Dumber Than a 6-Year-Old, 6 is the New 14, and Money Money Money!

I cannot for the life of me memorize my choreography. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Luis and I have our Latin combo Cha Cha / Samba / Salsa / Merengue routine almost finished, except for the “series of overhead lifts and tricks” (yikes…) he has planned, which we couldn’t choreograph yet because we need the big studio with the high ceilings (double yikes…) for that. I spent all afternoon Sunday watching and re-watching and re-re-watching the damn video I made of us, and I thought I had it all down, but when he turned on the blasted music and we were actually going at it, I forgot everything! David Hallberg posted a picture on The Winger of a bunch of little kids, by the looks of it not more than 6 years old, tremendously excited about having little roles in ABT‘s Le Corsaire last week. He commented how he could have never remembered his choreography at that age. And it made me think, ‘geez, I am dumber than a 6 year old kid…’ — just like when you’re in a foreign country trying so hard to learn the language and some little local kid comes along and blurts out sentence after sentence after sentence in perfect fluency and you feel like the greatest idiot…

On top of learning this choreography and mastering these crazy to-come lifts, I have a new worry over my head: money. Ballroom dancing is getting really expensive. I mean, I want to practice practice practice until I’m as perfect as possible — because how are my routines possibly going to look good if I don’t? But that’s hard when I have to pay a lot of money for every 50-minute lesson with each of my two teachers. I’m going to practice on my own as much as I can, and kill myself with far less expensive ballet classes for overall dance technique, but I can’t really practice lifts very well on my own. And you can’t really practice much in ballroom alone — ballroom by definition takes two. At the studio last night, one of my fellow students, who competed in a local pro-am competition last weekend, was all upset because her husband came unglued over her I won’t say how many thousand dollar credit card bill last MONTH. Unfortunately, it is so believable to me that you could rack up a several thousand dollar bill in only one month on this kind of dancing. Gowns are around $1000 at least, competition entry fees well over a thousand, teacher fees in the hundreds, likewise studio fees, and the bizillions of private lessons you need to get yourself ready. .. it’s breathtaking, really. And this was in Brooklyn, so there weren’t even any transportation costs. I jokingly told her to tell him, “please, dear, it’s necessary to my human development,” but I felt like she’s really lucky to have a husband who can afford it in the first place! I certainly don’t; and am struggling to afford it myself as it is…

Anyway, to try to calm myself down, I went to see The Devil Wears Prada. Mad great wicked fun! Of course I sat in the raucous-with-laughter ‘gay man section’ so that might have (greatly) helped set the mood for my viewing… Very campy in a “Valley of the Dolls” sort of way and somewhat satirical like “Heathers” or “Clueless,” and the genius screenwriter both gave Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci some nastily cool lines and re-wrote the plot to make it sweeter and with more heart than the book. At one point, in explaining to protagonist Andy why Streep was really going out on such a limb to hire her — “the smart fat girl” — Tucci exclaims that size 4 is the new 2, 2 the new 0, and 6 (Andy’s size of course) the new 14! Very wickedly funny movie, and far better than the book.

On one last note, I want to bring attention to Doug Fox‘s new blog, Dance That Matters, which will deal with how dance informs and speaks to the compelling social issues of our time, such as global warming, genocide, and wrongful incarceration, and will log what dancers and dance companies are doing to help improve their communities. As someone with a keen interest in both social justice issues and dance, I am really hoping this takes off. Go Doug!