Ain’t that the truth. She’s also got some good info on the new shows “Girlicious” and “Best Dance Crew”, so check the blog out…

Post from: Fame or Famine

Based on the ever-entertaining review of Kristin Sample over at TV Squad, I had a much more enjoyable evening. The best thing she had to say was:

“One piece, however, was pretty good (and define “pretty good” as “my ears didn’t bleed during the song and I didn’t feel slightly ashamed for the performers”). Carrie Ann’s team did “Call Me” and it was actually entertaining. The vocals were consistent. The choreography was fun. And the costumes were kind of cool.”

To which I’ll add, the videography was atrocious. Aside from the need for a better sound board operator, the show needs to get videographers who recognize that head & shoulders shots are not the way to convey choreogaphy. If you’re going in close, go in close – if you’re going to show the body, show the body. Don’t put the performer in a box where their limbs get cut off and various body parts of other dancers dart in and out of the frame.

See for yourself, in the video below. Watching it tells me everything I feel I need to know about Dance War – and that includes the salvaging of 1.5 hours of my life next monday…

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My fellow B5Media blogger DanceWatcher has posted a wealth of background information about the teams and the dancers involved. I guess from a trading-card kind of point of view this is a very good show – seeing all of her information set out there made me think of the old Dungeons & Dragons character cards that I used to create…

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I don’t know if it was just me, but sounded to me like Carrie Ann was kind of prepping by making excuses for the entire group – “singing live on tv is really hard!” Well, yes, it is, of course, but the fact that they brought it up so quickly just kind of said to me “it’s been a rough week in DanceWar land…”

In light of my previous post, you can imagine how I felt about the pseudo-military costumes for the opening number – if they were doing a number from Miss Saigon or South Pacific, sure, but just as decoration? Again, felt like pandering.

The singing wasn’t bad, but the dance was half-hearted – I saw several instances where the moves were perfunctory, kind of walked-through and not committed to. They made the cardinal mistake, over and over, of letting the move end at the end of their bodies, instead of pushing the energy out beyond.  The choppy editing of the individual montage began to really grate on me…with all the “zoom…whoosh!” transitions, it just felt too MTV.

And I think that’s my worry. We’re not looking for good singers and dancers, we’re looking for the next MTV set. And having a boy band number next kind of clinches it. I will say this – if they are actually singing and doing those dance moves, and the choruses aren’t actually voiced over…they’re doing pretty good. Bruno’s “difficult harmonies” comment, though, was ridiculous. That is not a difficult bit of harmony, folks, sorry.

The harmonies in the next group were much more impressive – but the dance suffered a bit. Who is it that choreographs these things?

And the choosing begins…again, lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Going over every persons name again? Ridiculous. Lachey’s reading of the question sounded so forced…if this is reality tv, why can’t they be real?

Wow, this is turning into a very whiny post. May have something to do with the fact that my back spasmed earlier today. Of course, last time I had a much nicer review than most other people, so this makes up for it.

The girls performance (why is it that all the girls had to perform together?) seemed to be a bunch of waving arms – again, not a lot of artistry here, just a lot of bump-grind-pump to go with the waving arms. I also found myself wondering how many of them had done this kind of dance in heels.

The process really seems tremendously padded to just enable more commercials. I really didn’t agree with Bruno’s evaluation of the vocal talents – especially the second group. I was amazed at how many wrong notes there were. The exception was Mariel, who I think is going to be my favorite. I keep hearing people complain about her dancing , but I don’t see it being any worse than anyone else’s, and her singing goes so far over everyone else, male or female – this is the person that I could easily see going on to a deal in the future.

Of course, the process of picking has to be totally hyped, with all the women compared to all sorts of celebrities- Beyonce, Shakira, Madonna, on and on…I think the process of hearing Mr. Lachey keep on repeating all the names each time is tied for the annoyance of “You’re….NOT the one that we want.” I was shocked that Mariel wasn’t chosen first by Bruno – I have to say that I think, in the realm of “competing”, he’s going to pay for that one.

They have one chance to perform again, and unfortunately the pressure showed almost right away – in the nervous twitching at the beginning, and the third singer who really dropped a note. And when the boys performed, it was obvious they had backups provided by the soundtrack, which leads me to suspect that the bigger group numbers really only have the soloists mic’d.

And let’s see…I think (this is being typed before they pick) that Alyssa and Philip are going home. Let’s see what really happens…Nope, Bruno proved me wrong right away, picking Philip. Again, I don’t think he’s really making the best decision there. I think Maxx will stay, though- Carrie-Ann is a dancer, primarily, and she’ll want to keep his talent.

…wow. I am obviously no judge of talent. Alyssa and Qis were picked, and Maxx and Corinna are going home. Maybe it was the hair…

I’d like to see, sometime, a loser say “Fuck this! You all have NO idea what you’re missing out on! And your accent isn’t cute, it’s TACKY!!!”

Just because it might feel, you know…real.

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“…I’ve never in my life seen more people with less dance training seeking to become “stars.” They sang their hearts out and wiggled their butts and seemed in all honesty to have no clue that ass wiggling did not constitute dance…and so looked like monkeys.”

