Funnies: Dads Doing Good

This month's funny has the added bonus of not just making me giggle, but being for a good cause!  Check out these dancing dads!  These fantastic dudes are fathers of RAD (Royal Academy of Dance) students at Danscentre in Aberdeen, Scotland who learned and performed this piece to raise money for charity.  They ended up raising about $28,500!  Don't worry, although this may be reminiscent of The Full Monty, this is very clean and appropriate choreography : )

As many dads tend to be, this lot are goofy and a bit doofus, but totally lovable!  Cheers to great dads doing great things, and getting their groove on while they do it!

Back To School Goodies!

It's almost heeeeeerrrreeee!  TV commercials and online ads are probably bombarding you with reminders that it is indeed the season for Back To School!  I imagine that the parents are probably more thrilled about this than the kids (see the funny below), and I myself approach the season with a bit of conflict myself... On one hand I'm excited as a student myself to get back into the learning groove, to use my brain to its full potential and attempt to put some of the knowledge back in that inescapably has leaked out over the weeks, months, and years, but on the other hand August still feels so much like summer to me (especially in California), that get I get a bit bummed by the eminence of the end of one of my favorite seasons.  Yet, overall my feelings about Back To School are ones of excitement, and in the spirit of that, I've listed some of the coolest and (in my opinion) must haves for Back To School 2012!

I love someecards...

So if you have some kiddos on hand who are of the Not So Excited about Back To School variety, what better way to welcome them home with a great snack?  Milk and cookies, anybody?  Shop Sweet Lulu has an adorable collection of many great festive things, including these old fashioned milk bottles, which I think make for an adorable (and yummy) snack.  Pictured here are both glass and plastic versions.  Plus, these make great beverage containers for any party you might have coming up in your future!

Babble.com has a neat blog called The Family Kitchen, which is where I found some of the coolest (and weirdest) new lunch bags and boxes.  Lunch boxes were always my favorite acquisition at Back To School time... I'll never forget my purple My Little Pony lunch box.  It would probably be vintage nowadays, I should look for that thing ....

Planetbox's variation on the lunch box

And what would Back To School be without a cute pair of new shoes?  Of course I'm partial to ballet flats, but Old Navy has these cute polka dot lace ups that still keep some of that light summery feeling, which I dig.

So there you have it, some of my faves for Back To School!  Hope the new school year brings you and yours lots of fun, knowledge, friends, and good times!

Spotlight On: The Olympics (Part Deux)

Well, the Olympics are over.  The two weeks of excitement, disappointments and drama made for great athletics and great TV (even if NBC can sometimes be overly cheesy and dramatic), and I loved getting into the spirit of things and rooting for my favorite athletes.

On my last blog post about the Olympics, I talked about Gymnastics, and some of the differences between this sport and dance; some glaring differences, and others more subtle, and the argument on if the sport has lost some of its grace, and if Gymnastics of previous years brought more quality to the floor, and is quality being sacrificed by the quantity of turns, flips, and general athletic tricks.  I know this will be an ongoing debate that we'll probably keep hearing more about as the Olympic chatter continues on even as the games close, and there is a similar debate that's sprung up in the dance world that parallels this same discussion going on in Gymnastics.

Risa Gary Kaplowitz published an article on Huffington Post not long ago reminiscing about a time when ballets and ballerinas gained their then rock star status not by doing 9 consecutive pirouettes or for hyperextended and hyperflexible lines, but by diving deeply into the character they were portraying through their dance; for a calm, carefully studied and expertly balanced (both physically and dramatically) performance.  I have to agree with many of Kaplowitz's points.  Check out the article here, and give some thought to this quote:

"Yet, as wonderful as [Cynthia Gregory's] heart-stopping moments [of dance] were, they never came at the expense of Ms. Gregory's characterizations and musicality. Rather, she used her technique as a means by which to express whatever character she was portraying. She was a true ballet artist of the narrative ballets.

Unfortunately, in these days of what appear to be an Olympian approach to ballet, such ballet artists are hard to find. And sadly, many ballet schools and major companies do not seem to be doing enough to preserve ballet's greatest asset -- its ability to transcend words and transport an audience into their world. Ballet technique that explodes with meaning instead of fireworks is vastly lacking."

Cynthia Gregory as Aurora

Kaplowitz goes on to compare Gregory's performance as Aurora to modern day (and fantastically talented) dancer Alina Cojocaru with The Royal Ballet.  Cojocaru has fantastic lines and lovely extensions, yet she attacks the Rose Adagio with a boldness that (in my opinion) doesn't quite fit a young and naive Aurora.  It is an impressive performance by Cojocaru, but to me, lacks the quiet gentleness that a budding 16 year old would have dancing with potential suitors.  Below I've posted two videos comparing the different dancers performances.

