Dancing in the Dark

Yesterday, I took myself off to the Betsey Johnson sample sale in the Hotel Millennium, which is a gorgeous art deco hotel located in the theater district on 44th Street. I was looking for a party dress for a Christmas party that I'm going to tomorrow night. Although I shouldn't be spending the money, I can't resist a pretty party dress. Well, I was tres disappointed. All of the party dresses were strapless! What's up with that Betsey? The last time I wore a strapless dress was for a beauty pageant in college, and I spent the entire night wondering if it was going to fall down. I just don't have the belle poitrine for that kind of dress. What happened to all the great dresses that she used to create? Oh, I know, they don't end up in the sample sale pile! I remember when her dresses used to actually be relatively inexpensive, now they cost like $300 and $400!

Afterwards, I schlepped over to Banana Republic to look for a dress and I couldn't find anything which may be God's way of keeping me from spending huge amounts of money I don't have. Still I had a good time trying on clothes. They had way nicer dresses on sale that the ones I saw at the Betsey Johnson sale.

I also went to the Best of 2008 night at Dancesport where I've been taking ballroom dancing classes for the past two years. This was a mammoth evening of 27 performances by either students or student/teacher combos. There were even a few wedding dances thrown in. I bought a class of Chateau Dancesport 2008 and settled in for the evening. Beforehand though was dancing, and I even got to do the hustle with Paul Pellicoro, who is the owner of Dancesport which was fun. By the time the evening was over at quarter of one in the morning, I had seen some great performances and some scary ones. I even got to vote for best performance of the evening.

I'm glad that I went instead of staying home and watching Grey's Anatomy re-runs, that would have been painful given the dismal state of the show this season.

Everything I know about Romance I learned From Dancing with the Stars

Last night was Latin Night on Dancing with the Stars. Was everyone as excited as I was? No? Since I take Latin Ballroom Dancing classes at Dancesport, I was excited to see the celebrities performing two dances that I actually know something about, the rumba and the samba.

I have to say how impressed I am with how well the dancers performing the samba did considering they only had a week to learn a choreographed routine. I've been taking samba lessons for a year now and I'm probably at the same level as Marissa Jaret Winokur. Samba is hard, and ballroom samba is even harder. There's the bounce factor, where your body is supposed to be going in two different directions. And samba moves! Ideally not just across the floor but around the room. I can't tell you how tired I am after taking an hour samba class.

The rumba is my favorite dance, I even wrote a post during the last season of DTWS about my love for the rumba. As Len and Mark said, the rumba expresses vertically what goes on horizontally. Its all about the push me/pull me aspect of romance. You want him but you don't want to want him. Kind of like in romance novels, when you bring the hero and heroine together and then you pull them apart only to bring them back together again. Only there is no black moment in rumba!

So I was very happy that MY Kristi and Mark got the highest scores for a beautiful dance. I even forgive Mark for wearing lavendar shoes (seriously what is up with that?). Even though Kristi felt the need to decide they had to play characters (Kristiana and Markutio), they were very romantic and sensual.

In second place was hottie Jason Taylor dancing with Edyta who in every dance has to remind you of how long her legs are and how flexible she is. We get it, now can you showcase your partner instead of yourself? Mario and Katrina did a great samba but I couldn't get over how orange she looked. Seriously, all that spraytanning cannot be good for you. And Louis von Amstel and Priscilla Presley? Sigh! I really wanted them to do a good rumba, but she just looked uncomfortable although kudos to being able to do a split to the floor when you're 62. Too bad she had such a hard time getting back up. Talk about awkward.

I still want my Kristi to win although I did vote for Marlee Matlin and Priscilla Presley (how nice of ABC to allow you to vote from 3 different emails) as well.

