ballroom dance

Burn The Floor: FloorPlay
Conceived, Directed and Choreographed by Jason Gilkison
Vogue Theatre
Remaining shows Apr 17, 2 and 8 pm, April 18.

Vancouver, BC:  Last night at the Vogue Theatre I saw  Burn the Floor for the third time in eight months . The show has lost none of its impact from the first two times I saw it  in New York and the dancing- and the singing - is as fantastic as before. They got several standing ovations and deservedly so. Anyone who loves dance should see this show and there are only three performances left  before they head off to Toronto.

We were a group of 8 people with very mixed experience in dance,  that met to go and see  the Friday night performance.  All of us, from the 5 who are simply enthusiastic observers of dance shows, to me - a very late starter in ballroom dance, and my two teachers, who are ex-competitive dancers, were wild about the show. 

Earlier this week I had enjoyed the opportunity to chat to some of the dancers and to Preview the cast dancing in three of the numbers up close, but the energy they generated in the dance studio was nothing compared to that  in the theatre, when magnified by the strong percussive music.  You could power a city with the force of their energy.

Unfortunately I had a very large, tall man  in the seat in front of me with a big head that really blocked my view of the overall  stage, except for two numbers when he sat a little lower in his seat. If it was the first time I saw the show I would have been really upset. 

But as it was, looking around his head,  I found myself focusing less on the spectacle and more objectively on the individual dancing- the various steps that I could identify and the awesome precision of the footwork.

Forget about your superheroes. Forget about "swifter, higher, stronger". The fittest athletes not to compete in an Olympic Games are performing in Vancouver this week. It's the cast of Burn The Floor, the  dance spectacular that reinvents International Ballroom and Latin Dance in a show that is absolutely riveting.

They are fresh off their Broadway run - where I loved it so much that I saw it twice in two weeks  - see Burn The Floor - New York Theatre.

And guess what,  I already have my ticket for the Vancouver show.

So what's so special about this show? The music will rock you to the core and the percussion rhythms of Georgio Rojas with vocalists Ricky Rojas and Rebecca Tapia will make you want to get up and dance.

The dancing is amazing.
It's fast and high energy. You won't believe that human legs can move that fast.

It's sexy and passionate. If you've needed Viagra, you won't after this show.

It's sensuous and romantic - like floating in a dream dance.

"I get the performing part - its a dance show after all, but athlete?" you may ask. 

For more pictures click the "read more" link. If there is not a picture of you in this collection that means  I did not get a good one to post.  If you have a great picture of yourself or anyone else to post here please email it to me and I will add it to the collage.

We are nearing the end of this 16 night cruise from Beijing to Bangkok. Singapore is the last stop before we disembark in Bangkok.  I spent a week in Singapore in September 2005 when the International Association for Pediatric Laboratory Medicine had its triennial meeting there. Although much of the time was spent at the conference - really,  we did get to tour a bit. I visited the Botanical gardens, and a group of us made the mandatory trek to Raffles Hotel to sit in the bar and drink a Singapore Sling. Actually I sipped someone else's Singaproe Sling just to taste it and then had white wine instead.

I also spent some time shopping and found some terrific tops in a regular department store on Orchard Street. They actually became my most often worn tops for casual and for dance wear. So this visit  I really want to see if I can get back to the same store.

Friday, November 20th, Singapore
 

From the South China Sea, the Diamond Princess entered the Singapore Strait around 3 am and was docked at the pier around 7 am. Although the weather was cloudy it was hot, hot, hot. The noonday temperature was 29 C - maybe not that hot for many people but way too warm for hot-blooded me.

For Singapore, there were 6 of us in the "Weinstein and Women" gang that signed up for the river cruise and Singapore sampler excursion, Carol and Jeane having joined the original group of  four, Raoul, Joan, Bernie and me. 

I am sure the other guys are wondering just how Raoul does it - getting to explore exotic locales with 5 women trotting quietly and obediently - (not!) after him. But actually as I am sure he will tell you, the reality is that despite, or perhaps, because, he is an organizer and map-reader extraordinaire, he spends a lot of time "herding cats" so to speak - as we rush ahead, fall behind or dash off in various directions to shop and to washrooms, while, gentleman as he is, he waits patiently till the group is together again - and usually will have some newly thought up highly relevant joke to share.

Two Days in Traveler's Paradise: French Polynesia

Our South Pacific Cruise is rapidly coming to an end  and this is the part that most of us had been waiting for; visiting the beautiful islands of French Polynesia that sit like exquisite jewels in the warm blue and green waters of the Pacific Ocean.

The islands we will visit on this cruise are Bora Bora and Moorea, and then the  Pacific Princess will dock at Papeete in Tahiti.  With a 7:30 am flight  next morning I won't see Tahiti so I really wanted to get a  flavour of the other two islands.

Bora Bora and Moorea are part of the Society Islands , an archipelago originally named for the British Royal Society by Captain Cook. There are two groups, the Windward Islands, in which Tahiti and Moorea are included, and the Leeward Islands in which Bora Bora lies. They have been a French colony since 1880.

