Archives for December 2009

According to Associated Press reports, three-time Indy 500 winner and season 5 Dancing with the Stars champion Helio Castroneves, 34,  became a father. The baby girl, named Mikaella Castroneves, was born Monday afternoon in Atlanta to Castroneves and his girlfriend Adriana Henao.

Castroneves was the first foreign-born race driver to win the Indy three times. Castroneves was also in the news recently for tax evasion charges. He was acquitted of all charges except one, but that was dropped in April. In May 2009, he was fourth in points despite having missed the first race due to the litigation.

Castroneves was paired with Julianne Hough during the fifth season (24 Sept. 2007 through 27 Nov. 2007) of "Dancing with the Stars." Hough had just won with partner Apolo Anton Ohno during season 4. Castroneves and Hough received perfect scores for their quickstep, foxtrot and cha cha cha performances. Mel B and Maksim Chmerkovskiy would finish second.

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The launch on Sky1 will see the 10-year-old called James perform an amazing routine for judges. There are high hopes that he will make the finals of the new talent series. But fears are already mounting that he may not be able to cope with success or failure. Host Davina said: “If James had been spectacularly bad and he’d been laughed at on stage, then I would have been very upset.

“But it’s not like that.James is a gifted dancer and, in fact, dancing has helped him in the most amazing way. “He hasn’t been put in the firing line to be laughed at. “Viewers will love him. I am very protective about anyone who goes onto any of the shows I do, including Big Brother. “I would hate the idea that someone would be upset.

“I want people to enjoy the experience. “We go out of our way to make sure the contestants, especially the kids, are looked after. “If anyone cried at auditions I would rush out to comfort them or take them to their families. “The judges on our show are also sensitive to the auditionees, especially the kids.”Got To Dance starts on Sunday at 6pm, a day after the BBC begin So You Think You Can Dance. Davina added: “It’s tough having two dance shows on TV – but ours is different enough to get viewers.”

What do we mean by drama in dance? That question crossed my mind on Thursday night as Soledad Barrio danced a Soleá toward the end of Noche Flamenca’s new show at the Lucille Lortel Theater. There’s no question that Ms. Barrio is an intensely dramatic dancer. But she presents no characterization, tells no stories and during the course of her solo takes us through changes of mood so sudden that, if this were a spoken drama, they could work only within the context of a disturbed stream-of-consciousness soliloquy, probably a mad scene. Ms. Barrio, however, doesn’t come across as mad in the least.

Drama in dance certainly in these circumstances, but surely elsewhere too — is far closer to drama in pure music. Ms. Barrio’s intensity is striking, even when she’s standing still or walking slowly around the stage. Near the start of the Soleá, she stood still while the two singers, Manuel Gago and Miguel Rosendo, slowly approached her. Suddenly she changed the angle of her head and spread her arms wide apart. It seemed as if, without ever looking at them, she was telling them emphatically, “No.

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The 29 year old, who finished runner-up in the BBC dancing show last week, was arrested at the end of last month after he allegedly struck a photographer with his car. The actor walked into a police station in Merseyside where he was held for questioning before being bailed.

Merseyside Police said he would appear at the city's magistrates' court on January 15. The alleged incident happened after Whittle had returned to Liverpool, where Hollyoaks is filmed, and attended a party at the city's Parr Street Studios with colleagues from the Channel Four drama. Whittle lost to presenter Chris Hollins in the Strictly Come Dancing final last weekend. Following his performance, he called for the show to release details of the voting figures in a way similar to The X Factor.

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ON a steamy October evening here some 200 members of the Southern University Human Jukebox assembled on a campus parking lot, braving vicious mosquitoes, puddles and eye-stinging sweat to perfect, among other things, its spry signature step: the Jaguar rock. As they marched in meticulous rows, creating geometric designs, they lifted their knees to 90-degree angles, swishing their shoulders from side to side to form lines that whipped along like the wavy undulations of a snake. The Jaguar rock grueling, aerobic, exciting and exacting is what gives the Human Jukebox its pulse.

