The Mistake Waltz: Watch the Hilarious Ballet by Legendary Choreographer Jerome Robbins

in Comedy, Dance | June 4th, 2021

So often mistakes are the most memorable part of live performance.

In Jerome Robbins’ The Concert (or The Perils of Everybody), they’re built in.

The portion set to Chopin’s Waltz in E Minor, above, has earned the nickname The Mistake Waltz. It’s an anthology of screw ups that will be familiar to anyone who’s attended a few amateur ballet productions and school recitals.

When the entire ensemble is meant to be traveling in the same direction or synchronizing swanlike gestures, the one who’s egregiously out of step is a guaranteed standout… if not the audience’s flat out favorite.

Robbins generously spreads the clowning between all six members of the corps, getting extra mileage from the telegraphed irritation in every indiscreetly attempted correction.

Performed well, the silliness seems almost improvisational, but as with all of this legendary choreographer’s work, the spontaneous beats are very, very specific.

It only works if the dancers have the technical prowess and the comic chops to pull it off. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo aside, this can present a sizable casting challenge.

Robbins also felt that The Concert should be presented sparingly, to keep the jokes from becoming stale.

Individual companies have some agency over their costumes, but other than that, it is executed just as it was in its 1956 debut with the New York City Ballet.

Former NYCB lead dancer Peter Boal, who was 10 when he played Cupid in Robbins’ Mother Goose, has made The Concert part of Pacific Northwest Ballet‘s repertoire. He revealed another side of the exacting Robbins in a personal essay in Dance Magazine:

He had the unique ability to become kid-like in the studio, giggling with others and often laughing robustly at his own jokes. He was certainly his own best audience for The Concert. How many times had he seen those gags and yet fresh, spontaneous laughter erupted from him as if it was a first telling.

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Join her Necromancers of the Public Domain: The Periodical Cicada, a free virtual variety show honoring the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

Quarantined Dancer Creates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final Dirty Dancing Scene with a Lamp as a Dance Partner

in Comedy, Dance, Film | April 26th, 2021

1987’s low budget sleeper hit, Dirty Dancing, propelled its leads, Jennifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze, to instant stardom.

Swayze later mused to the American Film Institute about the film’s remarkable staying power:

It’s got so much heart, to me. It’s not about the sensuality; it’s really about people trying to find themselves, this young dance instructor feeling like he’s nothing but a product, and this young girl trying to find out who she is in a society of restrictions when she has such an amazing take on things. On a certain level, it’s really about the fabulous, funky little Jewish girl getting the guy because [of] what she’s got in her heart.

Nearly 35 years after the original release, another gifted male dancer, Brooklyn-based photographer Quinn Wharton, is tapping into that heart… and Grey has been replaced by a lamp.

Wharton once told Ballet Hub that his favorite part of dancing professionally with the San Francisco Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago was the access it gave him to the great names in dance — William Forsythe, Mats Ek, Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor, and others whose proximity made for “a remarkable education.”

The first few months of the pandemic forced him to dance solo, recreating memorable film moments in response to a friend’s challenge:

I was hesitant at first but thought I would give it a try to see what I might be able to learn from it. Turns out it was way more fun than I thought and the result was funnier than I could have imagined.

We agree that his Quinn-tessential Dance Scenes series is very funny, as well as beautifully executed in the twin arenas of camera work and dance. His self-imposed parameters — no outside help, no green screen, no filming outside of the apartment, and no special purchases of props or costumes, contribute to the humor.

His hardworking, disembodied, comparatively well-covered haunches elicit laughs when seen next to the much skimpier original costume of Flashdance’s “Maniac” scene, above. 18-year-old star Jennifer Beals had three dance doubles — Marine Jahan, gymnast Sharon Shapiro, and legendary B-Boy Richard Colón, aka Crazy Legs of Rock Steady crew. None of them appeared in the original credits because, as Jahan told Entertainment Tonight, the producers “didn’t want to break the magic.”

In other words, a lot of steamy 80s-era fantasies centered on Beals are now known to be a case — possibly three cases — of mistaken identity.

Wharton’s quarantine project afforded him a chance to come at John Travolta from two angles, thanks to the disco classic Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction’s twist sequence, a surprisingly popular fan request. Though Travolta’s dance training was limited to childhood tap lessons with Gene Kelly’s brother, Fred, Wharton praises his “serious range.”