Similar to the Gymnastics discussion, this is also an issue that I think will continue to develop within dance.  Today, with audiences seemingly needing and being obsessed with "how much, how high, and how fast" dancers, athletes and performers can do or show, I completely understand how dance companies, dancers and choreographers are striving to cater to these ideals; showing audiences "how much" of a particular element they can show is engaging and entertaining and gets the "oooohs" and "aaaahs", therefore solidifying a future appreciation of dance, or Gymnastics, or whatever.  Given the choice to watch a dancer dare to balance for as long as she can while engaging an audience with smiles and charm or watching a dancer pirouette or fouette repeatedly or get some impressive air time in grand jete, most observers would choose the latter for the sheer excitement factor.  Therefore, in order to keep dance a relative experience to the public, more dancers, teachers and directors strive for impressive athletic excellence.  However, I also believe that dance is an art, not a competition, not an athletic showing.  Dancers are also actors and actresses, whose job it is to not only to inhabit the character they're dancing and make that character believable and relatable to audiences, but to do it in an effortless and timeless way as the ballet they're performing calls for.  
Kaplowitz asks if dancers now are artists or merely technicians, and its a valid question to consider as shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars and even events like the Olympics shape audiences expectations about dance and performing.  Personally, I would hate to see dancers become only technicians.  While technique is vital and important, not to mention impressive when used correctly, it is empty without a human soul to carry it.  I don't want to watch a robot dance, I want to watch a fellow human who shows me highs and lows, investment and heart.  I think that is what made dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Margot Fonteyn rock stars of their day, very much like athletes Gabby Douglas and Jordyn Wieber are today.  They bring their heart and soul with them to their performance and lay it on the line.  If that kind of humanity isn't impressive and heart wrenching, I don't know what is, and for me, that's what dance and to a certain extent the Olympic games is all about: putting your heart and soul into something you love and believe in, and watching the journey of that commitment unfold.  Congrats to all the Olympic athletes for doing just that!

Spotlight On: The Olympics!

Happy August!  And happy Olympics!  I love the Summer Olympics, it's so inspiring to watch athletes from around the world gather to support their country and each other, not to mention the feats of athletic excellence that these individuals are able to conquer!  I feel so proud of not only the US team, but all of the athletes and can only imagine what their individual journeys have been to get to London, the blood, sweat and tears they have shed and sacrificed ... it gets me all verklempt just typing about it!  And when they get up on that podium... it's just magical!

As a dancer you'd be right in guessing that one of my favorite sports to watch is Gymnastics.  Those itty bitty girls pack a punch, and I love it just as much for its similarities to dance as for its differences.  In my younger and more idealistic days I remember feeling upset that Dance wasn't an Olympic sport; dancers work just as hard as athletes to develop the muscular prowess required to perform our art.  Now I feel that those two words - perform and art provide the rub that separates dance from being an Olympic sport.  While dancers are indeed athletes, and dance a very demanding physical sport, it is also a performing art; an ideal that always changes and is somewhat intangible.  That intangibility usually results from defying the usual terms of the pedestrian.  Gravity, for example.  The Romantic ballets and ballerinas were all about portraying a lightness of being, of floating and fluidly moving through space; this is how and why pointe shoes were invented.  That fluidity is part of what makes dancing look so "easy", when in fact that ease is a practiced quality, only found after years and years to the devotion to the technique.  And even after that, the pursuit of making dance look effortless is a continuous one.  Dancers spend their whole careers trying to figure it out.

In the Olympics, athletes are encouraged to show the effort, and the audience wants to see the push, the drive, and the struggle to get to the top.  I'll admit, it is compelling to see the ferocious physical push that athletes exert in their effort to get the gold, but in dance that sign of effort and any sign of "trying" is forbidden.  This is yet another element that separates dance from being a sport.  In sport the struggle of the effort is welcome and applauded, in dance it's disappointing.

Also, as performers, dancers are asked to tell a story, to dive not only physically, but emotionally into a concept, and this I think, is a huge difference between dance and the athletics we find at the Olympics.

I ran across this great article on Slate and wanted to share it as an extension of my thoughts.  

"Coaches and gymnasts, however, don’t treat dance elements as opportunities to connect with the music and audience. They regard them same way they do the tumbling skills—as a way to rack up tenths. Just as gymnasts cram the hardest flips into their 90-second floor routines, they also try to do the most difficult dance elements, regardless of whether or not they fit the music or the mood. Also, many of these “dance” skills exceed the gymnasts’ ability to perform them with anything resembling ease and grace."

-Dvora Meyers, Slate.com

This article makes great points, and I agree that the element of Grace is missing in the Gymnastics floor routines.  Maybe this is due to the newer scoring elements and requirements, but be that as it may, it would be so refreshing to see a floor routine actually performed with some commitment to Grace, rather than for the sole purpose of a high score.  But then again, that's the performing artist in me, not the athlete. : )  

I wanted to post this video that I think shows a really interesting progression of "performing" in Gymnastics.  It really is compelling to look back to the Gymnastics of the 50's and see how much more fluid and graceful the movements of the athletes are.  I definitely don't think that means that the Gymnasts of today are less athletic than Gymnasts of yore, but rather that the audience/judges priorities and idea of what is valuable has changed.

What are your thoughts?  I would love to hear what you think on this issue, or any other thoughts on the Olympics, Dance as a sport, etc.  E-mail me here! We still have many wonderful days of Olympics ahead of us, so I'm sure I'll be posting more!  Go Team USA!