So back to the point I was trying to make before I started venting, I am out of good things to write about that are dance related. I’ve talked about every style of dance that I have experience in, and I’ve blogged about some of my experiences with dance. I honestly don’t know what else I can say that would be even remotely interesting. I guess I could try and critique some dances, but I don’t think I would have too much to say about that either, it would probably be really boring, and most people wouldn’t understand what I am talking about anyways if they aren’t a dancer. So since the assignment is to blog 750 words per week about this topic, for the next few weeks (until this assignment is over with), I will just try and find anything dance related and write about it. There might not be too much of a themed entry type thing anymore (I will try, but no promises), but if it has anything to do with dance, I will talk about it. And I guess I’ll just leave that sort of as a preface to my next couple of entries incase they are extrememly random.

I’m sure everyone has heard of some tragic story of dancers who suffer from anorexia or balimia. I know I’ve seen a few movies on the issue in the past. Fortunately I do not personally know of any dancers who suffered from actual eating disorders, but there were definitely issues regarding weight, even the really skinny girls in class always seemed to be on a diet of some sort. This is something I have personally struggled with all of my life. I don’t really know exactly how or where it starts, but somewhere along the line it is instilled in a dancers mind that fat is not beautiful. And dance is an art expressed through body movements… you’re body is “supposed” to be beautiful.. aka not fat. When you grow up with this idea in your head for so many years it becomes particularly difficult to let go. It becomes something you simply believe, without question.

I used to be skinny. Until about third grade. Around then I started going to my grandparent’s house after school. They watched me until my parents got out of work. As we all know, grandparent’s are notorious for feeding the grandchildren and spoiling the hell out of them. My grandparents were no exception. There were always cookies and sweets around. Even when I didn’t want something they encouraged me to eat for some reason, probably an italian thing. I had dinner there every night around 5 o’clock. Then my parents would pick me up around 7 or 8, after they finished working, and they still had not eaten dinner yet. So by the time we all got home and dinner was ready for them it was usually around 9. That was enough time for me to be ready to eat again. And I did. This happened pretty much everyday for several years. Of course I don’t know for sure what lead me to gain weight, but that would be my best guess.

I continued to dance. Most of the girls were very skinny. There were probably about 3-5 girls per class out of 20ish on the heavier side. I did not really notice how bad I had gotten until I saw my recital video one year. It was aweful. It sucked to work so hard on something and think you are accomplishing things and improving, and then to see yourself on video and realize you look ridiculous next to all the skinny girls. Even at a young age, I felt this way. And it literlly is because of weight alone. Maybe this is just what I have been trained to believe, but when I see two equally skilled dancers doing the same dance, if one has a better body I will think she/he is better. That’s just how it is. It’s what my impression of a beautiful dancer has been shaped to be. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it just is.

My weight problem peaked probably somewhere between 5th and 7th grade. After that I thinned out alot without even realizing it. But the image I had of my body was destroyed by then. I became obsessed with trying to lose weight. I never went as far as being unhealthy about it though. I tried weight watchers many times, I did a class on eating healthy with my mom. But even when those things did work, I never really felt any better. Everytime I was in dance class almost the entire time I would just look at myself in the mirrors that lined the entire front of the room and compare myself to everyone else. Now when I look back at pictures of myself from 9th grade I can see that my body was completely normal. I wasn’t a twig, but I wasn’t really even what I’d consider a little bit chubby at that point. Yet I always felt fat. I was fat compared to everyone else and therefore not good enough.

I ended up gaining a little bit of weight as highschool went on. Not to the point where I was ever really more than chubby, but enough for it to be noticable. I have recently watched my recitals from high school, and I think freshman year was when I was the skinniest. Sadly enough, after comparing the recitals from the different years, I almost feel as though as I gained weight my dancing actually did get worse. And it makes sense. If you weigh more you can’t move as easily, you can’t jump as high, and you can’t dance with as much energy as you would if you weighed less. So how can this issue be dealt with? How can dancers understand the importants of being in shape without it making them overly self concious or destroying their self image? None of my teachers ever came up to me and told me I needed to lose weight or was too fat, the negative feelings associated with weight were just there naturally. Being in shape was encouraged but I don’t think the teachers ever did anything to encourage students to feel badly about themselves.. Maybe this is just an unavoidable downfall of being a dancer.

This still effects me today. Dance is not as much a part of my life as it was before I came to college. I do not compete anymore, and I only do it for fun on the dance team. My self-image actually has improved tremendously since I stopped dancing on a serious level. But my weight is always on my mind. I almost feel as though the image I see of myself is distorted to a certain extent. People always say I’m not fat, and yes i know I’m not obese, but I still do not feel skinny enough. This opinion of the way I want my body to look I don’t think will ever really go away.

Here’s a really sad but beautiful example of a production.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06nOZuPPCOQ

…I literally started balling half way through watching it so I had to put it up. Any dance that makes you cry is a good dance.

I figured I’d change things up a bit and talk about the productions I was a part of at my dance studio.