Wharton cites the inspiration for one of his lesser known recreations, director Baz Lurhman’s first feature, Strictly Ballroom, as a reason he began dancing:

My dad loves this movie and as a kid I can’t count the number of times that I watched it. It’s so much, loud, brash, exuberant …It also allowed me to bring back my favorite partner.

Quinn-tessential Dance Scenes is on hiatus so Wharton can concentrate on his work as a dance photographer. Watch a playlist of all eight episodes here.

See more of his dance photography on his Instagram page.

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine, who can occasionally be spotted wandering around New York City in a bear suit, in character as L’Ourse. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

Watch the “Greatest Juggler of the Ages,” Frances Brunn, Perform His “Painfully Exciting” Juggling Routine (1969)

in Creativity, Dance, Television | April 21st, 2021

When John Ringling North, then president of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, saw a pair of German jugglers and acrobats perform in Spain, he immediately invited them to join “the Greatest Show on Earth.” A brother and sister team, Francis and Lottie Brunn would astonish audiences. In 1950, theater critic Brooks Atkinson called Francis “the greatest juggler of the ages. Not many people in the world are as perfectly adjusted as Mr. Brunn is. He will never have to visit a psychiatrist.” If physical grace and balance are reflective of one’s state of mind, maybe he was right.

When Lottie left the act in 1951, Francis went on to popular fame and even more hyperbolic acclaim. “After he performed before the queen of England in 1963, The Evening Standard called his show ‘almost painfully exciting,’” Douglas Martin writes at The New York Times.

“Trying to describe Brunn’s act is like trying to describe the flight of a swallow,” writes Francisco Alvarez in Juggling: Its History and Greatest Performers. He became a regular performer on The Ed Sullivan Show, “played the Palace with Judy Garland,” notes Martin, “and went twice to the White House, where President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed him the best juggler he had ever seen.”

None of this should bias you toward the television performance, above, of course. (How many jugglers could Eisenhower have seen, anyway?) Judge for yourself. By way of further context, we should note that Brunn was known for perfecting “an austere but demanding minimalism. He was fascinated by controlling just one ball, and virtually compelled audiences to share this fascination.” Or as Brunn put it, “it sounds like nothing, but it is quite difficult to do properly.” As anyone (or virtually everyone) who has tried and failed to juggle can attest, this description fits the art of juggling in general all too well.

Brunn made it look laughably easy: “Large numbers of objects posed scant problem. He was believed to be the first juggler in the world to put up 10 hoops,” Martin writes. He also liked to incorporate flamenco into his act to compound the difficulty and the grace. “I do not consider myself doing tricks,” he said in 1983. “There is one movement for eight minutes. It’s supposed to be, let’s say, like a ballet…. I would love if the audience is so fascinated that nobody applauds in the end.” Brunn, I suspect, never got to hear the sound of stunned silence after his act.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

The Evolution of Dance from 1950 to 2019: A 7-Decade Joy Ride in 6 Minutes

in Dance, Music | April 12th, 2021

I see Michael Jackson as a dance style, okay? — Ricardo Walker

Ricardo Walker and his Crew’s The Evolution of Dance , 1950 to 2019 will make you regret every minute spent hugging the wall in middle school.

The breakneck, 6-minute romp led by dancer, choreographer, and Michael Jackson impersonator Ricardo Walker, not only showcases the all-male Brazilian crew’s talent, it makes a strong case for throwing yourself into some serious dance floor silliness.

The Crew, formed by a mutual passion for the King of Pop’s moves, is plenty cool, but their willingness to ham their way through “Flashdance…What a Feeling,” the “Macarena,” and Dirty Dancing’s “Time of My Life” suggest that the joys of dance are available to ordinary mortals such as ourselves.

They cavort in sagging early 90s-style Hammer Pants for “U Can’t Touch This” and don Western wear for Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” the most recent number on this musical tour.

Troupe members Gabriel Zaidan and Alexandre “Lelê” Mayrink seem unhampered by vanity, tossing their enviable locks into the 35 costume changes’ goofiest styles.

The Crew took 16 hours to get the video in the can on a day when one of their number felt under the weather, and they had to be out of the studio by 7pm. (Our compliments to the editor!)

While such hits as Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again,” Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” Madonna’s “Vogue,” Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” and — who could forget? — “Gangnam Style” instantly summon a period, the 90s placement of Tom Jones’ signature tune, “It’s Not Unusual,” is throwing viewers for a loop.

How did that old chestnut wind up between Madonna and Backstreet Boys?

By virtue of its first studio version, released in 1995 as part of the compilation album The Legendary Tom Jones — 30th Anniversary Album, that’s how.

