Photo courtesy of www.ville-fayence.fr

20 years ago, I was a little ballerina. And there was an excellent (and very small) ballet school in Fayence. Our teacher, Jacqueline Lavielle, was a fine ballerina herself and was considered one of the finest teachers of the region. She taught us well. Gave us a strong foundation and a passion that most of our little group carried on as an adult (several of us became dance teachers, another danced in a company and others kept dancing for pleasure).

In 1987, I was 8 years old and we were photographed for the local news paper in honor of our success at the ballet exams of Monte-Carlo. Yep, in ballet, you take exams and dance in front of a jury to move up to the next level. Frightening! Jacqueline’s students pretty much always passed and had honorable mentions regularly (I did twice!).

I wish I had more photos of that time period, but I treasure this copy of the article. We were all so proud.

From left to right: Magali Escapin, Vanessa Moltenis, Alexandra Ducamp, Stephanie Soleil, Vanessa Cottone and Sadou Zeeghers.

Update: The photo doesn’t represent all of us in the group. Others not in the photo were Sarah Paiman, Magali Ghiglione, Severine Fromentin and Sandra Tiberi. If anyone out there remembers who else should be mentioned, please comment!

It’s high energy, precise, sexy, creative and did I say sexy? It’s ballroom. Now don’t you go imagine your grandpa and grandma style of couple dancing. This is smokin’! There are live musicians and singers which they integrate in the show intricately unlike most productions. So much fun!

They are currently performing at the Post Theatre in San Francisco through March 15th. You can get cheaper tickets here. And if you are somewhere else in the US or in the world, check out their tour dates.

They are a gift to our senses.

The first one was Planet B-Boy at the Lumiere movie Theater. Wanna see some spinnin’? Wanna see some freezin’? This documentary on Germany’s “Battle of the Year” is packed with amazing moves!
Gotta check it out for the little French kid and Grandma B-girl!… And of course the other mind bendingly good dancers!!

You can find the YouTube video of the full winning piece here. Check it out!!

On the complete opposite side, I went to see a ballet show hosted by (but not danced by) San Francisco Ballet. I didn’t know you could get last minute $10 standing tix for any SF Ballet show!! What a bargain!

The program included 3 world class guest companies: The National Ballet of Canada, New York City Ballet and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

Without going too deep into analysis, the Canadian company was very strong, but the choreography didn’t really grab me. NYC Ballet presented Balanchine’s super cute “Duo Concertant”. I liked it a lot.
But then, the Monte-Carlo dancers came on stage and completely made us forget about everybody else. Jean-Christophe Maillot’s choreography, paired with Karl Lagerfeld costumes and completely engaged dancers created pure magic.

(photo via Voice of Dance)

I read that this “Alto Canto” piece was 40 minutes long and honestly it felt like 15 or 20 minutes, which is soooo rare when you watch a dance show!

(photo via Voice of Dance)

We met a gay couple who was here to see the show for the 3rd time, just to experience the Monte-Carlo Ballet piece one more time. Now that’s impact!

Voice of Dance has a great article on this program.

And so I had the privilege to be Nrrrd Dncrrr #1.

It took a Saturday afternoon (probably more for the main characters) to shoot the whole thing. They dressed me up and did my makeup. I totally felt pampered! The whole crew and process was so fun!!

Nrrrd Dncrrr Stephanie.

MC Chris has opened an official video contest voting booth. Please, please, please, take a minute and vote for us!!! Our video is called “sexiestgeekalive”. (note: unclear how long we can vote…)
Update 3/4: voting is over and we didn’t win. Note: there wasn’t anything to win anyways and the picking process seemed random and all over the place, so whatev’.

On YouTube it’s already a total hit! It has 114,000 so far!!!
Update 3/4: 243,000 views on YouTube!! Now that’s winning something, right?
Update 3/10: 660,442 views!!!

Here’s the jem:

Hip Hop seems to be evolving (or going back) to a light, fun, narrative or conceptual direction. Very little dances were just dancing with formation changes and tricks. If formation changes and tricks there were, it was within a clear concept or idea that lead the whole piece. I could write and talk about that show all day long… but I’ll try to sum it up and tell you what and who stood out. Quite frankly, I can’t tell which is my favorite.

DS Players from San Jose

Man these guys are smooth! In their long tuxes, and old school style, they captivate and don’t let you go!

Over The Influence from Vancouver

They rocked the house! With their janitor concept, in working overalls, using brooms, rolling planks, handkerchiefs, they were light, funny, so refreshing. I didn’t want them to stop!