I don’t know that I’d go that far – again, this is a show not about dancers but about what kind of team Bruno and Carrie can craft. But I actually came to the review via Natalia of the “Shimmyblog“, and she mentioned another critique that, while accurate for the show, leads into a dangerous stereotype:

“I will just say this point blank: If you are dancing to music, but your movement ignores the music – then go home and work on your musicality. It does not matter how perfect your technique is if you can’t figure out how to fit that movement to your music. And don’t even try to say, “that’s the choreographer’s job” Sure it is, but it’s your job too. “

I’m sorry, but coming from a Modern dance background and training – well, first of all, most of our training was not to music. I recall how uncomfortable I was after two years of Modern dance training to come to a jazz class where everything was right-on-the-beat .

My comp teacher, Jin-Wen Yu, taught me this better than anyone. He had the class sit down and told us he was going to be doing a solo for us. He then stood in the center of the room, full of composure and presence (you have to see this man, if you get the chance, just to feel him on the stage) and signaled for the music to begin.

A guitar started wah-wahing, and a funky little drum beat started, and the class started giggling – it was the BeeGees singing “Stayin’ Alive”. Not what you’d expect a world-class dancer to use in his modern dance composition class.

Then he started to move. I recognized what he was doing right away, because I was also taking an early morning T’ai Chi class from him – he was doing the Yang short form. And the contrast of the slow, deliberate motion to the music was beautiful.  What followed was some very difficult training getting us to ignore the music, no matter how steady or driving the beat, or how to impose our own rhythm on long, sustained John-Cage-type music.

Which is the best argument of all, I think. Merce Cunningham was the king of just sticking dance to whatever music – or noise, even – that was happening, enjoying the happy coincidences that occur, or that are imposed by the audience. The thing is, we are conditioned to want to see those kinds of match-ups, and will put them in whether they are there or not.

Which may be why modern dance isn’t as popular as, say, DanceWar. Because it takes a little more work to appreciate what’s going on, to really find the beauty in dissonant movement. I don’t want to make a value judgement on it – hey, I love rhythmic dancing as much as the next guy.

But just because something doesn’t fit into convention…well, that may be a good thing. It’s part of why I was so disappointed that they let Quandrell go. It’s how people grow. Watching another dance video, I heard a critic talk about how Baryshnikov had added all sorts of movements to the ballet canon that hadn’t existed before, and now all the male ballet dancers did them as if they were no big thing. “But that’s not what makes Misha great,” he added. “What makes him great is that he can stand on the stage doing nothing – and you can’t take your eyes off of him.”

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 I wish that Bruno and Carrie Ann were real rivals and actually despised each other. That would be awesome. On Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter: Team Hughes vs. Team Serra, you could tell that Matt Hughes and Matt Serra really disliked each other. Maybe ABC will just replace Bruno and Carrie Ann with Matt Hughes and Matt Serra (no, that would be silly…or would it?).

I say let’s take it a step further: a la Wife Swap, have a week where the hosts swap shows, and we see Carrie Ann coaching the fighters and Matt Serra screaming “No! No! Dammit, with FEELING! Now take it again- frikkin’ 5-6-7-8…”

Post from: Fame or Famine

This is a minor point; I’m not saying that we shouldn’t watch the show, or that they even thought about what they were naming it when they came up with the name. But they did bring in the “war” word, and they did fade an American flag, billowing, during the solo audition of a singer performing “Amazing Grace” on a California beach (an act which could, in itself, seem a bit disrespectful to the origins of that melody). It felt to me like they were making a play at the Patriotism heart strings, and in that context – it really didn’t fly, for me.

A friend of mine recently visited Seaworld, and like me, a veteran of military service, she found the same things happening – using the tragedy of war as a part of entertainment:

At the Shamu show we got a multi-media American flag waving event to honor the brave American soldiers and those of our allied nations. They had US force members stand up for a big cheer. Immediately after that they had the nerve to show cute images of animals, calling them, Brother, Sister, Cousins, In-laws, and then flash to the earth and call it Mother.

We were to celebrate the young men and women who are dying because of really stupid politics in this senseless war. We’re to call cute animal brothers but we’re to send out our young to kill other humans and destroy habitat and history, not to mention decimate our international reputation and credibility.

The park has many international visitors and children. It was deeply embarrassing and distressing for us.

I’m not trying to point fingers here, or say that people shouldn’t remember these folks. It just seems to me to take away from the gravity of the situation to do these things in a context where one minute you’re thinking of the dead and maimed and the next you are cheering because a whale ate a fish. If we are remembering these things, we should, in my opinion, remember them, give them some actual time in our hearts and minds and perhaps even try to figure out ways to honor their memory – not the least by thinking before we decide to go to the next war.

My fellow B5Media Blogger The WidowsQuest linked today to a dead soldier’s words. I recommend you go and read the entire piece; he was a good writer, and his words deserve to be heard. If you don’t have the time, well, then here’s his own wishes about the use of the war to promote any cause:

I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I’m not around to expound on them I’d prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn’t support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I’d prefer that you did so. — Andy Olsted (R.I.P.)

Post from: Fame or Famine