"Dance that funky cha cha, white boy..."

The Ballroom Dance Society's July shindig is a casual affair, the only one of the year where the guys toss their ties and the ladies shed the sequins and silk in favor of flouncy frippery. We also generally experience a change in music style, with bands who lean toward the rock and roll side of the musical family tree.

Last night was a good example, as The Shades provided the music, and quite frankly it was the best time we've had on a dance floor in recent memory. The band has been around forever, it seems, but inexplicably this was the first time we'd heard them. They provide a "CPR playlist" – country, pop, and rock, although not in that order – and they were in fine form at the Midland Country Club.

Apparently, so were we – that is, the collective group of ballroom dancers – as the band expressed their amazement at playing for an audience where (1) everybody danced, and (2) everybody knew how to dance. Making that observation once could have been chalked up to an attempt to butter up a well-paying audience in anticipation of a repeat invitation for a comfortable gig, but their kudos went well beyond that point. And if you think about it, there's probably not much better affirmation for a rock 'n roll than moving people to get up from a nice meal and hit the floor. So, the appreciation was mutual.

But it was an interesting scene. Most of the crowd was AARP-fodder, but that also meant that we grew up with the music the band was playing. That also meant that we brought a certain "maturity" to the dance styles, meaning that there were actual steps involved, unlike the arrhythmic shuffle-and-jerk I did when I was in high school. But that led to some occasional incongruities.

For example, one expertly-performed medley merged La Bamba with Twist and Shout, which in turn led us through a dancing safari combining rumba, East Coast Swing, and – what else – the twist. I had never considered it before, but a lot of the Beatles' music lends itself to Latin dance steps (although some of it also has rather maddening tempo changes that make it a challenge to dance to).

Our ballroom form quickly went by the wayside, though, when The Shades launched into a rendition of the Isley Brothers classic Shout, popularized in Animal House. It was a toga party in spirit, if not in fashion.

The best was saved for last, as the band ended with a high energy version of the Commodore's Brick House, followed by Wild Cherry's classic from which the post title is derived. I seriously doubt that when Wild Cherry recorded Play That Funky Music, they envisioned that three decades later a bunch of middle-aged hipster wannabes would be doing the cha-cha to their song (and mouthing all the words at the same time) in the middle of an upscale country club ballroom. Is this a great country, or what?

Dancing With the Stars: Helio races to the trophy

I predicted it, but it didn't really take a rocket scientist (or professional dancer) to see that race car driver Helio Castroneves would win this year's Dancing With The Stars competition.

I didn't think Spice Girl Mel B. had the fan base to get her into the finals, let alone win the coveted Disco Ball Trophy. I was wrong about the first thing, but not the second. She was clearly the judges' favorite – not by a lot, but consistently so – but Castroneves had the charisma (and the Y chromosome) necessary to win the female vote. It's a tossup as to which we'll get first: a female DWTS champion or a female president.

I also believe that viewers will continue to reward those contestants who don't have a background in dance. The appealing premise of the show is that people undertake something outside their comfort zones, and that we get to watch them on a journey through the season. Professional entertainers may have the edge in terms of composure on the stage, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't have two left feet.

I'm reminded of a quote from the movie All That Jazz, where Roy Scheider plays a character – Joe Gideon – based not-so-loosely on famed choreographer Bob Fosse. In one scene, Gideon is attempting to console a female dancer who made it into his production by way of the casting couch, and who has just realized that she doesn't really have the talent to be where she is. Gideon tells her something like this: I can't make you a great dancer. I don't know if I can even make you a good dancer. But if you work hard and don't give up, I promise you that I can make you a better dancer.

That's what the DWTS audience tunes in each week to see: someone becoming a better dancer. And, who knows, maybe a great dancer will emerge.

Handicapping DWT '07

Tonight we'll learn which three couples will advance to the finals in this season's edition of Dancing With the Stars. So, once again, I'm putting my professional and personal reputation on the line by providing my earnest-yet-uninformed opinions about the contestants and their chances. (It should be noted that I did pick last year's winner, but missed just about everything else. Hey, you're getting what you're paying for, so don't complain.)

