serene’s posterous

Photo credit: Mathieu Young/FOX

This is probably the only TV show I would watch bits and pieces of over the summer.  This is the top20 week.  My favorite routine is the weird and quirky piece, choreographed by Wade Robson, performed by Kupono and Ashley.  Crash test dummies. Toy dog. Cool music - Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp.



Special mention to the lovely routine performed by the Ade and Melissa.  Although I did not like the treacly music, I love the series of side-by-side coordinated jumps around 46-49sec in this video.

Caught bits of the auditions and the Las Vegas callbacks of this season's So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD).  A dancer, Alex Wong, really stood out.  I thought his solo piece in Las Vegas was amazing (and it doesn't hurt that he is kinda cute).  I guess that's why he is already a principal soloist at the Miami City Ballet. 

Unfortunately that also means he is still under contract with the ballet company, and can't join the competition this season.  And therefore I won't be "appreciating" his dancing on TV this summer.  He apparently has a youtube account, and put up this cool Pas de Deux rehearsal.  The song is Hallelujah by Vitamin String Quartet, which I love.

Danced a great Zwiefacher at Jammix on Friday night.  Richard Powers doesn't seem to play Zwiefache (a description on wikipedia) regularly at Jammixes, although I think he sometimes covers it during the waltz classes he teaches. 

Zwiefache are dances that changes time signatures between 2/4 and 3/4.  The one played on Friday has a simple regular pattern, mixing waltz steps in 3/4 time interspersed with pivots during the 2/4 time.  This particular song is Wintergrün (hear a sample on amazon), which has a WWWW PPWW PPWW (W=waltz, P=pivot) timing.  I like the musicality of it.  My dance partner and I role-reversed part way through, so I managed to have fun leading the waltz and pivot steps too.

It is funny to see myself on youtube again.  This time I had stumbled on a video (with a very noisy audio) of Vienna Teng's performance of the song "Between" at the 2005 Big Dance.  I had remembered the crazy crowd (it was like a mosh pit!) on the dance floor while she performed Between, which had a great tempo for a cross-step waltz.  Spotted myself in the crowd in the dance floor, and waltzing by her piano while trying to avoid traffic. 

I also remembered feeling a little torn about choosing to dance over hanging out in the balcony to enjoy the performance.  It is probably not the ideal conditions for a singer-songwriter to perform...apparently the dance floor (a huge sprung floor in Roble Gym) was really bouncing in sync with the steps of all the dancers.

Her new album is out, so I may actually go out to purchase it since I had already missed all her shows in the Bay Area.

Looking forward to dance class tonight.  I am taking a series of 8 evening cross-step waltz classes.  Cross-step waltz is probably my favorite couple dance, because I like the slower waltz music, and it is a very flexible dance and reasonably easy to partner/follow even if you haven't done a particular variation before.  I remember first learning the dance in a beginning social dance class, not very long after Richard Powers and Angela Amarillas had developed the dance.  Over the years, Richard and Angela, and other dancers, had created more interesting variations.  And I end up learning more variations each class I take.  Admittedly, it is harder for the lead to remember how to lead all these different variations!  All I usually have to do is figure out what the lead is trying to do, and just keep it flowing.

Here's a youtube video of Richard Powers and Angela Amarillas demonstrating some cross-step waltz variations (although not some of the variations we have been learning in this series of classes):



Angela's so graceful!  Unfortunately she is not partnering Richard in these series of classes.  And it is too bad the classes are not on campus anymore, making it inconvenient to get to.  I also sort of wished I signed up for the later West Coast Swing class as well.

I learned this quadrille several years back, and if memory serves, danced it at dawn (hah...I found myself on youtube (!), dancing the quadrille) at two Big Dances (an all-night social dance event held every Spring in Stanford) few years ago.  I don't think I am crazy enough to stay up dancing all night again, but for old times sake, I went to the Russian Mazurka Quadrille class tonight.  And stayed a little while longer for a few more dances at Jammix.

The Russian Mazurka Quadrille is reconstructed and choreographed by Richard Powers, based on a description by Charles Durang in Fashionable Dancer's Casket.  And it is traditionally danced at dawn at the Big Dance to prove that the dancers are able to do a complicated quadrille after dancing all night.  Jason also has a nice flash page up with all the steps and figures of the quadrille.

Last Jammix of the year. I guess I had to show up, since I hadn't
gone dancing since the Ragtime Ball.
 Jammix, usually held on the second (but sometimes the first) Friday
of the month, is dance party DJ-ed by Richard Powers. As described in
the email, it has "informal freestyle dancing with an emphasis on
couple dances and eclectic music." An old daily article
about Jammix descibes the scene.
 
I was a bit concerned that I won't know or recognize anyone there. It
is always a little awkward to ask random strangers to dance if you
have never met them before, even in the fun, relaxed environment of
Jammix. Fortunately, after sitting out the first few dances when I
got there (and missing out on dancing West Coast Swing to James's
Laid), I managed to dance with people I had met from dance classes,
friends (some of whom I hadn't seen in years), and a few "randoms".
 
It is funny how the first couple of the dance floor essentially
decides what most people would do to a particular song. It was really
weird to see most of the people ended up dancing the polka to ragtime
one-step music. It was also funny how a cha-cha a friend and I were
doing segued into a West Coast Swing after a cross-body lead. I think
it was probably just harder to do cha-cha to non-Latin music, and
therefore more natural to slip into West Coast Swing. I should
probably try to relearn West Coast swing yet again, because all I know
is the Sugar Push and maybe one or two turns. I also want to try that
accelerating waltz again, this time doing pivot steps instead on the
really fast bits.
 
Looking forward to the first Jammix of next year...

Took the opportunity to watch the 2 hour finale on the motel's samsung flatscreen tv. I haven't been following the show because some of the dancing by the "stars" was excruciating to watch and there's always too much fluff. As expected, the finale is way too long.
 
Of the non-finalists, Cody and Julianne's jitterbug is cute. Warren and Kym's hustle has the fun mood down but Warren's technique is quite poor. No bunny hops in the hustle! Lance and Lacey's jitterbug is high energy and fun too. While Lance's pigeon toes are a little distracting, he is clearly a better dancer than Warren. Derek and Brooke's waltz is lovely. My favorite of the lot.

I haven't been to the Ragtime Ball in years, mainly because I haven't been doing much social dancing in recent years (other than the odd waltz class or the once in a blue moon jammix), and I am just not very good at lindy hop. But I decided to reserve a ticket the day before the ball on a whim.

It was a lot of fun. The live big band, Swing Solutions, was good, but they played mostly swing music (as to be expected by their name!). Dancing to live music is indeed more enjoyable than to canned music. But the last 30min DJ-ed by Richard was great fun too because we got to dance stuff that the band didn't play - polkas, more waltzes, Schottische, and a hustle (which we did to polka music).

Some of the attendees were dressed in cool roaring twenties fashion. Cute fringed flapper dresses, which appear to be coming back in fashion, or fringed blouses, which look great in motion. I went with a dropped waist, twirly skirt (with a bow), which I guess is a late 1920s silhouette too. My skirt has a similar silhouette to this:

I really like this dance choreographed by Mia Michaels performed by
the top 4 finalists of SYTYCD this season. I didn't know I liked
"contemporary" dancing until I started watching the show. But I think
the music (in this case Hallelujah by Vitamin String Quartet) plays a
big role in my first impression of a routine. I also loved the kilts
on the guys and the plaid dresses on the girls. If only they had
chosen to do this routine on the tour.