My first production was Thoroughly Modern Mille. Thoroughly Modern Mille is a musical that was popular on broadway at the time. Our choreographer (Cheryl) put together a mix of a bunch of songs from the show and we did our routine to that. This is typical for productions. Many choreographers choose a popular musical as their theme. Our production of Thoroughly Modern Mille started out with a 1 girl on stage who was playing the main character of the show. She was alone on stage pretending to sing the balad that was playing. It was more of an acting thing than dance for that part. Then the song picked up and the three guys came out. Then a few seconds later everyone in the dance came out and started dancing. Though there were only 3 actual guys in that dance, half of the girls played guys. I was a guy unfortunately.. I was always a guy when girls needed to play guys, because I was always one of the tallest in the class. The “guys” were dressed in suits and the girls in flapper dresses to match the style of dress portrayed in the actual musical. This production was all tap and had a lot of partner parts with the “guys” and girls.

My second production was during the year that Donald Trump’s reality show came out ( i forgot what it is called!) ..and our teacher was obsessed with it. So she decided to have our production theme be working. We used Michael Jackson’s song “Working” (I think that’s what it’s called.. if not, it’s something about work). This was a fun dance. We were all dressed in black pin stripe business suits and had to buy fake glasses and a briefcase. The characters we were supposed to play were basically uptight workers who all of a sudden bust out into crazy tap dancing. And at the end of the dance, Cheryl put in an actual sound clip of Donald Trump saying “you’re fired” from his reality show and she had a few of the dancers act out a little skit to it.

My third production was themed Polar Express! …yes, it was the year the movie Polar Express came out. The dance started out with us giving our tickets to the ticket person and boarding on the “train”. We all wore colorful clothes and hats, scarves, gloves, stuff like that. There’s not really much more to explain about this one. It was a fun dance too and was also tap.

I didn’t really like my last production so much. It was during the year that country music started getting really popular. So of course Cheryl picked Wild Wild West as our theme, which when you think about it there really isn’t that huge of a connection between the two. But oh well. That’s why she did it I’m sure. I hate country music, but luckily the majority of our dance was to Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West”. However it started out with hard core cow roping, pretty much on the ranch type of music. Our best guy dancer was out there by himself doing some jazz moves with a rope. Then some of us came out tapping and others doing jazz/broadway style. After a few minutes of the cow roping music, the song broke out into the funky “Wild Wild West”. Towards the end the music stopped and there was one of those fancy brawl type things you see in westerns. I forgot what they are called. Two of our guys circled around eachother then walked in opposite directions and turned around and pulled out fake guns and shot at eachother. Then one collapsed and was dragged off stage. After that it went back into “Wild Wild West” and we continued the dance. It was actually a pretty cool dance I just hated my costume. And that was enough to ruin it for me. The group I was in had to wear chaps made out of animal print material, black booty shorts, and a skanky black shirt that pretty much only covered the boobs and a little bit of arms. So the only thing covered of our body’s were the front of our legs, the small area that the booty shorts covered, and the boobs. And they weren’t even sexy, which I’m guessing was what she was going for. They were just AWEFUL. And on top of that most of the people who had to wear them were not skinny enough for that kind of costume, including myself. I wouldn’t say I’m fat but there’s no way in hell I should have been wearing that. And it was a tap dance, so everything was jiggling around. It was just aweful. It ruined the entire dance for me, and probably a lot of people that had to watch that. I don’t know what she was thinking.

Getting ready for competitions was really fun too. We all had to have a certain hair style and makeup and of course costume. The last 3 or 4 years I did competitions, they made us wear these massive hair pieces. They were kind of a pain, but they looked good. We had to put our hair in a bun and then rap this, probably about, 6 ft long string with hair dangling off of it, around the bun. So basically it looked like a really thick pony tail. I don’t know why they didn’t just have us use our own hair.. it probably would’ve worked just as well, but they did look good even though it was a pain in the ass. The makeup usually consisted of dark foundation, lots of blush, thick black eyeliner with fake eyelashes, white and brown eyeshadow, and red/bright lipstick. It was really intense and I loved it.

The rewards ceremonies were held several times throughout the day. Everyone who danced in that section would get on the stage (I don’t know how we all fit) and they would read through every dance and announce which medal you won. The medals were based on scores and usually you would get platinum (high scores), high gold, gold, or silver (low scores). Then they would announce rankings for each category and overall rankings as well. It was definitely an exciting time of the day. Sometimes there were cash prizes, but it always went to the studio, not us unfortunaltely.

The craziest thing that every happened to me during a competition was, once we were in the middle of doing our production and the speaker blew. None of us knew what to do so we just kept going. And after a few seconds people decided to start singing the song. So we were singing and dancing at the same time, and we ended up speeding the dance up like crazy. It was a tap dance too so by the time we got to the end it was INSANE.  I’m sure it looked horrible, but people understood it wasn’t our fault, and we got to do it again so everything worked out. It was kind of funny though.