Here's assessment of the skill of the remaining contestants.

1. Mel B (aka Scary Spice) – For raw dancing prowess, she stands head, shoulders, and D-cup ahead of everyone else. She's also a scary-fierce competitor, and a good match for her partner, Mad Max. If it was just about the dancing, she's the easy winner.


2. Helio Castroneves (aka Speed Racer) – Helio is this year's Apolo or Emmitt. He's smooth and precise, as you would expect from an open-wheel driver, and his sheer joy in performing is infectious.


3. Jennie Garth (aka Who Dat?) - She's another pleasant surprise. Like Helio, she had no formal dance training, and she struggled early on with technique and confidence. The former was expected; the latter was a surprise to those of us accustomed to seeing celebs handle anything thrown at them. But she absolutely rocked last night's cha cha, and showed that she's overcome both of those early issues.


4. Marie Osmond (aka the Swooning Sweetheart) - I just realized something last night (a guilty confession): Marie is hot. Or, she can be when she puts her mind to it. She's easily the weakest dancer in the final group, but she's not afraid to take chances, and she knows how to shine when the music starts.

So, that's how I see them stack up based on pure skill. Here's how I predict they'll actually finish, based on some intangibles that I'm completely unqualified to assess:

4. Mel B - She goes home tonight, as the voters penalize her for being, well, a professional dancer. As with the Cheetah Girl, who got spanked early much to the surprise of the judges, the viewing public wants to see someone they can relate to perform under pressure, and no one can relate to a Spice Grrrl.


3. Jennie - To be honest – and this surprises me – Jennie would be my personal favorite to win, because she epitomizes the reason this show is successful: celebrities put in situations outside their comfort zones so we can watch them squirm and either excel or exit. Jennie has come further, with more honest tenacity, than any of the other competitors, and she's turned into a very, very good dancer.


2. Marie - You think Mormons don't rock the vote, especially for ballroom dancing? Brigham Young University has one of the premier dance troupes in the world, and I have no problem extrapolating from that directly to a situation where Osmond's innate likability and showmanship more than overcome her relatively plodding dance steps.


1. Helio - Sorry, girls; this is, ultimately, a competition decided by women, and Helio is just too darned cute not to prevail. That alone wouldn't do it for him, but he's got the skill to back it up. And, like Jennie, he's an amateur in sense of having no dance background. (Unlike Jennie, however, he stepped onto the floor with a fairly high level of apparently natural ability). His secret weapon is his partner, Julianne Hough, whose personality and choreography helped Apolo Anton Ohno win last year.

So, there you have my bold predictions. Feel free to start poking fun at me immediately following tonight's results show (or sooner, if you want to get a jump on the holiday crowd).

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Rumba Here

I see that Jimmy has drunk the Corté Kool-Aid and is now taking dance lessons to make points with his wife. The thing is, after only one lesson he seems to think he qualifies for sainthood. Let me tell you, Boxstep Boy, you'll know when you truly merit that recognition, but at this point your descent into the Nether Regions has scarcely entered the foyer.

Come talk to me when your dance-related expenditures have moved well into four significant digits (including a digital camcorder for taping lessons); when you can discuss the timing of "promenade, rondé, lock and flair" with the same facility that you employ in computing slugging percentage; when your time at the dance studio exceeds your time in Big Bend (including drive time to and from); when a good friend tells you that she dreamed about watching you two dance (and adds that, in her dream, she remembers thinking "well, they're not very good" [we assured her that was no dream]). We'll be ready to listen when you are able to admit that you actually bought a new pair of shoes just for dancing. You'll know you've arrived when the appearance of a newspaper ad for "social dresses" at Dillards strikes fear into your heart, and causes your wallet to shrink to a size that could be concealed in Emmitt Smith's DWTS partner's dance costumes.

Yeah, Jimmy, I applaud your romantic motivations -- even as I also understand the complicated calculus that you're trying to employ to compute a potential payoff -- but I hope you don't find that you might have been better off selling a couple of semi-important organs and buying your wife a nice gemstone. Because, frankly, at least that way you get to pick the organs.

Happy dancing, amigo!