“You want to have a lot of flash and action in your marching,” said the band’s director, Lawrence Jackson. “We don’t just march straight.”At universities and high schools across the country, football season is also marching-band season — time to soak up a particular form of American folk art, in which music and bodies work in tandem to create spectacles of design, movement and sound that rival the precision dancing of the Rockettes. The viewing window is a short one, culminating in college football’s postseason bowl games and a marching-band showcase in the coming weeks.

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The 29-year-old Hollyoaks actor was questioned by detectives on Merseyside and will appear in court on 15 January. The actor was reportedly in a car when a collision occurred and a photographer suffered minor injuries. The Oldham-born star plays Calvin Valentine in Hollyoaks, which is filmed in Liverpool.

He was arrested at the end of last month and reportedly lost a day's training in dealing with the incident. It is believed he had been to a party at Parr Street Studios, where Hollyoaks is filmed, with colleagues from the Channel Four drama. In Strictly Come Dancing the actor, from Billinge, was partnered with Australian dancer Natalie Lowe.

The Greater Philadelphia Asian Culture Center and the Greater Philadelphia Falun Dafa Association will play host to Shen Yun Performing Arts formerly Divine Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 2 and at 2 p.m. Jan. 3 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.

Shen Yun brings to life classical Chinese dance and music in a gloriously colorful and exhilarating show. Its exquisite choreography and graceful routines light up the stage, with gorgeously costumed dancers, stunning backdrops and a live orchestra.

The show is based on ancient heroic legends and modern courageous tales. A collaboration of leading Chinese dancers, choreographers and musicians, Shen Yun seeks to breathe new life into traditional Chinese culture while providing an experience of transcendent beauty.

Based in New York, the company is a nonprofit organization that is independent of China’s political regime, under which the traditional arts have long suffered; included among Shen Yun Performing Arts’ members are those who practice Falun Gong.

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When Christmas and New Year is here, can celebrations to welcome those be far behind? With the festivefervour increasing day by day, dance schools have started organizing special sessions for school children. Gautam Sharma of Ecstasy Dance Studio said, “To keep in sync with this fast lifestyle of ours, we have introduced short-term special courses. In three days, I teach the basics of Salsa, Hip-hop and Bollywood.”

So far, he has received 30 registrations for Christmas and 40 for New Year. Most prefer to learn Salsa and hip-hop. Interestingly, not only teenagers but also professionals are learning to dance to rock the party on this Christmas and New Year eve. Jaslovleen, a MBBS student at CMC, Lalton, said, “It is just a miss conception that science students are always busy with books. Actually, they also love life and spend time with friends and chill out.

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Thanks to it being the decade that taste forgot there’s some-thing reliably entertaining about footage of celebrities from the 70s.

It’s no exception with The Nolans, who made their first-ever TV appearance in 1974 wearing one of the biggest fashion crimes known to man. And as for Coleen’s hair, the less said about it the better.

Here, as they prepare for their I’m In The Mood Again tour, sisters Coleen, Bernie, Linda and Maureen look back over their lives and career path, from performing in working men’s clubs with their parents and four other siblings to the time they decided to call it a day. There’s also a visit to their old three-bedroom house. It was there that they’d play Miss World on the landing, force their brothers to pee in the garden and where, as a baby, Coleen slept in a drawer. Yes, an actual drawer. It was a bizarre life, to say the least, and Coleen admits that she didn’t enjoy the constant performing as a child.

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Meryl Davis and Charlie White's unique, Indian-themed original dance is a hit all over the globe, with people from Michigan to Mumbai many of whom don't know the first thing about ice dancing raving about the program and forwarding videos of it to family and friends. One video alone on YouTube has racked up over 210,000 views, astronomical numbers for a figure skating program.

"It's very cool," Davis said. "Charlie and I have always been excited about being different and embracing what we could bring to the sport. It's really exciting to expand the fan base, and expand the fan base to parts of the world that haven't really experienced it before."

For the original dance, skaters are given a prescribed rhythm — a tango, for example — but can use any music or choreography that falls under that rhythm. This season, folk/country dance was chosen for the OD.

Although many skaters opt for American country — the Vancouver Games might give new meaning to the term dueling banjoes — or Spanish music, choreographer Marina Zoueva wanted something that would really make Davis and White stand out.

When she spotted an Hermes scarf with brilliant colors and Indian dancers last spring, she knew she'd found the answer.

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