Few Americans realize that some of the best Ballet dancers in the world hail from Cuba…
Tag Archives: Dance
The Prez Does the Tango
The Prez cuts a step in Argentina –
Of course some of the media criticized the Prez’s moves – but nowhere on the list of Presidential duties is being a professional dancer.
The Hip-Hop Gymnist
This is fun!
No reason American Gymnasts shouldn’t be able to insert a little American pizazz in a sport too heavily influenced by stale Eastern European moves for decades…
This is Sophina DeJesus who is a member of the UCLA Gymnastics team at a recent performance.
Wow!
President Obama Cuts a Step in Kenya
The singers are a group called Sauti Sol, and the song is Sura Yaku. Sauti Sol is a hugely popular group in Kenya, whose music is now reaching across the region into Uganda, Tanzania, and throughout eastern Africa. The dance is called the Lipala, and historically it has been a pre-wedding dance. Sauti Sol has turned it into the latest Kenyan dance craze.
Another major hit this year has been Neria, which I believe is a marvelous demonstration of these guys incredible vocal talents…
Dance With My Father
This is one of the most intelligent and creative programs I’ve heard of for the incarcerated. Daddy-Daughter Dance Day. A day when incarcerted Dads, and their daughters at home can dress up and come together for a little parental bonding. It doesn’t fix the fact that Dad’s irresponsible actions landed him in jail in the first place – but it does preserve a small bit of that “fatherhood” thing so sadly missing in our Country today. Check out the pics in the Article link below.
A father-daughter dance — in jail
The girls ages 6 to 16 sit in order of size in the drab lobby of the Richmond City Jail, their glittery shoes swinging back and forth.
“I don’t like it here,” says Jhaniyika Morman, 6, who covers her eyes, smudging her blue eye shadow and pointing toward the jail’s visitation booths, where inmates are separated from their visitors by thick glass.
“I’m nervous. I hope he recognizes me,” mumbles Alexis Atkins, 9, who has her blond hair curled into long ringlets and keeps zipping and unzipping her hot-pink purse.
Down the hall, through several gates and inside a communal cell with thick blue bars, 12 inmates change from their frayed one-piece jumpsuits into formal attire. They pass belts and shirts of various sizes back and forth between the tight rows of steel bunk beds.
“Anyone know how to do up this here tie?” asks a jittery looking Andre Morman, 42, who has been in and out of jail on drug charges numerous times.
Then the inmates line up, too. They walk down a long hallway and wait in silence to get a glimpse of the girls: their daughters.
For a few hours on this Saturday afternoon, the incarcerated fathers will be allowed to take part in an American tradition, the father-daughter dance. “A Dance of Their Own,” thought to be the only event of its kind in the country, will be in the jail’s small, windowless multipurpose room.
The event in Richmond is just one example of the alternative father-daughter dances springing up around the country amid growing concerns that traditional father-daughter dances are exclusionary. Their detractors say they are outdated, discriminatory and sexist and that they no longer reflect what American families look like. For starters, according to 2011 census data, more than half of all children in this country are raised by unmarried mothers.
French Hip Hop?
There is an old saying that a “Lie can get half way around the world before Truth has a chance to get its pants on”.
There is one thing faster – music.
Festival celebrates French hip-hop
Since the founding of Washington, it has been tres facile to sense the French influence in the circles, grids and diagonals bequeathed by Pierre L’Enfant, and in recent years, it seems no office is more than steps away from a French (or French-named) place to buy a croissant.
You’d think Sylvain Cornevaux, cultural director of the Alliance Francaise, would consider his mission accomplished now that it’s so easy to pick up baguettes in our French-formatted city. He doesn’t.
“The bread, the architecture — these things are French, and these things are very nice, but they are also very old,” Cornevaux said. And so this month, in an effort to connect the District’s streets with the New France, he has organized a festival of French hip-hop dance.
Oui. French hip-hop dance. Does that sound oxymoronic? Au contraire, Cornevaux explains. Given the influx of immigrants from former French colonies and the general French fascination with urban American life, hip-hop culture caught on in France but quickly merged with higher-brow art. The result is choreography that’s now being exported back to the United States. And thus we have “Urban Corps: A Transatlantic Hip-Hop Festival,” which continues through Friday, May 25, at venues in Arlington County and the District.
“It is very interesting, because hip-hop was born in the U.S. but it has quickly developed in another way in France,” Cornevaux said. “Hip-hop was still an emerging artistic field in the beginning of the ’80s, but at the beginning of the ’90s, many hip-hop artists started working a lot with classical choreographers and with artistic directors of theaters. [Dancers] kept their hip-hop skills but transformed to show them in a contemporary manner. They incorporate hip-hop, mime and Capoeira,” a Brazilian blend of athletic dance and martial arts.
The Alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting French language and culture, worked hard to obtain visas for 13 dancers affiliated with four French companies, and each troupe received funding from its home town or region to cover travel. The city of Nantes even paid to ship extensive sets for KLP Company’s show “Tour of Duty” to that Atlas Performing Arts Center.
“Tour of Duty” may sound like a show inspired by military battles or war video games, but according to press materials and the company’s Web site, it’s actually a narrative tracing the history of hip-hop in Brooklyn, beginning in 1960, and recounting years of gang wars and communities coming together.
Junious Brickhouse, founder of the District-based hip-hop collective Urban Artistry, is a bit skeptical about the storyline — Brooklyn? What about the South Bronx? — but suspects that the dancing will be on target. “I’ll be honest. I think there are some things that get lost in translation,” Brickhouse said, “but at the end of the day, I just want to get down with some nonverbal art.”…
Chez Chez…Indeed.
Wedding Dance – Smooth Criminal
Trends come and go relative to Wedding Parties. One which seems to have caught on in recent years is a new form of Wedding dance which replaces the old style Waltz with a closely choreographed set of steps by the groom, bride or family.
Have to admit – these are fun, and add to the memory of what is a joyous occasion.
My only question though – is 30 years from now…
Do you show this to the kids?
CNN Discovers DC’s GO Go Music
30 years later and folks are still “discovering” Go-Go, a music style developed in Washington DC. Sorry about the ad in the beginning. Danced away many a night to this at one or more of DC’s “Cabarets”.
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1st collector for CNN Discovers DC’s GO Go Music
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First Lady Cuts a Dance Move, and Does the “Dougie”!
Our First Lady continues her campaign to help children become healthier through exercise and proper eating…
Along the way she shows off a few dance moves!
Go Michelle!
DJ Newk From Back In The Day
Chicago Southside After Party Jam from DJ NEWK downloaded on SoundCloud
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