Mormons Got Dance

We went to last night's presentation by the Brigham Young University Ballroom Dance Company* and let me tell you...I don't know if they can jump, but those white kids can flat-out dance!

Proceeds from the hour-and-a-quarter program at the Lee High School auditorium benefitted Safe Place and Harmony Home, both of which serve families trying to escape abusive situations. They are fitting recipients for LDS beneficence; whatever you might think of that organization's religious doctrine, its commitment to the preservation of traditional family values is admirably strong.

BYU's Ballroom Dance Company represents the cream of the crop in worldwide amateur circles. They have won just about every national and international dance competition you can name, and have done so for literally decades. It's all the more amazing when you consider that of the 35 performers -- all of them full-time students -- listed in last night's program, only four were dance majors.

I'm far from expert but I do have more than a passing interest in ballroom dance, and from my perspective, last night's performance was scarily flawless. Some of the moves were simply breathtaking in athleticism and grace. The choreography was imaginative, as were the costumes and music (although the latter tended at times to overpower the school's sound system). Case in point: the number entitled "Baliwood" was performed under UV lights (aka "black lights") with the dancers wearing head-to-toe costumes in eye-popping fluorescent colors. In one scene, two dancers wore black tops and two others wore black tights (I initially typed "bottoms" but that didn't seem to sit right. Ha!), giving the effect of torsos and legs moving about independently, seeking to re-unite.

The dance routines were offered non-stop, and covered the gamut of traditional ballroom: fotxtrot, waltz, tango, rumba, swing, cha cha, etc. Granted, none of their steps resembled what I and MLB are learning -- which would have been somewhat demoralizing to beginners like us, if it hadn't been so downright entertaining.

I feel compelled to finish with what I started in the first paragraph. While their precision was such that the term "Stepford Dancers" comes to mind, this allusion is reinforced by the sheer physical uniformity of the troupe. The guys were clean-cut, the girls were -- what's the female equivalent of "clean-cut"? Their audience generally reflected the west Texas demographic (almost equal parts anglo and latino), but the troupe was completely anglo, with one exception, a fellow hailing from Lima, Peru. I'm not offering this observation with any sort of judgment; it just struck me as interesting. I suspect the dance troupe's demo is an accurate microcosm of the university's student body as a whole.

One final observation. The performance proved that dancers don't have to be suggestive or crude to be sensuous. There was no crotch-grabbing ala Michael Jackson or "dirty dancing" ala just about every hip-hop "artist" in existence, but there was passion and fire, romance and exhilaration. And if you think ballroom is for sissies, you need to catch a future performance and you'll re-think your perspective.

*I wanted to link to the troupe's webpage, but to get there you have to go through BYU's Performing Arts Management website, which managed to freeze both Firefox and Safari. So, you're on your own.

Call me on my rhumba numba

You know those people with the fancy schmancy cell phones and the obnoxious ringtones that play entire songs and annoy you to no end but they think they're really cool? You know -- those people, um, like me:

G'head, give a listen. It's just 62kb.

I've never before had a phone with Bluetooth and MP3 capabilities and when MLB and I got new RAZRs a couple of weeks ago, it set me off on a path that will eventually lead me straight to perdition, but the journey surely is fun.

I used iTunes to snip a section of music from one of our dance numbers ("Sway," by The Pussycat Dolls), which was a bit more complicated than usual since it was in Protected AAC format (purchased from the iTunes Music Store) and I had to get around the DRM protection. I then moved the MP3 over to the phone via Bluetooth and assigned it to my wife's mobile number so I'll be able to quickly recognize her call, not to mention aggravate everyone around me.

But, lest those put-upon souls become too exercised over the ringtone, they should be forewarned: it could get worse. I have a rhumba and I know how to use it.

The one thing I wish I'd done is edit the clip to fade it at the end, not that I plan on ever letting it run that long...

Dance Lessons, Week 3: A Sinister Revelation

Our third ballroom dancing lesson left us with the illusion that we might someday master this skill. There were times, perhaps perceptible only by us, that we were actually dancing as a couple, rather than answering a casting call for extras in the next George Romero movie. (Note to George: If you ever decide that "Ballroom Dance of the Dead" is a title that piques your imagination, have your people call my people. We'll do lunch, bubbie.)