Because of the time constraints, what these cruise visits do is  just give you enough of a taste of each destination so that you can decide to where you would like to return for further experiences.  Having grown up in Cape Town where  I used to love to swim in the warm waters of the southern Indian Ocean, I was eager to dip my toes into the waters of the South Pacific. So Bora Bora and Moorea - here I come. 

Wednesday October 7  Samba at Sea and Bora Bora

We were originally scheduled to arrive  at  the island of  Bora Bora at  8 am  and  depart at 5 pm for Moorea, but  adverse currents and choppy seas over the preceeding  five days had  forced a reduced cruising speed and that meant we would not arrive in Bora Bora until around noon. 

This caused some concern among those who had booked early morning excursions, and lots of scrambling on the part of the staff to reschedule everything. I had not booked an excursion so it did not bother me. I was more concerned with the fact that I had rashly  signed up to do a  Samba routine in the talent show at 10:30 am and we had not really rehearsed anything.

I woke as usual around 6 am and by 6:30 was sipping coffee and eating a banana  nut muffin and yogurt in "my office" on the aft deck outside the Pacific Buffet. We had arranged for Jorge to come and help Richard and I choreograph a short samba routine - really simple stuff but energetic enough to look like we were doing something good. I had my I-Pod with some great samba music and we put together three mini-routines that we thought would be fun.

We went through several variations and by the end of our brief practice i already felt I had had my workout for the day. I went back to the cabin to recharge my I-POd and get changed.  Ruby and Jorge decided to put together a tango routine. Cool - so as it turned out of the 6 "acts" 2 were from the Dancers at Sea group.

There is something strangely liberating about being among a mass of strangers who don't know your name, and whom you will never likely encounter again. I think I can almost understand why some people can make absolute idiots of themselves on those reality TV shows without  it seeming to bother them.  So although I was a bit anxious at first, when it came to actually getting out on the floor with all these strangers watching, I sort of forgot about them and just focused on not falling over when the ship rocked, and having fun.

I even made a joke about not having any Brazilian blood so that this would be a "Canadian samba."  Since what I actually meant  was that there wouldn't be any of the "frenziedly  shake your chest" action  that seem to be the most favoured celebrity moves in the Dancing with the Stars samba routines, I should probably have qualifed it further by saying this would be an "age-appropriate Canadian samba" but I don't think fast with a microphone held in front of me.

Anyway we got through the routine and Wendy videoed it on my small digital camera. Having viewed it, i don't think I will post it.  Too many things to work on before I will be comfortable having anyone see a video of me dancing!. Having said that, the husband of one of the other performers said he had videoed our dances and said he would mail us a copy. Hopefully he wouldn't post them anywhere without asking first. Oooohhh...

Friday October 2 - the first of 5 days  at sea,  and the Formal Night dinner
 
We departed from Hilo shortly after 4:30 pm on Thursday afternoon  and set course in a southerly direction across the Pacific Ocean towards Christmas Island. The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of all the oceans and covers two-thirds of the earth's surface. Compared to the distance between our various ports in Hawaii, an average of 100 nautical miles apart, the distance to Christmas Island from Hilo is 1088  nautical miles so it was no wonder that when we awoke early as usual and went up on deck, there was only the ocean to see all around us.

Wendy had scheduled 2 dance workshops each of the 5 days we were to be at sea. Originally planned for  9 am, the Cruise staff moved them earlier to 8:30 so that the next activities in the Pacific Lounge could start on time at 10:30.

 Since both Wendy and I are  early risers, we were up on deck having coffee and a light breakfast by 7 am.  It was quite lovely out on the aft deck behind the Pacific Buffet. Fresh air,  a V sign of bubbles trailing behind us and the vast Pacific Ocean all around.

The Pacific Ocean was named by Ferdinand Magellan, the 16th century Portuguese explorer whose fatal voyage (he was killed during fighting in the Philippines) nevertheless provided the proof that one could circumnavigate the globe  without sailing off the edge and that  therefore that the world was round and not a disc.

Pacifc means peaceful although that is difficult to believe when you are trying to do a Bolero and the ship rolls you down when you are supposed to go up!

When you think of the conditions under which Magellan sailed, and even as recently as when my great-grandparents immigrated by  ship to South Africa and Scotland, it is absolutely amazing  to think of what we take for granted these days.  Forgetting about air travel - which to my great grand-parents would have seemed as bizarre as a time-travel machine seems to us today, we can be out  "in the middle of nowhere" and yet  expect hot showers, clean laundry, gourmet food - and what to me is quite mind blowing - wireless internet access as good as at home - though at many times the price.

The fact that I can talk to my children on Skype from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and it seems as if they are in the room next door - impressive - thanks to satellites, wireless routers,  and the exponential increases in processing and data storage capacity that have occurred over the past couple of decades

So when I caught myself grumbling that wireless internet access was costing me 40 cents a minutes, 35 c if I had been smart and bought 500 minutes up front instead of 250, I reminded myself instead to say a silent thank you to the thousands of scientists and engineers who made internet access from a ship  "in the middle of nowhere"  possible with minimal effort on my part. Anyway, on deck in a fresh breeze, I used up some of my precious internet time to check emails.What a great office.