When I was in high school i was extremely busy. I took around 8-9 hours of dance class every week, plus school, i had a job, and i was in the school musical every year. Musical took up an insane amount of time and it was really really stressfull. I would have dance mondays, tuesdays, thursdays, and some years on fridays for the entire year, and musical rehersals ran from around December to March. By the time we got to around late January/February rehersals were usually close to, if not everyday. And on top of that I had homework and work just about where ever it would fit in.. I don’t know how I did it all to be completely honest. There were days where I would go straight from school to musical rehersal then to dance and back to musical. Sometimes work would be thrown in there as well. And then the week before the musical opened we would have rehersal from 330 usually until around 10 or 11 everyday. That was insane! There was no time for schoolwork. I don’t know how I did it. But I did all of that stuff because I loved it, and i loved to dance and being a part of the productions at school. It was worth it in the long run. The experiences I gained through those activities definitely fall into the category of defining moments.

My senior year was a little bit harder to manage everything though because I was a co-dance captain.. which basically meant myself and another girl were in charge of teaching the dances. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, but our choreographer for some reason always had some reason she couldnt make it to rehersal. So instead of cancelling rehersals she put us in charge. It was really difficult because alot of times the rehersals would be at the same time as my dance classes. So I would have to miss one or the other. And everytime I missed a dance class my teachers would get mad at me and I would fall behind in the dances, and then whenever I missed a musical rehersal the dance ensemble would be without 1 of their leaders. Then I would come to the next rehersal and I wouldnt even know the dance because I wasn’t there for the rehersal. So understandably, people got annoyed. It all worked out in the end, and no major issues resulted from it, but it was very difficult to manage.

My experience with hip hop is pretty limited. I took it for about 2 years at my studio and I was not good at it. I wasn’t absolutely horrible.. but i wasn’t good. Hip hop is a very difficult style to pull off. The moves are so intricate and quick. It’s also very different from the other styles of dance that I’ve talked about already. Though some aspects of other styles are encorporated into hip hop. Even when you get the moves down, you have to add the style to it, which is the hardest part for me. Most of the moves look stupid if they aren’t done just right.

There are many different kinds of hip hip styles. I won’t even attempt to explain them, but here are some videos to show the differences:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zYDnUZFAb8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfR9VJBVPgk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTZFo7oT32Y

For a better definition of hip hop dance visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8423hE83L4

That was from So You Think You Can Dance (if you can’t tell by now). This dance is like the quintessential example of a broadway dance. It has just about everything a typical broadway number does: the props, the music, the costumes, and of course the moves. Broadway dances are usually done to musical theater songs, especially songs along the lines of “All That Jazz” from Chicago, “Big Spender”, “On Broadway”, and “Bye Bye Birdie”. Any studio that offers broadway is almost garunteed to have done one of those songs in the past 2 or 3 years. My studio did all of those songs at least once in the time that I was there.

Broadway dance moves are based on jazz, usually the turns and leaps are involved. But the choreography itself is different. Again, it’s hard to describe. It’s always easier to explain the differences among dance styles through watching dances. That is why I provide so many! Alot of times broadway choreography incorporates the Bob Fosse style. Bob Fosse was an extremely famous musical theater choreographer. His work is most famous in the musicals “Chicago” and “Sweet Chariot”. If you’d like to read more about him visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Fosse

I came across a video on youtube that demonstrates some Fosse moves. This however is not a dance, just a demonstration of some of his signature choreography moves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWfH7BkQ3yc

After watching that, if you go back and watch the first video you will find several of those moves or moves very similar to them. Bob Fosse has tremendously influenced the style of broadway dance.

The costumes and props of broadway dances usually consist of chairs, hats, gloves, suspendors, fancy suits, and fun stuff like that. The not so fun part about it is the girls usually have to wear character shoes. Character shoes are basically a pair of high heals with some rubber soles on the bottom. They are the worst to dance in! They are extremely hard to turn in and when you do jumps somehow you only get about half as much height.

Here’s another fun dance from So You Think You Can Dance. This dance was performed on the finale of last season. And was choreographed by judge Nigel Lithgo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU6KAwdPWG8

Last year I was in the musical Children of Eden at Fisher and they added an extension to the stage but for some reason they wanted it angled down a little bit. Mind you the angle was a pretty minute change, but the first time I did a turn on it, I went to put my foot down after the turn and the floor wasn’t in the place that it has been for the past 17 years that I have been dancing and it completely threw me off. I fell.. almost off the stage. It was funny, but good thing it was only a rehersal. Usually the type of floor differences dancers encounter are how slippery/sticky they are rather than if they are straight or slanted. How slippery or sticky the floor is can completely throw a dancer off if it’s not what she/he is used to. For me, I usually dance barefoot whenever possible, and now when I try use shoes everything feels different and it throws me off because dance shoes can be like wearing socks. Socks are much more slippery than going barefoot. The floor we danced on for the performance wasn’t that big of a deal though. I was fine with it. Some of the girls had small problems but we got through it just fine.