Archives for August 2009

"The Bold and the Beautiful" won drama series honours at the Daytime Emmys on Sunday, the CBS soap opera's first such victory in 22 years on the air.

It was a poignant victory for executive producer Bradley Bell, whose late father William J. Bell co-created "The Young and the Restless," a show that was honoured seven times in the same category. The younger Bell's mother, Lee Phillip Bell who worked closely with her husband and also on her son's show, cheered him on.

"It's incredibly exciting because I grew up going to visit that show," Bell said backstage. "It's sweeter after 22 years, it didn't come in five or 10 or 15 years. I think my dad is here in spirit. He would probably say, 'It's about time.' I took out the expletive.

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In short

Michael Clark is the closest that ballet has come to producing a real rebel yell. He is constantly spoken of in legendary terms: Apollo, Dionysus, Icarus. He's both the fallen angel and prodigal son of dance.

Backstory

Born in 1962 in Aberdeenshire, Clark learned Scottish dancing as a child and went to the Royal Ballet School at the age of 13. There, in a pattern that would be writ large in his career, he both excelled in ballet and rebelled against it. He won prizes for dance and choreography but would bunk off school to go to punk gigs. He got caught glue-sniffing but wasn't kicked out; he'd already landed the lead part in the school production.

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What happens when a kathak maestro meets Latino dancers? A medley of footwork, frenetic hip movement, spins and hand gestures, making for loads of “happiness” on stage. Leading kathak exponent Uma Sharma teamed up with two Brazilian Latino dancers Fernanda Dias and Serginho in the capital for a kathak-salsa performance as part of the pre-World Dance Festival.

“India and Brazil have two very different cultures, but the meeting point is happiness,” Serginho told IANS.

As Sharma joined the high-voltage salsa and forro dancers the latter a northeast Brazilian dance form on stage to match steps and movements, she said: “Hum kisi se kum nahin (we are no less than anyone). I will improvise my kathak to blend with salsa on stage.

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Former boxing champion Joe Calzaghe is the bookies’ early favourite to win Strictly Come Dancing.The Welsh fighter, who retired unbeaten earlier this year, will partner Kristina Rihanoff, the professional who choreographed some memorable routines for John Sergeant in the last series.

Long jumper Jade Johnson, with pro dancer Ian Waite, are second favourites. And with sports stars’ impressive record on the show, with five out of 12 finallists coming from a sporting background, William Hill offer just 6-4 that one of the five sports stars competing in this series walks off with the glitterball trophy.

In a series which has been hit by ageism rows after the sidelining of judge Arlene Phillips, it is Ronnie Wood’s estranged wife Jo, 54, at 25-1 and 61-year-old actress and Loose Women panellist Lynda Bellingham at 20-1 who are the outsiders, along with Daily Mirror columnist and former champion jockey Richard Dunwoody.

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On Monday, August 24, it was announced the pairings that will take over the dance floor this season on "Dancing with the Stars". Most of them have leaked out last week either through unconfirmed reports or as informed by the celebrities themselves. None missed the spot.

Former House Majority leader Tom DeLay will get the assistance of Cheryl Burke who almost became a third-time champ last season had Shawn Johnson and Mark Ballas not win. Ballas himself this time around will lead actress Melissa Joan Hart. They had tweeted each other on Friday, August 21 with Hart greeting "Hiya partner! I'm so excited to get this season started! Can't wait to waltz tomorrow.

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Leonard Scalplock is hurtling in a repurposed golf cart along a winding trail towards Chief Crowfoot's grave, dust pluming behind as he careens over the rollercoaster green hills of the Siksika Nation. I am coated in dust and loving every minute of this very personal tour from my very spontaneous Indian guide.

Scalplock points out a nose-shaped ridge: “My brothers and I ran like deer through here. We also played cowboys and Indians. Everyone always wanted to be cowboys, because in the movies, the Indians lost.” The burly young man in black jeans and a backwards baseball hat chuckles.

Hundreds of tipis would have filled the valley below us, in what is now Alberta, when the six tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy met in 1877 under threat from European settlement. Fight or sign a treaty? All eyes were on Chief Crowfoot, who sat alone on the hill in his tipi for four days, fasting and smoking his pipe, before deciding to sign. The other tribes followed.

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People burst crackers, visited temples for thanksgiving and distributed sweets across Orissa Sunday after a state-based the Prince Dance Group won TV reality show "India's Got Talent" at the grand finale in Mumbai.

People glued to the televisions, sent thousands SMSes in favour of the group when the grand finale of the show began on Aug 22 on television channel Colors.

After the results were declared, people in many parts of the state came out on the streets and raised slogans, hailing the victory. Also, they were seen dancing and distributing sweets on Aug 23. Many went to the temples to thank the god for answering their prayers for victory.

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A beauty pageant has set off a beastly battle between Peru and Bolivia, which both claim ownership of the Andean "Devil's Dance."The Peruvian contender for Miss Universe, Karen Schwarz, set off the feud when she donned a wildly ornate dress, boots and cape accompanied by a multicolored, horned headpiece — as a symbol of the dance allegedly native to her country.

Bolivia immediately cried fraud. "The devil has his home" in Bolivia's high-plains city of Oruro, said Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca. His government began running ads on regionwide television network Telesur and CNN en Espanol staking Bolivia's claim to the dance and has threatened to take the dispute to an international tribunal at the Hague.

And on Thursday night, hundreds of Bolivian dancers and musicians bedecked in the devilish attire swirled fiendishly around La Paz's central Murillo Square for more than three hours. Last week, a team of Peruvian congressmen stumped through a comparatively shaky performance of the whirling jig in front of Congress.
Congressman Johnny Lescano, from the Puno province bordering Bolivia, called Bolivia's claims "disoriented." The dance "was initially established ... in Puno and first danced in the mines of Laycacota in 1583," Lescano said.

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He's the Conservative party's shadow minister for children, schools and family, but as a regular contributor to the BBC's Newsnight Review, Michael Gove likes to think of himself as a smart cultural commentator, too. Yet, writing in the Evening Standard this week, Gove reveals that his views on arts education are fuelled by prejudices that – even by Tory standards – are weirdly out of touch. Arguing that standards are being lowered by an invasion of "soft" subjects, Gove trumpets: "Academic rigour is the answer - not an A-Level in dance".

Not surprisingly this cheap shot has elicited a flurry of outraged responses from the dance profession, many of which point out that Gove clearly has no idea what dance at A-Level involves. Andrea Martin, head of dance at the College of Richard Collyer in Horsham and an A-Level examiner, says that her own students regard dance as one of the most challenging of their options. For those collecting their results today, studying dance will have involved the physical tasks of performance and choreography, as well as written exams requiring critical analysis and in-depth knowledge of history and human anatomy.

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When people think of break dancing, do they imagine youngsters "battling" in an urban playground? Or the professional dancer spinning on his head in a 30-second TV spot?

Break dancing is all that and more. As the annual Shore Dance festival concludes this weekend at Algonquin Arts in Manasquan, it will showcase the way break dancing, a widely popular dance form, is becoming a serious art.

Tomorrow, the Olive Dance Theatre, from Philadelphia, will offer the premiere of "Swift Solos," a multimedia dance-theater piece celebrating the achievements of hip-hop veteran Ken Swift, an original member of the pioneering Rock Steady Crew. The program was created with the help of an "American Masterpieces" grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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