i am a dork. this is not a new development, but in case someone reading this is not yet privvy to this fact, i thought i'd point it out before i explain how i spent a chunk of saturday. so consider this paragraph "background info"; those of you who know me well can safely skip this part and go down to the second paragraph. it's ok - you won't miss anything. for the rest of you, yes, i am a dork, but my dorkdom is primarily focused in the theatre/musical/band/dance areas. i am currently working with the choir at school to choreograph a couple numbers for the spring concert, and the idea of maybe starting a show choir at school has been bandied about a bit. so it is with these thoughts in mind that amy (the choir diva) and i found ourselves at epcot, sitting in the america gardens theatre, watching the finals of the Showstoppers Show Choir Invitational Competition. yes, we are both big fat dorks, but we also wanted to get an idea of what we needed to think about before approaching our principal with this idea. (and we wanted see people who were even bigger dorks that we were - mission accomplished.)
mostly what we took away from the day was what NOT to do, and the certainty that we would NEVER make our kids do some of this stuff. we did come up with some ideas of what TO do, as well, but that mostly came from us, and not from what we witnessed on stage. first up were the top three girls' choirs, followed later in the afternoon by the top five soloists and the top five mixed choirs. what appalled me the most was the need to make these kids dance through every second of every song. the choreography had no place in most of the songs, and made no sense most of the time. also, these kids were drilled within inches of their lives, so that each of their movements were exact, finite, and perfect. which sounds good in theory, exept people don't really move like that, so they just looked like a team of well-programed robots spinning on stage. also, as far as i'm concerned the "cheerleader nod" and the "oh, i'm so surprised and cute at the same time" look have no place in theatre, dance, or especially show choir.
and i don't even know how to describe the abject horror amy and i experienced as we watched 40 white kids from the mid-west perform hip hop moves, which had clearly been taught to them by someone who was not only white, but had never met a minority or watched a dance or hip hop video in their life. it would be easier to describe if i could just attach a video of me re-enacting this heinous dance move, but alas, i do not have the technology to do so. so in order to convey the severity of the crime committed, i will write you a how-to. please just follow the simple instructions below, and you, too, may be jumped in any racially mixed area.
step one: stand up and move slightly away from your computer (far away enough not to cause damage, but close enough so that you can still read. if you are concerned about your lack of dance skills, you may want to print these instructions out and then go to large empty space void of people.) you may also want to inform any others in the room with you what it is you are doing so they do not think you have lost your mind or want to beat you up.
step two: place your feet shoulder width apart in a relaxed stance.
step three: form your hands into blades. press all your fingers and the thumb of each hand close together, and hold your wrists rigid so that your hand jut stiffly from your arms.
step four: bend your elbows at a forty-five degree angle, keeping your elbows tucked fairly close to your body throughout the following steps.
step five: lift your bent arms up and pulse them twice, so that your arms go up, down, up, down. you will do this twice - once to the left and once to the right.
step six: as you raise your arms to the left to begins your pumps (don't forget to keep those fingers locked together and those hands rigid), you will raise your left leg, bending at the knee. you will make two knee pumps that echo the movements of your arms.
step seven: repeat on the right side.
step eight: do this 4-count sequence twice, so that you have two pumps to the left, two to the right, two more to the left, and two more to the right.
step nine: as you execute the left pumps, say "what, what" as your hands and knee hit the "up" position.
step ten: throughout this eight-count routine, keep your chin up, eyes straight ahead, and smile so fully that your teeth and cheeks begin to ache.
step eleven: take yourself very, very seriously.
congratulations! you may now join an elite show choir from nebraska!
but again, at least we learned what NOT to do. and we also learned that if any of our multi-cultural kids ever came to one of these competions, we would definitely have to provide them with notebooks to write down all their snide comments so that the parents and fans around them wouldn't hear.
did i mention we suffered through one show choir doing "welcome to the jungle" wearing zebra-print dresses for the girls and red velour jackets with zebra collars for the boys? we did.
