Posts Tagged ‘Dance’

  
Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Theatre Is Easy: “Groovaloo”

by Molly Marinik

BOTTOM LINE: An incredible dance show, unlike anything you’ve seen before.

The Groovaloos are a dance company from LA. They’re hip-hop dancers with diverse backgrounds who came together a while back as a community of freestylers who liked to jam with one another. They’re perhaps the most talented group of hip-hop dancers out there, at least as far as I’m aware. You’ve probably seen them on TV in one way or another, as they’ve been featured on several of those reality talent shows over the past couple of years (Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew). Their autobiographical show, Groovaloo, has grown and changed since its inception in 2003, and it now comes to New York to play at the Joyce Theater after a successful run in LA. After its brief stay in New York — it plays though September 27 – Groovaloo will tour the country beginning January 10.

Performance-wise, Groovaloo is an athletic, energy-packed 90 minutes that gets the audience’s attention and doesn’t let go. Each of the 14 dancers is better than the next, and with men and women of all cultural backgrounds, the cast is totally captivating. Each dancer gets a solo moment, and as the show reveals itself, the audience learns each dancer’s story and how they got to where they are now. Although there are many featured moments for each dancer where they can break and freestyle and do their own thing, there are also many synchronized and choreographed moments where some or all of the dancers perform the same steps or tricks in smaller groups or as bigger production numbers. The variety keeps the production moving along at a nice pace.

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Saturday, August 29th, 2009

Theatre Is Easy: “Burn the Floor”

by Molly Marinik

BOTTOM LINE: Just like Dancing With the Stars. With more dancing. And fewer C-Listers.

Let’s say you’re a major celebrity like oh, Elton John. And let’s say it’s your 50th birthday and you’ve recently become a big fan of contemporary ballroom dancing. Maybe you like the sparkly costumes. So your peeps decide to honor your special day by hiring amazing dancers to create a show for you to be performed at your soiree. Now let’s say you’re a power-player with money who happens to be a guest at Sir Elton’s birthday party. And you see this show and you think “this is both awesome and potentially lucrative.” You put your monacle back in your eye, take out your checkbook and adapt the show into a worldwide hit called Burn the Floor.

I’m not totally positive that’s how it all went down, but suffice to say this show got its roots in 1997 in Sir Elton’s honor. After a decade of developing and re-working, it has played in England and pretty much traveled the rest of the world on various tours. Burn the Floor has now set up shop at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre for a limited engagement through January 2010. (more…)

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Saturday, August 29th, 2009

Soundtrack Saturday: “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”

by Kelly Stitzel

You knew this day was coming and now it’s arrived: after a few mentions in previous posts, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) has finally, officially invaded Soundtrack Saturday.

Released only seven months after the first Breakin’, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (FYI: You can’t just say “Breakin’ 2.” The “Electric Boogaloo” must always follow. It’s a rule.) brings back our heroes from the first film — Kelly (Lucinda Dickey), Ozone (Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones), and Turbo (Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers) — who use their breakdancing skills to try and stop a greedy land developer from tearing down their beloved community center.

When we join our heroes, we find that Kelly is working as a dancer and apparently hasn’t seen her buddies Ozone and Turbo in a while. She decides she misses them, so she makes a visit to Miracles, the community center where they work. Turns out a developer wants to bulldoze it in order to build a shopping center. Ozone and a few of the other volunteers, including Byron (Harry Caesar), the man who runs Miracles, go to City Hall and find out from the city commissioner that they have 30 days to raise enough money to save and renovate the center or the developer will have his way and the building will come down.

Ozone, Turbo, and Kelly, along with the other volunteers and kids who use the center, decide to try and raise money by holding a car wash. When that endeavor doesn’t raise enough funds, they decide to throw a big street festival to raise more money. Later, as the group is doing maintenance on the community center, Kelly tells Ozone she’s up for the lead in a show in Paris. He questions her loyalty to the community center and whether or not she’ll stick around to help save it.

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Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Future Retro: Jody Watley

by DJ D

A TOUCH OF SHALAMAR

Singer, songwriter, and producer Jody Watley first boogied her way to fame at the age of 14 as a dancer on the legendary music program Soul Train. In 1976 the group Shalamar was created by Soul Train’s booking agent, Dick Griffey, and R&B producer Simon Soussan. After a group of session musicians recorded the original hit “Uptown Festival” in 1977, Jody and her male counterparts took over as the official version of the group. For seven years Shalamar was a solid-gold hit machine, spinning off a string of disco, soul, and funk classics.

The group’s longest-lasting and most popular lineup consisted of Jody and singers Howard Hewett and Jeffrey Daniels: their success began when they signed with SOLAR Records and joined forces with producer Leon Sylvers III. Shalamar’s run of chart success kicked off with 1979’s “Take That to the Bank,” which reached #20 on the UK pop chart. Numerous pop and R&B hits followed, including “A Night to Remember” (#5 pop in the UK), “This Is for the Lover in You,” and “Friends,” and 1980’s million-selling smash hit “The Second Time Around” soared all the way to #1 on the U.S. disco and R&B charts and #8 on the pop chart. The album Friends achieved platinum status in 1982 by crossing over and reaching fans of pop, disco, and soul.

Shalamar kept the dance floor full through the early ’80s. However, problems behind the scenes with their record label led Jody and Jeffrey to dance their way out of the group by 1982; it was a new version of the group that recorded the hit dance groove “Dancing in the Sheets” for the Footloose soundtrack album in 1984. Meanwhile, Jody found her way to London and began recording demos with the Art of Noise before being asked by Bob Geldof to appear on Band Aid’s 1984 charity record “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” She was soon ready to walk the runway to her own solo career. Hasta la vista, Shalamar!

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Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

DVD Review: “Joni Mitchell’s The Fiddle and the Drum”

by Ken Shane

Joni Mitchell's The Fiddle and the DrumI don’t think it’s boastful to say that I know a little bit about music. I’m old, so I’ve been playing and listening to it for many years. In that context, I think I know a few things about Joni Mitchell. She’s a founding member of what I call my pantheon: a group of artists from various disciplines who have, in my opinion, reached the mountaintop. The membership includes the likes of Pablo Picasso, Sam Shepard, Miles Davis, and Francis Ford Coppola. It’s a tough club to get into.

On the other hand, I don’t know a damn thing about ballet. I have very little interest in classical ballet, though I can tolerate modern dance. I once saw a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and that was memorable, but that’s where my experience ends. So faced with a DVD that combines the music of Joni Mitchell and the choreography of Jean Grand-Maitre and his Alberta Ballet, I had to call in the cavalry. Luckily, I knew just who to call.

Nicole Vanasse played semi-pro ballet. She never made it to the bigs, but she has an ongoing love of the form and still insists she coulda been a contender. So we made a deal — I’d handle the music, and she could weigh in on the dancing.

The production, called The Fiddle and the Drum (Koch Vision), is a compelling blend of Mitchell’s music, represented here by ten songs, including three from her most recent album, Shine; a video installation she created called Green Flag Song, which is projected on a large canvas screen during the ballet; and the dance performance itself. The package comes with an eight-page booklet with liner notes by Mitchell, and the DVD extras include an isolated look at the Green Flag Song artwork as well as interviews with Mitchell, Grand-Maitre, and several of the company’s dancers.

The themes of the work are humankind’s capacity for love and hate, and its ability to create and destroy. Here’s what Nikki had to say: “I loved the music, the message and the stage production. I always thought it was hard to choreograph ballet to contemporary music, but Jean Grande-Maitre did a phenomenal job.

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