s theme, but I was happy to accept the part. 

When you watch dance, really good dance, there’s usually a story behind it.  Dancing is like acting, and you need to be in the right state of mind.  When you’re dancing to a contemporary or hip hop, you shouldn’t just smile the whole way through.  You have to get into character, and understand what you’re dancing. 

You need o know the difference between a smile and expression. 

There have been times when I stayed in character the whole way through, like last year’s Mary Poppins dance.  I was constantly making weird faces and exaggerating my movements.  There are also those times when I forget about myself and I just think about what comes next. Those are the times your face is stuck in a smile or worse, it’ blank.  It’s the worst feeling to come off stage without knowing you did your best, and when you’re not in character it’s never your best. 

That’s why I’m so excited to be playing a role in my school’s rendition of Enchanted.  Yes it’s because I enjoy being a creep in front of others, but it’s more importantly the opportunity to be a character and express myself in a way I can’t in other dances.  So it doesn’t matter who I am as long as I’m in character.

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The Hannah Montana Movie is AMAZING! I’ve been looking forward to this movie all weekend, and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was the perfect feel good movie.  It made you laugh, cry, and all those cheesy things that Disney movie do. 

Miley is having trouble balancing her superstar life with her normal life.  While going back home to Tennessee she meets a hot guy…a super hot guy… and they fall in love.  This guy is so goddamn good looking, especially during that scene when he’s riding the horse extremely sexually…there kiss scene at the end was pathetic, I would have been all over this guy. 

She has some really good songs in this movie: her Hannah Montana songs were really catchy, but her Miley songs were really beautiful (especially the one she wrote about her and her dad.  I was also really into the last song, ‘the Climb’).  But there was one song she sang, as Miley, which was so funny and cute.  It was called the Hoedown Throwdown or something.  She starts singing this country/’hip hop’ (as she called it) song and she’s making up a dance to go along with it.  By the end of the song everyone is standing up dancing Hannah’s new dance craze.  On the Disney channel they showed everyone how to do it and I can just see a bunch of tweens all knowing this dance.  So why don’t you learn it too

See the movie.  Hannah Montana is cool.  It doesn’t make you cooler to hate her, so don’t.

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.

We all know there are different categories of movies, but beyond the basic horror, comedy, romance, action and drama there are ‘dance movies’.  Dance movies differ from all other movies because they use dancers instead of actors to play the characters.  This means the dance scenes are great, but the acting is a little bit…lame.  The storyline is usually pretty cheesy and the only good parts are the dancing scenes, but despite all that this, dance movies become addictive, like a song stuck in your head.  There is one dance movie, You Got Served, which I must have watched everyday for weeks and I can’t explain why.  There aren’t words sufficient enough to describe my love for this movie when it first came out.  The acting is one of the worst I’ve seen, and several parts of the movie are painfully bad, but when I hear the songs from the movie, or I see the dancing scenes, it takes me back to my living room five years ago when I would turn up the volume of the opening scene and just sit there and watch with a huge smile on my face for 4 minutes and 43 seconds before I rewound the scene and watched it again. 

The opening scene is a hip hop battle between the two crews and it’s so much fun to watch .  Maybe it’s me…but just hearing the song from the opening scene excites me.  Since this movie is so uncomfortably lame and cheesy and cliché I felt ashamed of my love for it, but after realizing that dance movies are in a category of their own where the movie is defined solely by its dancing, not the story or characters, my pride in You Got Served was restored, because for a ‘dance movie’ it’s pretty damn good.  Now I’d like to share it with you…