Chantal Robson choreography and freestyle

Dancing her own choreography:


Freestyle/improv:

Ok, those weren't THAT good. I mean for hip hop or whatever you want to call this, it was fine, but when you have the last name Robson, everyone is going to expect you to be the choreographic genius that is your brother. If you aren't, don't put it on YouTube.

I can't find much about her from Google, other than a CourtTV article about Michael Jackson. That's "helpful".

Stay on your toes,

Selly

About those weird tap pointe shoes...

You are a young dancer in the 1920's trying to make it on the vaudeville circuit. You stand backstage nervously awaiting your turn to perform. Your costume and hair are perfect. You reach down to tuck the ribbons of your toe shoes in one last time. Any second your name will be called to perform. You hear the announcer remind the audience that once you start your routine, you will not come off of full pointe, mostly because of the steel shanks in your toe shoes. You walk on stage, rise to your toes and begin to tap dance.

Toe tap is style of dance made popular in the 1920's by dancers on the vaudeville circuit. It was one of the many ways to keep an audience on the edge of their seat wanting more. The dancer performs a mixture of tap dance steps and modified turns and tricks all while standing on full pointe. Dancers even attached ball bearings to the platforms of their toe shoes so that they could perform tricks such as chaine turns en pointe while in a backbend position.

Video footage of these toe shoe hoofers is very rare. I saw one on YouTube the other day but stupidly forgot to bookmark it (Found it! See it above). It appears in a few musicals and movies from this era.

Toe tapping is still done today, but is much less common. Sansha now makes a lace up pointe shoe with taps attached to the bottom of the outsole like a regular tap shoe.

More information can be found here and here.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!

It's funny, we didn't even get the weekend off of rehearsals for Easter. I really like all the pieces we're rehearsing, but I'm really glad the performance is next week so we can finally be done with it.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

"Hi" is on a liquor commercial

Weird commercial, AWESOME song. And the dance that Wade Robson did to the same music was pretty amazing, too.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Pointe Shoe Information Exchange did a serious update

I'm sad now. It's a lot more information on retired styles of current brands of pointe shoes, and a lot less on really old brands from the '20s and '30s. Oh, and does anyone know where that cool picture of the rainbow pointe shoes went? I saved it, but I didn't get the brand name. I want to know what brand those were.

The website also has some really informative articles about pointework, and lists of suggested brands of shoes (and reasons why others are not on this list). It's definitely worth looking at.

You can find all the new info at The Perfect Pointe.

UPDATE: After contacting Danielle DeVor of The Perfect Pointe, I think that the depicted pointe shoes are Sylvia brand.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

A lot of stuff has been happening, and I've been too busy/lacking anything to write about, so the blog is a little dead right now. Anywho, here come some dance links:

• The crazy is back. Dancing With The Stars's season premiere was last night, and it appears that the favorite to win is Kristi Yamaguchi.
• The Southtown Star did a video feature on M.A.D.D. Rhythms hoofer, Lee Howard:
  
  
• Saifan Shmerer, a student at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts reflects on her last Advanced Repertory class and disconnecting the mind from the body at the Joyce Theater's blog.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

My blistery feet are just that pretty that I had to post pictures of them here

You can't really see them all that well on my left foot (which is probably a good thing), but they're definitely there.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Two things that amaze me

1.) Dancing on pointe without padding for about 5-10 minutes at the end of a flat technique class can cause 4 new blisters.

2.) My friend is already out of ICU, the surgery was extremely successful and she is already walking with and without assistance.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Why do we dance?

Is it because to a certain group of people, perfection of movement is the ultimate goal? Is it because for some reason we enjoy working our butts off for hours every day? Is it because there's something hiding deep inside of each of us that we don't know is there that only comes out when moving across a studio floor and simply cannot be expressed in any other form?

Or is it simply an outlet for elitists and perfectionists to micromanage themselves in a somewhat healthy way? Is it because we somehow enjoy the pain of endless blisters, sore muscles, weak ankles, bunions, and every other foot ailment imaginable?

Is it purely a fact of tradition and evolution, memorizing and passing down an art form that came about hundreds of years ago and still exists as it did then today? Is it because we need to prove to ourselves that there is something in us that is different or better than everyone else? Is it because we have the tendency to enjoy repetition? Is it because ballet can teach the best life lessons even if it is in the strangest of ways?

Is it because we strive for the respect that prima ballerinas, ballet mistresses, and those ancient technical master teachers receive? Is it because we need a greater being to respect and idolize and we may find this in a company, a studio, a class?

Is it because the composers and musicians need images of symmetry and physical perfection to properly complement their classical scores and dancers do just that? Is it because some of us are so broken inside that we can only hope that one day we'll be able to fix ourselves?

Or is it just that we've done this for so long we don't know how we could ever stop?

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Please keep her in your thoughts

A good friend of mine who I've danced with since toddlerhood had surgery for pretty severe and sudden scoliosis yesterday. As far as they can tell now, the doctors were able to move what they needed to move, but they are not 100% positive of what the outcome will be. They do not know if and when she will be able to dance again. She's still in ICU now. Please try and send positive healing energy her way.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Nasty ant hats

At rehearsal tonight, we were practicing a dance with hats. The old ones were falling apart, so our Artistic Director/Ballet Mistress dug out some really old ones. We're talking "Oh, this person taught me my first tap class and they wore this hat when they were 10" old.