Prior to their virtuoso turn in the Evolution of Dance, 1950 to 2019, the group guided viewers through the Evolution of Michael Jackson’s Dance. (Jackson’s influence is also evident throughout the former, earning him 4 nods.)

For those whose feet have begun to itch, choreographer Walker teaches a Master Class in Michael Jackson’s dance moves for $100.

Songs used in The Evolution of Dance — 1950 to 2019 — by Ricardo Walker’s Crew

00:03 – 00:13 – Singin’in the Rain – Gene Kelly

00:13 – 00:23 – Hound Dog – Elvis Presley

00:23 – 00:30 – Tutti Frutti – Little Richard

00:30 – 00:35 – Let’s Twist Again – Chubby Checker switch to color

00:35 – 00:45 – I feel good – James Brown

00:45 – 00:57 – I Want You Back – The Jackson Five

00:57 – 01:09 – Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees

01:09 – 01:16 – Dancing Machine – The Jacksons

01:16 – 01:20 – Shake your Body – The Jacksons

01:20 – 01:24 – You’re the one that I want – John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John

01:24 – 01:31 – Time of My Life – Bill Medley, Jennifer Warnes

01:31 – 01:46 – Billie Jean – Michael Jackson

01:46 – 01:55 – Rhythm Nation – Janet Jackson

01:55 – 02:03 – FootLoose – Kenny Loggins

02:03 – 02:13 – Thriller – Michael Jackson

02:13 – 02:18 – What a feeling – Irene Cara

02:18 – 02:22 – U can’t touch this – MC Hammer

02:22 – 02:31 – Black or White – Michael Jackson

02:31 – 02:42 – Vogue – Madonna

02:42 – 02:51 – It’s not unusual – Tom Jones

02:51 – 03:02 – Everybody – Backstreet Boys

03:02 – 03:13 – Macarena – Los Del Río

03:13 – 03:26 – Crank That – Soulja Boy

03:26 – 03:33 – Single Ladies – Beyonce

03:33 – 03:46 – Bye Bye Bye – NSYNC

03:46 – 03:54 – Ragatanga – Rouge

03:54 – 04:04 – Gangnam Style – PSY

04:04 – 04:15 – Despacito – Luis Fonsi

04:15 – 04:25 – Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson , Bruno Mars

04:25 – 04:34 – Party Rock Anthem – LMFAO

04:34 – 04:43 – Can’t Stop The Feeling – Justin Timberlake

04:43 – 04:51 – Watch Me – Silentó

04:51 – 05:03 – Swish Swish – Katy Perry

05:03 – 05:17 – In My Feeling – Drake

05:17 – 05:35 – Old Town Road – Lil Nas X

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Iconic Dance Scene from Hellzapoppin’ Presented in Living Color with Artificial Intelligence (1941)

in Dance, Film, Technology | March 10th, 2021

After Charles Lindbergh “hopped” the Atlantic in 1927, his history-making solo flight set off a craze for all things “Lindy.” Of the countless songs, foods, products, and trends created or named in honor of the famous onetime U.S. Air Mail pilot, only one remains recognizable these more than 90 years later: the Lindy Hop. Developed on the streets and in the clubs of Harlem, the dance proved explosively popular, though it took Hollywood a few years to capitalize on it. In the late 1930s, the musical Hellzapoppin’ brought the Lindy Hop to Broadway, and in 1941, Universal Pictures turned that stage show into a major motion picture directed by H.C. Potter (now best known for Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House).

An often surreal, fourth-wall-breaking affair, Hellzapoppin’ is remembered mainly for the five-minute Lindy Hop musical number that comes about halfway through the film. It features a dance troupe called the Harlem Congaroos, played by the real-life Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a group of professional swing dancers founded at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, the origin point of the Lindy Hop as we know it today.

Its appearing members include Frankie Manning, whose name had become synonymous with the Lindy Hop in the 1930s, and Norma Miller, who as a twelve-year-old girl famously did the dance outside the Savoy for tips. Hellzapoppin’ preserves their athleticism and vitality for all time — with a hot jazz soundtrack to boot.

Like most Hollywood musicals of the early 1940s, Hellzapoppin’ was shot in black-and-white, and cinephiles will maintain that it’s best seen that way. But just as the technology powering long-haul flights has developed greatly since the days of Charles Lindbergh, so has the technology of film colorization. Take DeOldify, the “open-source, Deep Learning based project to colorize and restore old images and film footage” that “uses AI neural networks trained with thousands of reference pictures” – and that was used to produce the version of Hellzapoppin‘s Lindy Hop number seen at the top of the post. It all looks much more convincing than when Ted Turner attempted to colorize Citizen Kane, but in lovers of dance, whatever sense of realism DeOldify contributes will mainly inspire a deeper longing to experience the culture of Harlem as it really was in the 1920s.