On to The Bachelor. Matt really went up a notch this week in my estimation by booting off Robin. Little Miss "I've lived in London and my parents have a tea maker" deserved to go. She was rude to the other contestants and seriously condescending. Marshana was right for calling her out on that. Although Omarosa jr. needed to dial it down a notch. Just because you tried rugby and skiing and showed you were a good sport (not really) doesn't mean that Matt should pick you. And her hissy fit over Chelsea and Robin was ludicrous. Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill. They may have been attacking your character, but you were not classy about the way you defended yourself.

Note to contestants, if you have to suggest to Matt how much you would like to bring him home to meet your family, and instead of it coming from him, you're pretty much going home. I knew that Marshana was going home, because she had more screen time then ever in this episode, and Matt made no effort to kiss her at all, at any time, during the episode, and he kissed everyone else. Robin with her 'Bon Soir' good-bye was hilarious. I sort of knew when she said that she was 95% sure of getting a rose, that she was going home, plus Matt's lame excuse that he hadn't given her a one-on-one date because she'd been so good at stealing time from the others during the episodes.

I'm not sure why he kept Chelsea though, since she doesn't really like to be affectionate and he does. Come on, that's not really going to change in the course of this show. And Shayne Lamas, why is she on this show? She's a hot, little blonde, who I'm sure has not been without a date since even before she hit puberty. This is not the first reality TV show she's taken part in. She was dating a guy who has a show on MTV that she appeared on. Methinks that Miss Shayne is hoping to get a career boost out of this. I can't imagine Matt picking her in the end. She's whiny, needy and brings her make-up on the ski slope for touch-ups. WTF?

I think it's going to come down to the interchangeable brunettes, Amanda and Noelle. He clearly likes brunettes, and they both seem down to earth and relatively down to earth. We all know though that whowever he chooses, unless she's willing to move to the UK, she's toast.

Thanks for reading,

EKM

Dancing away with the Stars

So last night was the premiere of the 6th season of Dancing with the Stars, my most favorite television show of all. Seriously, I love this show even more than American Idol and Top Chef, which just goes to show you how lowbrow I am. What I love about it, is that it's celebrities out of their comfort zone. It is live, there are no re-takes, if you make a mistake, it will be replayed on YouTube for eternity.

So why do B, C and D list celebrities do it? Because it's fun. They get to wear pretty costumes and dance with hot men and women, and their significant others can't really complain about it, because its dancing, not a love scene with kissing and partial nudity. Also they are learning something, how to dance. And possibly reviving their careers like Joey Fatone, Mario Lopez, and Ian Ziering (seriously had any of you seen Steve Saunders since 90210 ended?).

My money so far is on Mario and Jason Taylor. Mario because he can really dance, although Mario Lopez might wanna watch out because I think this Mario is trying to make time with Karina, and Jason Taylor just because he's big and yummy. Penn Jilette and Adam Carolla will be long gone soon, and Steve Guttenberg will be this seen's John Ratzenberger or Marie Osmond, you know the celebrity who stays on long past their sell by date because they are cute and try hard.

Then I caved and watched the season premiere of The Bachelor. I know that I said I would stop wathcing this show after Brad Womack, but come on, the new Bachelor is British and cute, I had to watch, if only to see one of the Bachelorettes hand him her panties before she passed out. Yes, she gave him her panties. At least, I hope they weren't the ones she was wearing. I could be wrong, which makes it even more disgusting.

Seriously, is this what women have come to? Giving a man they just met and don't really know their panties after playing footsie and practically feeling him up? You know there is flirting and then there is just being a skank. And panty girl crossed the line. I have to give Matt Grant, the Bachelor, credit for not picking her to stay around to add drama to the show (although from the previews, we get to see angry black woman in the next episode. I know, couldn't skirt that stereotype!).

Thanks for reading,

EKM

Are you ready to Rumba?

Anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile knows how much I love "Dancing with the Stars." So much so that I finally got up off of my fat ass and started taking ballroom dance classes in January. Right now, I take Jive, Hustle, Salsa, and my favorite dance, the Rumba.