Bernadette, our ever-patient instructor, was not content to let us rest on our laurels, as she continued to throw variations into the almost-comfortable basic steps we'd been practicing. We added the promenade to the tango and the cha-cha. If you're unfamiliar with that move, let me assure you guys that it's not one that you want to do in public in Midland, Texas without a female partner. However, when you have a lovely person of the distaff persuasion mirroring your moves, it evokes Fred/Ginger imagery (well, in the way that a Mad Magazine cover might evoke Time Magazine imagery).

I also had a revelation on Friday evening: dance lessons are for the guys. Oh, the women show up in order to make us be there, and to develop a passing familiarity with the steps, but they really don't have to learn anything because no matter what happens -- and it's very important to understand this -- it's all our fault.

The fact that it took me three lessons to figure this out proves that I never stood a chance. Never did, and never will.

Technorati tag: Ballroom Dance

Dance Lesson #2: War of the Twirleds

Dance Lesson Number Two took place last night and was a study in lowering the bar. When we were good, we were very...OK. But when we were bad, we were awful.

At times, we seemed to be really dancing, moving as a couple with the music and feeling only a little like the step-counting robots from last week. That feeling invariably passed, however, as our tenuously-grasped rhythm sputtered, died, and left us standing there with a single recurring phrase on our lips: "let's start over." (At least we were synchronized at that point.)

Repitition is the operative term. The class was essentially a duplicate of last week's, and that was good. I remembered exactly one of the seven steps we were introduced to in that first class, and I don't think I was alone in my inability to retain the moves. We started from scratch and went through each step: foxtrot, waltz, cha-cha...and so on. We added a couple of new moves here and there -- the tango corte, for example -- but overall we simply tried to deepen our neural grooves by a picometer, hoping that the basics would stick with us for at least an hour after class, instead of disappearing in ten minutes like they did before.

I've also begun to realize that I have no natural ear for music and rhythm, in terms of knowing which dance goes with which music. We spent a little time at the end of class listening to music, then attempting to match the right step to it. The Latin rhythms all seem the same to me (except for the tango, which is becoming my dance of choice, I think because it's the only one where we spell out the steps instead of count them). I dread the day when I'll suffer the fatal humiliation of attempting to mambo to what will be obvious to everyone else is a cha-cha. It's inevitable, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it.

Regardless, we soldier on, and take our victories where we find them. No one got hurt and the instructor generally was successful in containing her laughter. Lesson #3 is a week away, and I must go practice.

Dance Lesson #2: War of the Twirleds

Dance Lesson Number Two took place last night and was a study in lowering the bar. When we were good, we were very...OK. But when we were bad, we were awful.

At times, we seemed to be really dancing, moving as a couple with the music and feeling only a little like the step-counting robots from last week. That feeling invariably passed, however, as our tenuously-grasped rhythm sputtered, died, and left us standing there with a single recurring phrase on our lips: "let's start over." (At least we were synchronized at that point.)

Repitition is the operative term. The class was essentially a duplicate of last week's, and that was good. I remembered exactly one of the seven steps we were introduced to in that first class, and I don't think I was alone in my inability to retain the moves. We started from scratch and went through each step: foxtrot, waltz, cha-cha...and so on. We added a couple of new moves here and there -- the tango corte, for example -- but overall we simply tried to deepen our neural grooves by a picometer, hoping that the basics would stick with us for at least an hour after class, instead of disappearing in ten minutes like they did before.

I've also begun to realize that I have no natural ear for music and rhythm, in terms of knowing which dance goes with which music. We spent a little time at the end of class listening to music, then attempting to match the right step to it. The Latin rhythms all seem the same to me (except for the tango, which is becoming my dance of choice, I think because it's the only one where we spell out the steps instead of count them). I dread the day when I'll suffer the fatal humiliation of attempting to mambo to what will be obvious to everyone else is a cha-cha. It's inevitable, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it.

Regardless, we soldier on, and take our victories where we find them. No one got hurt and the instructor generally was successful in containing her laughter. Lesson #3 is a week away, and I must go practice.