The weekend-long Wasatch Wiggle contra-dance event ended on Sunday, and three days later I’m finally getting feeling back in my toes. The blisters speckling my feet are turning into odd-shaped lumps of callus. My knees and hips have stopped trying to give way at odd times and they no longer feel uncertain about which way they’re supposed to bend. So much dancing! So much fun.
I wonder how many miles I walked, hopped, skipped or pirouetted over the weekend. And how many calories’ worth of high-energy snacks I nibbled on from the sideboard between dances. The best I can hope is that I broke even, I’m afraid.
The music was provided by Notorious, which performed as a duo+1—Eden Macadam-Somer, Larry Unger and Sam Bartlett—and they are fanTAStic. Seriously. Go watch this video of them performing “Gelem, Gelem” (the Romani national anthem) earlier this year at a different contra dance event. Marvelous.
The caller was Rick Mohr, and he led us through round after round of intricate, exciting choreography, almost without pause. I guess it’s really Rick Mohr’s fault my feet are so tired.
I took along my new-ish camera—a Canon PowerShot SX200 IS—to the Wiggle, and amused myself/annoyed everyone else when I wasn’t dancing by filming and photographing everything that happened. Here is some of the evidence:
Contra dancing is fun, is (relatively) easy on the joints, can be excellent exercise, and is danced to gorgeous music. And it’s great for beginners, because the steps are fairly simple, each dance begins with a run-through beforehand and then is danced to called instructions. Find a contra dance event near you and check it out!
I have a tradition of watching Fox’s summer reality show So You Think You Can Dance and blogging breathlessly about how hot the contestants are. Unfortunately for you, my avid readers, Twitter has taken over a great deal of that role in my life (which is one reason for the sparse updates here), which means that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t aware of my SYTYCD crush, Summer 2009 Version: Evan Kasprzak.
Here’s Evan and his brother Ryan’s audition video:
Here’s a jazz routine, choreographed by Tasty Oreo:
Here’s a contemporary routine choreographed by Mia Michaels, in which Evan is sadly fixated on his partner’s butt:
And here is the samba Evan danced last night with partner Randi.
SO HOT. Now, his samba’s not great, and in a lot of ways it’s not even good. But… somehow I don’t care.
Anyway. There you go! That’s my current crush.
Oh, and here’s the Mia Michaels routine that blew everyone’s minds on Twitter last night, and which looked like it was really going to suck in rehearsal and then turned out to be very powerful in the actual performance:
Here’s the routine were Jason danced with his shirt off the whole time (rowr):
And here’s the Wade Robson routine that closed out the night last night and made me really glad that Wade Robson is back as a choreographer on the show, and why the hell don’t they have him every week:
And oh my gosh I can’t post all the dance routines. The above videos are via Rickey.org—go watch the rest there, too. TTFN!
I turned in my last assignment for the Spring 2009 semester a few days ago, and it still hasn’t hit me that I DON’T HAVE HOMEWORK TO DO. Unfortunately, I won’t have long to get used to the idea—the summer term starts in nine days, so I need to get my party on.
That last assignment, by the way, was one I should have enjoyed thoroughly, and should have done very well on, but (as usual) I put it off until the very last day, which meant it was a stressful, slapdash, rush job. The topic: the evolution of feminist science fiction. Which allowed me to read such gems—and I am not being sarcastic here—as “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!” by Raccoona Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree, Jr., AKA Alice Sheldon) and “When It Changed,” by Joanna Russ. Both keep returning to bother and delight me, just like all the best fiction does. Cannot recommend either story highly enough.
Last night I went to a karaoke bar for the first time since I started drinking, and my friend Denice and I blew everyone’s minds with our rendition of the Scissor Sisters’ “Filthy/Gorgeous.” Also mindblowing, I’m sure: our filthy, erotic dancing. We didn’t carry no watermelon, if you know what I’m saying.
I saw a dance video yesterday evening that simply blew me away. Had to share it. So I pulled together a quick comparison/contrast lineup for y’all to make it look less like I was gushing about THIS SHINY NEW THING I FOUND.
First up is a television performance of the first part of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s “Fase.” Feel free to fast-forward to the 1:40 minute mark if you don’t understand French.
I was watching Neil Gaiman perform “Creepy Doll” on YouTube with Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm and I realized that I only had six Jonathan Coulton songs in my iTunes. I know! Crazy, right? So I went immediately to jonathancoulton.com and downloaded everything available. I’ve been listening to Jonathan Coulton for the past two days and wow, his music never gets old. Check. Him. Out.
I hope you all enjoyed the three Rufus Wainwright videos I posted yesterday. Remember, there are many more of his videos and many, many more of his tracks to watch and listen to. YouTube and iTunes are your friends! Also: bittorrent.
If you don’t know what “slash fiction” is, Mr. Neil Gaiman has your back. Or had your back, back in 2002. But his words are timeless: in response to a reader’s request, he explained that
. . . slash fiction is basically erotic fan fiction, normally TV series based, pairing off two (er or more I suppose) members of the same sex who don’t normally couple for the cameras. From the “/” mark in the middle of “Kirk/Spock” or “K/S” fiction, which is where it all started. (“But Spock,” said Kirk, huskily, realising, finally, irrevocably, what his true self had been trying to tell him ever since the beginning of season one, “it’s so huge. And it’s green.” “And it would be logical for you to… touch it, Captain,” said Spock. And so on. It’s normally written by extremely nice ladies. I have several very sane, respected, and respectable friends who write slash fiction, and do not try to make me read it.)
Really quite excellent. I had heard about a great deal of the research, the case studies and the examples before, but Vedantam ties it all together engagingly, clearly and incisively. I'm not qualified to judge the research this book is based on, or even the conclusions the author draws from that...
The series has gotten better with each book, but this is finally the installment that I felt tipped it over into four-star territory. Barely. But four stars even so. Sure, I rolled my eyes when the sixteen-year-old characters talked about their Twoo, Twoo Wuv, and there was plenty of other...
Possibly my favorite Neil Gaiman book to date. Gaiman has a marvelous way of hinting at so many things without vulgarly spelling them out. Half the fun was reading between the lines. A must-re-read.
