One afternoon in 1988, I stepped off a bus, only to tumble and fall onto the concrete, skinning my elbow and crying that wail that only a little kid can wail. I was your typical, pudgy little klutz. I fell down, tripped, stumbled, and walked into walls on a daily basis. As a solution, my mom put me into dance classes at age five. I took my last dance class at age twenty.
So when Fox Broadcasting Company asks me, “So You Think You Can Dance?”
I say, “Fuck yeah, I can.”
It’s the dance world’s American Idol. And I can dig it. All the catty judges, fake eye lashes, glitter, and gay boys? That takes me back to New York City Dance Alliance Conventions, learning a jazz combination to Journey’s Separate Ways by a queen named “Billy Angell.”*
August 17th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
what that catchy rhyme your flamboyant brittish dance teacher used to say? something about tucking your peaches? stiff hammy protruding fanny?
i may be making up stories from your childhood.
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August 17th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
It was “gracefully and grandly..” as we glided across the floor. Or, more accurately, “graaaaacefoolly and graaahhhhndly.”
When you stand at the barre, you have to squeeze your butt the entire time. One of my ballet teachers, Miss Heather, would call it, “tucking in your peaches.” Another teacher Mr. Brown would shout, “no bom-boms!”
In fact, now that I think of it, I have a t-shirt somewhere that says, “I survived Miss Heather’s Wild World of Ballet” and it has all her little crazy phrases on it. Like, “Don’t Kill Your Bunnies,” and “You’re so damn fat, you’ll never make it in the dance world, what the fuck to you think this is, ‘Fame’?”
Okay, maybe not that last one.
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