One of us says "THERE"S SOMETHING CRAWLING ON MY HEAD!!!". We all throw the hats down. Lo and behold, between two of the hats, about 700-800 large ants had made their nest between two of the hats and they had spread to some of the other ones while sitting in a box for years and tears.

Our choreographer (different one than that in the previous post) threw the hat containing most of the ants out the window. It landed on the AD's car. Someone saw the hat fall and brought it back in to the studio before the choreographer could run to the office to tell the staff what had happened.

So, the ants almost invaded the studio, but in the end, they didn't. It was still absolutely disgusting though.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

You're certainly old enough, and I think you're intellegent enough (most of you) to remember choreography, so why don't you?

Tonight at rehearsal, about half the group stopped towards the end of our neoclassical piece we're working on. When our choreographer asked them why, they dared to say "Oh, well we forgot it." She FLIPPED OUT. I would have too. So, the choreographer left the room because she knew she would start screaming at us and probably knew that this was just the right group for someone to get upset and quit altogether. I had to teach the last 24 counts that we had learned at the last rehearsal to the rest of the group. Almost no one was there, and all but one other person and I were late. I don't find this at all acceptable. I mean, really? You would "just forget" and stop IN THE MIDDLE OF REHEARSAL?!? Really?

I mean, honestly, would any of you out there just decide to stop dancing and sit down in the middle of a rehearsal because (this one is a gem) "I couldn't see her demonstrating last time so I was watching someone else who isn't here this week"? Is this suddenly now acceptable?

When she finally gained her composure and the choreography had been retaught to the rest of the group, the choreographer came back. Believe it or not, she said this was only the second time she had ever walked out on a class in her entire ballet career. It was pretty funny (not in a humorous way, but weird) because I specifically remember this same choreographer/teacher walking out on a class I was in a couple years ago. I guess I'm... lucky...?

Ok, end of rehearsal rant.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

So now she's a swing choreographer too?

Hamilton Academy of Music Dance Department. Choreography by Sarah Reich.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

This might be old news, but...

Danciti really scared me for a second. When I saw their post title "Judith Jamison retiring", I kind of had a mini-breakdown. A little more mini than when I found out that Wade Robson won't be on SYTYCD4. So this was more of a micro breakdown.

It turns out that she will retire from her current position as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's AD, but that won't be until 2011. She also has plans to stay affiliated with the company.

More details available in a NYC Times post here.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

F is for Firebird

I promised myself I'd get around to finishing the ABC's of ballet, I just haven't yet.

The Firebird is a ballet based on Russian folklore about the Firebird, a magical bird that brings both good and bad fortune to the man who captures it. The first Firebird premiered in 1910 and was performed by Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, starring Tamara Karsavina as the Firebird. However, the most famous Firebird is probably Maria Tallchief who danced George Balanchine's version of this ballet. Other famous Firebirds include Margot Fonteyn and Gelsey Kirkland. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater also performs a piece to Stravinsky's Firebird score; it is a modern duet danced by two men.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

7 Things About Me

Maria tagged me, so here goes:

Here are the rules:
1 - Link to the blog who tagged you (above)
2 - Post the rules on your blog
- Share seven random and/or weird things about yourself.
- Tag seven people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
- Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1.) I've been to a Hilary Duff concert. Yikes.

2.) I really hate the movie Dirty Dancing.

3.) One time, I dyed my hair pink.

4.) I've taken class from some amazing old time tappers. At times, I really hated it.

5.) I complain about blisters, yet I choose to only wear the cut off toe of a sock as pointe padding.

6.) I've never been to New York City.

7.) There are a couple of blogs that I link to that I've only ever read 1 or 2 times.

I'm tagging Swan Lake Samba Girl, Blogging SYTYCD, Identity Check, DanceMind, Danciti, The Ballet Blog, and J-Pointe.

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Dance Magazine's New Coverboy

Wade Robson is on the cover of and heavily featured in the March issue of Dance Magazine. And there is some stuff in there that I actually never knew, too like his two year break from dance. It's pretty cool. The article can be found here.

I got that letter today.

You know; the one that says "Thank you for driving 6 hours in one day and paying us $20 to audition, unfortunately we don't like you enough to let you in! Sorry". I hate that letter.

Oh, and I have a big blister on my toe. I know, get used to it, but it hurts!

Stay on your toes,

Selly

Dancer's block?

I was posed with a question yesterday when complaining about having writers block (hence the lack of posts). It was: Can a choreographer get "dancers block"?

Although my only "real" (ha ha) choreography experience so far was a pseudo-lyrical dance for an inexperienced friend to use at a mock SYTYCD competition, I make stuff up all the time. I rarely ever dance it, but almost every time I hear music, some sort of idea for movement just seems to pop in to my head. It's so much easier for me to plan how bodies can move through space than it is for me to decide how to word a sentence.

But, then, there's the whole factor of burnout that does play a part in "dancer's block". And, as Mia Michaels puts it, the difference between people who want to dance and choreograph and people who were put on Earth to make dances. It seems as though the first people group sure is most likely to burnout, and even without burnout are more likely to have every piece of choreography look exactly the same. So does this count as "dancer's block"? Personally, I would say yes. I've had choreographers before that dance after dance, song after song, year after year, everything looks EXACTLY THE SAME. It could be lack of interest, lack of creativity, or just the fact that they were a bad choreographer. I may never know.

Anyone else got any thoughts on this?

Stay on your toes,

Selly