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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Radiohead Ballets: Watch Ballets Choreographed Creatively to the Music of Radiohead

in Dance, Music | February 26th, 2021

Since Radiohead’s last release, A Moon-Shaped Pool, members of the band have been absorbed in other projects. They’ve turned their band’s website into an archive for their discography and a library for rarities and ephemera — sending not-so-subtle signals their time together has reached a natural end, even if drummer Phil Selway said in 2020 “there are always conversations going on…. We’ll see. We’re talking.”

Two of the band’s most prominent members, guitarist Jonny Greenwood and frontman Thom Yorke, devoted their talents to film scores, a medium Greenwood has explored for many years: in the theatrical violence of There Will Be Blood, for example, the horrific aftermath of We Need to Talk about Kevin, and the almost balletic bloodiness of You Were Never Here. Yorke, meanwhile, scored Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, a film in which ballet dancers’ bodies are broken and bloodied by black magic.

Greenwood, Yorke and company excel at conjuring atmospheres of dread, despair, and disorientation, traits that suit them well for arthouse film. They might not have seemed a natural fit, however, for ballet. And yet, Jason Kottke reports, the two are “together at last” — or at least as of 2016, when choreographer Robert Bondara toured Take Me With You, a piece scored to several Radiohead songs, including In Rainbows’ “Reckoner,” which you can see interpreted above by two dancers from the Polish National Ballet.

The performance is an athletic response to a kinetic track, in choreography not unlike pairs figure skating at times. It is not, however, the first time the band has inspired a ballet. In 2005, Romanian dancer and choreographer Edward Clug created a modern interpretation of Shakespeare set to songs from OK Computer and Kid A. Radio and Juliet debuted in Slovenia, toured the world, celebrated its hundredth performance in 2012, and was scheduled to open in Moscow in 2020.

Clug drew on a prior connection: OK Computer’s “Exit Music (For a Film)” was written for, but not used in, the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. After Radio and Juliet, Clug once again drew inspiration from his favorite band (“They are the soundtrack to my other side; listening to them feels like I’m finding a self that I haven’t met yet.”) Clug’s piece “Proof” (preview above), set to “Feral” from The King of Limbs, debuted in 2017, his first for the Nederlands Dans Theater. If we are to have no more Radiohead, here’s hoping at least we’ll see more Radiohead ballets.

via Kottke

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The Power of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Choreographers and Even John Travolta Himself

in Dance, Film | December 29th, 2020

All the great movies have a few memorable scenes; Pulp Fiction is made of nothing but. More than a quarter-century ago, that film’s release turned a young video-store clerk-turned-auteur called Quentin Tarantino into a household name. Cinephiles today still argue about which is the most memorable among its scenes, and only the most contrarian could fail to consider the dance. It comes early in the film, when the hitman Vincent Vega takes his boss’ wife out to dinner, the absent kingpin having ordered him to do so. The two eat at an elaborately 1950s-themed diner and on a whim enter its twist contest. They walk off the dance floor with a trophy — as well as a couple decades’ influence on popular culture.

“The twist was made famous in the 60s,” explains choreographer Lauren Yalango-Grant in the Vanity Fair video just above. “There were a lot of variations that came out of the twist that we do see in this scene,” such as “the monkey,” “the swim,” and “the Batman,” better known as “the Batusi.”

As busted by John Tavolta and Uma Thurman, all these moves come out in an improvisational fashion, each in response to the last: “If John starts to do the Batman, then Uma’s going to ‘yes-and’ it with not only a Batman but an open palm, her own version of this move,” adds choreographer Christopher Grant. Their movements give the scene a great deal of its impact, but so does those movements’ incongruity with their expressions, which Yalango-Grant calls “the juxtaposition of their seriousness and the lack of play on their faces versus the play in their bodies.”

Though now cinematically iconic in its own right, Pulp Fiction‘s dance scene pays homage to a host of older films. The most obvious is Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à part, with what Yalango-Grant calls its “amazing dance sequence in a cafe. It’s totally out of context, of nowhere.” Never shy to admit his acts of artistic “theft,” Tarantino once complained that too few picked up this one: “Everybody thinks that I wrote this scene just to have John Travolta dancing. But the scene existed before John Travolta was cast.” The director’s intention, rather, was to pay tribute to his favorite musical sequences, which “have always been in Godard, because they just come out of nowhere. It’s so infectious, so friendly. And the fact that it’s not a musical, but he’s stopping the movie to have a musical sequence, makes it all the more sweet.”

