Fame or Famine

Everyone was happy and excited for Bailey Hanks, winner of MTV’s Legally Blonde reality competition. She beat out the other legal blondes and landed her leading role, which she premiered last Wednesday. The other contestants went home, heads hung low, bitter and defeated, right?
Well, not so much.
Surprise! You’ve Got Contracts!
As it turned out, the producers had jobs in mind for all four of the top contestants in the show.

Rhiannon Hansen will play Margot, Elle’s best friend, in the touring company of Legally Blonde
Autumn Hurlbert will join the Broadway cast as Elle’s understudy
Lauren Zakrin will not only join the touring company …read more

3 Comments

Milia comments: I’m 18 turning 19 and I feel so behind in dancing. I do know I’m not up to date in movements nor technique. But you will see me again – from today on I will practice, practice, and practice.
I feel that – it warms my heart, actually. At age 18 I started on what I thought was going to be a career in musical theatre, but got a bit sidetracked, and didn’t end up getting my degree in dance until the venerable age of 29. Ten years later, I have taught ballet to three year olds and the …read more

Comments Off

Here’s the last donated blog from Steve Eley, creator of the Escape Pod Podcast (among others). I asked him to contribute not because of his expertise in the arts, but because I know he can tell a story. As you will see here…

Being asked by Gray to write a guest post on this blog was a bit surprising. This subject matter is a bit off my track; I’m not talented at the stuff Gray talks about. I’m a mediocre actor, a dangerously bad dancer, and there are laws prohibiting me from singing in six states. The one thing …read more

Comments Off

Reading about the genesis of the Phoenix Performing Arts group in Tonga is incredible, and inspirational. Founded by Siosiua Tofua’ipangai and Shiara Astle, both were dancers (Siua an ethnic dancer, Shiara ballet) who had been injured and unable to continue in their chosen disciplines.
Adapt & Overcome
In spite of being bound to a wheelchair, Siua succeeded in his dream of creating a dance company. He drew from his University experience to apply the following precepts:

appreciate art on its own merit
study arts from a critical standpoint
articulate arts in practical and theory
separate emotion from the intellectual aspects of arts

Joined by his sister, …read more

Comments Off

I’ve been very interested in learning some of the behind-the-scenes aspects of everybody’s favorite reality dance competition, So You Think You Can Dance. I think it was getting Arielle’s perspective that got me interested. But something is rotten in the state of etc…
So You Thought You Could Dance?
Like me, the TV Grapevine had a personal connection to someone who auditioned for the show. Like me, that person didn’t make it past the preliminary stages – but in their case, she was able to stay the extra day to see the “individual round.”
Yes, that’s right. That “individual round” is not …read more

1 Comment

A couple of fascinating literary works have come out – one journalistic, one autobiographical – that serve to really highlight how much the world has moved on from the days of Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov leaping over airport turnstiles to defect to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Alexei Ratmansky
In the New York Times Chip Brown has written a piece about the very young artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Alexei Ratmansky. At 39 he has become “one of the most sought after choreographers in the world.” Instead of plotting his escape from totalitarianism, the …read more

Comments Off

I had the distinct pleasure recently of dining at the Med Hookah lounge in Madison, WI, which aside from having great Mediterranean food also feature middle eastern dancers (aka bellydancers, though some don’t like that term).
Those Who Can, Teach
One of the performers there is Arielle, a teacher at the Madison Multicultural Dance Center with Mona N’wal and others. Though very young, Arielle’s been dancing since she was fourteen, and that leads to quite a bit of experience as well as talent.
That evening she did a three-part set, starting with two traditional songs and then a blended hip-hop/bellydance routine of her …read more

4 Comments

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m…” Always loved that Beatles song. And I confess, with four daughters, I’m pretty confident at least one of them will care for me when I’m 64. Or 80, for that matter, which is how old Faye Wright’s mother is now.
And the star of the musical Chicago flew across the world to be with her. Now that’s a mother’s day present. On the other hand, she does sort of owe it all to Mom: “I decided to take her to dancing lessons because she was so shy,” says Natalie …read more

Comments Off

John Henry was a self-described “performing artist/educator” who realized he was dying of AIDS and decided to turn his preparation for death into a performance piece. With the collaborative help of Douglas Rosenberg and Ellen Bromberg, a dance/technology piece was born.
A large part of that piece dealt with John Henry’s experiences as a combat soldier in Vietnam. He integrated those experiences into the piece, combining video of combat footage with live onstage dancing. You can see several videos of the stage performance here; as the piece toured, however, the performance was required to change to accommodate John Henry’s declining health …read more

Comments Off

“Embrace what frightens you. Get some new experiences.”
– Adam Carolla, Dancing with the Stars
Over the weekend I’ve been in Fort Lauderdale as part of a performing arts  seminar. Part of it was myself and others doing some Japanese-based performance art, something like a cross between butoh and kabuki and a post-modern aesthetic. There were other groups there, but if can say so, ours was the most planned of the events.
It  was an interesting experience, because my friends and I came to this conference from several different states, and spent a few hours in a hotel room Thursday night planning out …read more

Comments Off