during the evening we decided to head out to pat o'briens at city walk for the st. patty's day festivities. i stopped at home between events and discovered that i had NO idea what i had done with my driver's lisence. it really should be in my purse, but it's not, so i had to be a big geek and use my passport in order get into pat o's. after waiting in a short line to get into the piano bar (which was definitely a fire hazard last night), we stood around awkwardly until we saw these three incredibly drunk blonde girls vacate the side of a table and then took their spots. (seriously? pace yourself: it's now 8 p.m.) and aside from the scary drunk amazon and her insecure, slutty friend pissing off the waitress and convincing her that we had odered all the drinks on the $250 bar tab and not their friends who had skipped out, we had fun. (especially after we talked to the manager and the waitress had the girls thrown out.)
this, however, was (i'm pretty sure) the first time i'd been back in the piano bar at this pat o's since everyone left me. I MISS MY BOYS. there, i said it. it made me kind of sad. and as much as i hate some of the songs they sing there ("friends in low places", anyone?), it was even worse without my drunken fools surrounding me and singing loudly and off-key in my ear. there was no bon to roll my eyes with. i didn't even have monica with me (the one person who still lives here), so when the piano player broke into "who dat?" in the middle of "when the saints go marching in", i was the pretty much the only person in the entire bar who knew what the hell was going on and was singing along. sigh. i had fun with amy and deb, and we were certainly entertained by the people around us, but it just wasn't the same. (when the hell are you people moving back here, huh?)
when the drunken tomfoolery of others ceased being entertaining, i headed home. john called me from ft. lauderdale in a slight panic, informing me that he had been drug to a "gay country bar". i didn't even know that was legal. apparently he was surrounded by gay men line dancing to (and this is the reason he called me) "wild, wild west". you remember "wild, wild west" from the eighties, right? "heading for the nineties, living in the wild, wild west"? i was not aware that it was a country song. or that it had a line dance, although if there's anything i learned while working on a cruise ship, it's that any song can have a line dance. (you probably didn't know that "hot, hot, hot" and "who let the dogs out?" have line dances, did you? they do. and unfortunately, i know them.) according to john, the only redeeming value to the place was that instead of the standard-issue gay-club disco ball, this place had four cowboy boots - heels backed together to face the four directions- covered in disco ball mirrors. i told him that the next time i come visit him i want to make sure we don't go there. he assured me that he would never again set foot in the place - he was too frightened by it. "besides," he added, "these boys are wearing cheap cowboy boots and gucci and perry ellis shirts. it just doesn't make sense in here."
so that was my st. patrick's day. it's a lengthy blog, i know, but hopefully the entertainment value of you dancing hip hop like a mid-westerner was enough to off-set my going on and on...
mostly what we took away from the day was what NOT to do, and the certainty that we would NEVER make our kids do some of this stuff. we did come up with some ideas of what TO do, as well, but that mostly came from us, and not from what we witnessed on stage. first up were the top three girls' choirs, followed later in the afternoon by the top five soloists and the top five mixed choirs. what appalled me the most was the need to make these kids dance through every second of every song. the choreography had no place in most of the songs, and made no sense most of the time. also, these kids were drilled within inches of their lives, so that each of their movements were exact, finite, and perfect. which sounds good in theory, exept people don't really move like that, so they just looked like a team of well-programed robots spinning on stage. also, as far as i'm concerned the "cheerleader nod" and the "oh, i'm so surprised and cute at the same time" look have no place in theatre, dance, or especially show choir.
and i don't even know how to describe the abject horror amy and i experienced as we watched 40 white kids from the mid-west perform hip hop moves, which had clearly been taught to them by someone who was not only white, but had never met a minority or watched a dance or hip hop video in their life. it would be easier to describe if i could just attach a video of me re-enacting this heinous dance move, but alas, i do not have the technology to do so. so in order to convey the severity of the crime committed, i will write you a how-to. please just follow the simple instructions below, and you, too, may be jumped in any racially mixed area.
step one: stand up and move slightly away from your computer (far away enough not to cause damage, but close enough so that you can still read. if you are concerned about your lack of dance skills, you may want to print these instructions out and then go to large empty space void of people.) you may also want to inform any others in the room with you what it is you are doing so they do not think you have lost your mind or want to beat you up.
step two: place your feet shoulder width apart in a relaxed stance.