The casting of Travolta (Tarantino’s “strong, strong, strong second choice” for Vincent Vega) proved fortuitous. The very image of the man dancing made for yet another chapter of pop culture from which the film could draw, but without his real-life dancing skills and instincts, the scene wouldn’t have been as memorable as it is. “Quentin was dead-set on both of us doing the twist, which is a very fun dance, but it’s limited in how long one wants to watch someone do the twist,” Travolta remembers on a recent appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden. So he told the director, “When I was growing up, there were novelty dances. There were dances like the swim and the Batman and the hitchhiker and the tighten up. Maybe we should widen the spectrum on this.” Tarantino’s unwillingness to compromise his ambitions and obsessions has made him perhaps the most acclaimed filmmaker of his generation, but so has knowing when to defer to the star of Saturday Night Fever.

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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

One of the Greatest Dances Sequences Ever Captured on Film Gets Restored in Color by AI: Watch the Classic Scene from Stormy Weather

in Dance, Film, Music | December 4th, 2020

It really is a wonder, knowing what we know about the history of racism and discrimination in Hollywood and America in general, that the musical Stormy Weather even got made in 1943. Along with one other similar film Cabin in the Sky, it’s one of the few American musicals of the 20th century with an all-Black cast, top billing and all. And what a cast, just some of the most talented artists of their time: Bojangles Robinson, Lena Horne, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, and the Nicholas Brothers star. Katherine Dunham, the “queen mother of Black dance” performs and choreographs. Coleman Hawkins, though uncredited, is there too, playing sax.

The film also gave you its money’s worth, with nearly two dozen musical numbers in less than 80 minutes. And the top performance is the one that closes the film, seen here remastered from a high quality source (make sure your YouTube is set to 1080p) and colorized with DeOldify, the machine-learning colorization tool. (Your mileage may vary with the colorization, but hey, it’s a start. Check back in a year or so and we might have another version that looks like it was truly shot in color.)

If you’ve never seen the “Jumpin’ Jive” number, or never heard of the Nicholas Brothers, you will soon find out why Fred Astaire called it the greatest dancing he’d ever seen on film. Their journey down the risers, one leapfrogging over the other and landing in the splits, has never been matched. There’s moments where they just seem to float on air. The band leader, Cab Calloway, who knew how to slink and slide around a stage, wisely gives them the floor. And at the end, while applause bursts out, the entire club is invited to flood the dancefloor. It’s pure joy on film.

Older brother Fayard Nicholas was 29 in the film, his younger brother Harold was 22. Eleven years before that they had moved to New York from Philadelphia and wowed the audiences at the Cotton Club with their mix of tap, ballet, and acrobatics. It was when producer Samuel Goldwyn saw them at the Club that their career took off. But their sequences were always separate in white musicals, so that racist cinemas in the South could easily edit them out. Not so in Stormy Weather, where they end the film.

It is often written that this sequence was shot in “one take” and improvised, but that is plainly not the case. There’s eleven cuts in the dance sequence where the camera repositions itself. That’s not to take away from the Nicholas Brothers’ mastery, and hey, maybe they zipped through the sequence, as dancing was like breathing to them. Let’s just celebrate this for what it actually is: the Nicholas Brothers at the height of their powers, bringing the house down.

via Messy Nessy

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Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the Notes from the Shed podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The Mistake Waltz: Watch the Hilarious Ballet by Legendary Choreographer Jerome Robbins

Quarantined Dancer Creates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final Dirty Dancing Scene with a Lamp as a Dance Partner

Watch the “Greatest Juggler of the Ages,” Frances Brunn, Perform His “Painfully Exciting” Juggling Routine (1969)

The Evolution of Dance from 1950 to 2019: A 7-Decade Joy Ride in 6 Minutes

The Iconic Dance Scene from Hellzapoppin’ Presented in Living Color with Artificial Intelligence (1941)

Radiohead Ballets: Watch Ballets Choreographed Creatively to the Music of Radiohead

The Power of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Choreographers and Even John Travolta Himself

One of the Greatest Dances Sequences Ever Captured on Film Gets Restored in Color by AI: Watch the Classic Scene from Stormy Weather

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