By 8:30 we were up in the Pacific Ballroom, Wendy had her I-Pod connected to the sound system and we were ready to go. Of the two couples in our group, both women loved to dance and their partners were there because they loved their women! So the range of dance abilities went from rank beginner to quite experienced.  In order not to lose the beginners - and we all wanted to encourage Bob and Charlie to get as excited about dance as they claimed to be about golf! -the workshops were very basic. We essentially just did the box step in both the foxtrot and the rumba. I didn't mind though as it was additional exercise, although I thought a bit wistfully back to the West Coast Ballroom Dance Cruise rumba and chacha workshops where we learned some quite complex doublespin moves to practice on the dance floor.

 South Pacific Ballroom Dance Cruise 2009: Part I

The opportunity to join Wendy and the Dancers at Sea on a South Pacific Cruise from Honolulu to Tahiti came up unexpectedly while I was on the Labor Weekend Getaway Dance Cruise. A test of my developing capacity for spontaneity - something I have really been working hard to achieve - I needed to decide on the spot whether to take up an unexpected vacancy that had arisen - the only problem  was that the cruise was scheduled to start a mere two weeks after I returned to Vancouver from New York (New York, New York 2009).

 I checked my calendar to see if there was anything that could not be rescheduled, decided not to check my budget and my bank balance, and just go for it.  So  after  just enough time back in the city to see a couple of  plays, do my laundry and  tidy my apartment, I was packed and ready for another great vacation dancing at sea.

Burn The Floor
Directed and choreographed by Jason Gilkison
Longacre Theater,220 West 48th St., New York
Till January 3rd, 2010

New York, NY:  As a reviewer, I think it important that my readers know the biases and foibles that influence my writing.  So before I write another word about the show itself,  I have two confessions to make.

Number one is that there is no way I can be even remotely objective about this production. I am an unrepentant  ballroom dance addict (doing as well as watching)  and my summary of this show is that  I loved it, loved it, loved it - yup, I really really loved it.

And that leads me to confession number two.  I was so blown away by the dancing and the amazing dancers when I saw it  before leaving on my  Labour Day Getaway  dance cruise, that I used up a second slot of my precious six available  theatre time slots of this New York visit  to see Burn The Floor again. This time I saw it with my son who is rapidly becoming almost as addicted to ballroom dancing as I am.

Well I have heard of terms like anti-matter and anti-gravity but I confess that I had not heard of anti-shoes until I walked into a store looking for sandals to replace the ones that kept giving me blisters.   Ballroom dancing is really hard on my feet, especially since I mostly wear quite high heels, so I am always interested in finding out more about different brands.  Julie, my massage therapist - who looks like an angel but finds every pain spot like a devil - suggested that my biomechanical problems - tight IT bands and tight every other muscle, would be better served if I got good flat shoes for walking. I was on a search for  SAS sandals and thanks to my computer, found a store on Granville Stret, downtown, that carries them.

While I was trying on a pair of SAS sandals- and they are as comfortable as they are supposed to be,  Amanda and our delightfully helpful salesperson, Sarah, got into a conversation about the anti-shoe! From what I gleaned from their conversation, the idea behind the shoe is to reproduce the effects on the skeletal system of walking barefoot versus the walking on multiple surfaces using shoes with different degrees of support. So these shoes are supposed to mimic the effect of walking barefoot on soft uneven ground such as sand - this forces one's muscles to react to counter the stresses and correct posture. Hmmm.

This is the index of postings to my Travelblogue that documents my ballroom dancing-focused West Coast cruise in the Sapphire Princess  from Los Angeles, California to  Vancouver, British Columbia. I traveled with a group of ballroom dance enthusiasts led by Wendy from Dancers at Sea. With three hours of dancing every night,a dance workshop, excellent food on board and excursions to wine country en route, it was the perfect trip for a gourmet food and wine-loving , ballroom dance addicted, travel writer.

The nature of blogs results in the latest posting appearing first on screen, so that  later events appear first. This Travelblogue index lists the postings in chronological order from pre-embarkation to the termination of the trip, as a guide to your reading.


INDEX OF ENTRIES:

   1. Dancing at Sea: A West Coast Ballroom Dancing and Wine Tasting Cruise

    Anticipation and Cruise Dancing 101

   2: Dancing at Sea: Embarkation day: A slow boat (oops- ship) to ....
 
   Not missing the boat - and getting to know you

   3. Dancing at Sea: I could have danced all night

   The on-board dance venues - and the dancing

   4. Dancing at Sea:  Days of wine and rosés - Santa Ynez Wine Excursion
 
  An excursion to Santa Barbara wine country

   5. Dancing at Sea: I enjoy being a girl ...

   Formal evening dinner and dancing

   6. Dancing at Sea: I left my heart...