step three: form your hands into blades. press all your fingers and the thumb of each hand close together, and hold your wrists rigid so that your hand jut stiffly from your arms.
step four: bend your elbows at a forty-five degree angle, keeping your elbows tucked fairly close to your body throughout the following steps.
step five: lift your bent arms up and pulse them twice, so that your arms go up, down, up, down. you will do this twice - once to the left and once to the right.
step six: as you raise your arms to the left to begins your pumps (don't forget to keep those fingers locked together and those hands rigid), you will raise your left leg, bending at the knee. you will make two knee pumps that echo the movements of your arms.
step seven: repeat on the right side.
step eight: do this 4-count sequence twice, so that you have two pumps to the left, two to the right, two more to the left, and two more to the right.
step nine: as you execute the left pumps, say "what, what" as your hands and knee hit the "up" position.
step ten: throughout this eight-count routine, keep your chin up, eyes straight ahead, and smile so fully that your teeth and cheeks begin to ache.
step eleven: take yourself very, very seriously.
congratulations! you may now join an elite show choir from nebraska!
but again, at least we learned what NOT to do. and we also learned that if any of our multi-cultural kids ever came to one of these competions, we would definitely have to provide them with notebooks to write down all their snide comments so that the parents and fans around them wouldn't hear.
did i mention we suffered through one show choir doing "welcome to the jungle" wearing zebra-print dresses for the girls and red velour jackets with zebra collars for the boys? we did.
during the evening we decided to head out to pat o'briens at city walk for the st. patty's day festivities. i stopped at home between events and discovered that i had NO idea what i had done with my driver's lisence. it really should be in my purse, but it's not, so i had to be a big geek and use my passport in order get into pat o's. after waiting in a short line to get into the piano bar (which was definitely a fire hazard last night), we stood around awkwardly until we saw these three incredibly drunk blonde girls vacate the side of a table and then took their spots. (seriously? pace yourself: it's now 8 p.m.) and aside from the scary drunk amazon and her insecure, slutty friend pissing off the waitress and convincing her that we had odered all the drinks on the $250 bar tab and not their friends who had skipped out, we had fun. (especially after we talked to the manager and the waitress had the girls thrown out.)
this, however, was (i'm pretty sure) the first time i'd been back in the piano bar at this pat o's since everyone left me. I MISS MY BOYS. there, i said it. it made me kind of sad. and as much as i hate some of the songs they sing there ("friends in low places", anyone?), it was even worse without my drunken fools surrounding me and singing loudly and off-key in my ear. there was no bon to roll my eyes with. i didn't even have monica with me (the one person who still lives here), so when the piano player broke into "who dat?" in the middle of "when the saints go marching in", i was the pretty much the only person in the entire bar who knew what the hell was going on and was singing along. sigh. i had fun with amy and deb, and we were certainly entertained by the people around us, but it just wasn't the same. (when the hell are you people moving back here, huh?)
when the drunken tomfoolery of others ceased being entertaining, i headed home. john called me from ft. lauderdale in a slight panic, informing me that he had been drug to a "gay country bar". i didn't even know that was legal. apparently he was surrounded by gay men line dancing to (and this is the reason he called me) "wild, wild west". you remember "wild, wild west" from the eighties, right? "heading for the nineties, living in the wild, wild west"? i was not aware that it was a country song. or that it had a line dance, although if there's anything i learned while working on a cruise ship, it's that any song can have a line dance. (you probably didn't know that "hot, hot, hot" and "who let the dogs out?" have line dances, did you? they do. and unfortunately, i know them.) according to john, the only redeeming value to the place was that instead of the standard-issue gay-club disco ball, this place had four cowboy boots - heels backed together to face the four directions- covered in disco ball mirrors. i told him that the next time i come visit him i want to make sure we don't go there. he assured me that he would never again set foot in the place - he was too frightened by it. "besides," he added, "these boys are wearing cheap cowboy boots and gucci and perry ellis shirts. it just doesn't make sense in here."
so that was my st. patrick's day. it's a lengthy blog, i know, but hopefully the entertainment value of you dancing hip hop like a mid-westerner was enough to off-set my going on and on...