Why do I like this dance in particular so much? Besides getting to dance to really groovy music (including a very sexy version of California Dreamin by Jose Feliciano), the dance is just sexy. According to Wikipedia, the dance is the slowest and most erotic and sensual of all the ballroom dances. It tells the story of a man and a woman in love, or more aptly, lust. The man persues the woman, flirting with her, and she flirts back, but ultimately she rejects him and casts him away.

Sounds cool, no?

I decided to do a little research to learne the origins of the dance that we now know as Rumba. The word Rumba is a really a generic term, covering a variety of names (i.e., Son, Danzon, Guagira, Guaracha, Naningo), for a type of West Indian music or dancing. The exact meaning varies from island to island.

There are two sources of the dances: one is Spanish and the other African. Although the main growth was in Cuba, there were similar dance developments which took place in other Caribbean islands and in Latin America generally.

Like a lot of other dances, the "rumba influence" arrived in the 16th century with the black slaves who were imported from Africa. Their native Rumba folk dance is essentially a sex pantomime danced extremely fast with exaggerated hip movements and with a sensually aggressive attitude on the part of the man and a defensive attitude on the part of the woman. Music is played with a staccato beat in rythm with the expressive movements of the dancers. Other instruments include the maracas, the claves, the marimbola, and the drums.

During the second world war, a dance called the "Son" was a popular dance in Cuba. It was a modified slower and more refined version of the Rumba. Still even slower is something called "Danzon", which was the dance of the very wealthy in Cuban society. Very small steps are taken in this dance, with the woman producing a very subtle tilting of her hips by alternately bending and straightening her knees.

Our American Rumba is a modified version of the "Son". The first attempt to introduce the rumba here in the United States was by Lew Quinn and Joan Sawyer in 1913. Ten years later band leader Emil Coleman imported some rumba musicians and a pair of rumba dancers to New York. Then in 1925 Benito Collada opened the Club El Chico in Greenwich Village and found that New Yorkers did not know what the heck the Rumba was all about.

There was beginning to be a real interest in Latin music which began during the late 1920's. Xavier Cugat (former husband of Charo) formed an orchestra that specialized in Latin American music. He opened at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles and appeared in early sound movies such as "In Gay Madrid". Later, Cugat played at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. By the end of the decade he was recognized as having the outstanding Latin orchestra of the day.

In 1935, the actor George Raft took a break from playing his usual gangster parts and played a role closer to who he really was in New York, the part of a suave dancer in the movie "Rumba", a musical in which the hero finally won the heiress (Carol Lombard) through the mutual love of dancing. I haven't seen it but the description makes it seem incredibly melodramatic with him dying at the end during their dance (apparently his character has a bad ticker!).

In Europe, Latin American dancing owed much to the enthusiasm and interpretive ability of a man by the name of Monsieur Pierre . During the 1930's with his partner, Doris Lavelle, he demonstrated and popularized Latin American dancing in London. They introduced the true "Cuban Rumba" which was finally established as the official recognized version in 1955.

Right now, I'm taking Bronze level classes. Which means that if I were to compete, this would be the medal level that I would be in. According to the International syllabus, here are some of things that I should be learning:

Bronze (thanks to Dance Sport UK for the steps)

Alemana (spot turn)
Basic movement
Closed hip twist
Cuban rocks
Cucarachas (learned, has nothing to do with cockroaches)
Fan (just learned)
Hand to hand
Hockey stick (have no idea)
Natural opening out movement
Natural top
New Yorker (learned)
Progressive walks
Shoulder to shoulder (just learned)
Side step
Spot turns (learned)

I'm not sure if I'll ever be good enough or up to competing, but I'm certainly having more fun learning than I've had in awhile. Of course, I leave each class feeling as if I'm in immediate danger of needing a hip replacement! I've also begun to watch the competition on "Dancing with the Stars" much more closely since I know most of the dances now.

I admire the celebrities who do this show even more now. Not only is it physically demanding, but most of them are performing steps that only competitors who are in the Silver and Gold class perform. And they have to learn most of these steps in a week. I'm still trying to learn fan after two classes!

Thanks for reading,

EKM