Mind Over Matter from San Francisco

If Allan Frias can do something, it’s sexy! Prison scene, with rolling wire fences brilliantly dividing up the stage using transparency. With girls dancing dominatrix style and boys hooking up (very graphically) at a bench press, this piece kept your jaw dropped and at the edge of your seat the whole time. I was a bit in shock of its R rated staging, but after all… why not! All of it was beautifully executed.

Funk Beyond Control (FBC) from San Francisco

I think they have the best dancing kids ever!!! Awesome concept portraying entertainment for a king and his royal surroundings. They used all sorts of styles including Belly Dancing. Their costumes were an ancient royal/hip hop mix. It totally worked and was a great way to manage a huge group of dancers. Loved it!

Mop Top from New York

OK. Check out this video:

Imagine this b-girl, in a Dorothee outfit, with red booty shorts doing the same thing. Yeah, she kicked ass! The rest of the group was very cool too, especially the tin man. It was the Wizzle to the Izzle!

Neopolitan from Oakland

Mix of Afro and Hip Hop. I’ve rarely seen such a clean dance going so fast with movements that can easily look mushy. I was hypnotized the whole time!

FootworKINGz from Chicago

So what do you think their forte is? That’s right, footwork, man! Their little feet went so fast that my eyeballs couldn’t keep up. The most impressive part? When all their little feet went crazy and in sync!! It’s like insane tap, but hip hop style. Man, amazing!

Can’t wait to see what’s in Program B!

The Bohemian newspaper did an article on Santa Rosa’s Dance Center emphasizing their non-competitiveness.

The Dance Center is the studio I used to teach at full time and seeing my former director Vicki in the center page of the Bohemian, brought back lots of happy memories and, well, felt a bit of nostalgia.
This studio is the biggest of its region and probably the biggest of most regions! I’ve always admired Vicki for her love for the art, and the ability to run such a studio for all these years!!! How do you do it? It takes some pretty darn solid dedication!… and patience with parents :)

Even though I’m really happy about how my life is “laid out” right now, I do miss teaching a little, coming up with choreographical concepts, being creative and feeling like I contribute to a younger person’s life in a positive way.

But I can’t complain! I have a very fulfilling job, that is at a higher level than I could ever imagine myself capable of handling, I get to dance in an awesome SF company, I get to travel and do cool stuff, and the best… I live with the man of my life. Believe me, my life is NOT boring!

So I guess it’s one of those moments when I look back at my life and say, man I lucky! I did pretty awesome things in the past and now I’m still doing awesome things, even if they have a different face.
Dance is definitely essential in some shape or form in my life. Creativity is too. So, even if I’m still on my teaching sabbatical, it doesn’t mean I’ll never go back to it. The crazy thing is that I think that I could do it all. I just need to be in the right mindset. I need a little more time.

Bravo Vicki for sticking around and enabling great instructors to share successfully this very weird and challenging passion that is dance!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the show, courtesy of Owen Donnelly and Sandy Lee.

(The team! …courtesy of Anna-Marie and a screenshot I took of her flickr stream)

More pictures to come!

• Wednesday night: Get to Salt Lake

Justin Zipcared me to SFO (so nice!) for my evening flight to Salt Lake. Unlike many of our trips together, things went really smoothly (flight on time, no fuel leaks, no extreme weather, no turbulence, even landed a bit early). A free shuttle brought me to the hotel and I slept from 1:30am to 11:30am…needed it!

• Thursday… all day rehearsals
  • Had an awesome brunch at the Oasis cafe in Salt Lake City.
  • Went to meet the Rose Wagner theater at 2pm. It’s such a beautiful venue and the staff was exceptional!
    We had a tech rehearsal until 6:30pm, which involves lots of standing around on stage, adjusting placements and going through notes. We did a few pieces full out to actually know where we need to go for the pieces, but not the whole thing.
  • 6:30-7:30p dinner…too much of it, at the brewery across the street.
  • 7:30-11pm… notes and full dress rehearsal. It was the first time we ran the whole show without stopping, in our costumes, on stage with lights. It went pretty well, but we all ate too much.
• Friday…
  • Awesome brunch at the Oasis Cafe again… yum!
  • 2-5pm Marking (not danced full out) dress rehearsal again. We were so beat we couldn’t dance right and we were trying to save some energy for our show at night!!!!
  • 5-6:30pm I squeezed a little hot tub time, woo! Perfect to relax the body and get it ready for some awesomeness in a few hours. Also snacked a little.
  • Night: SHOW! Butterflies in stomach, pretending it’s just a dress rehearsal, just with more people watching. It turned out to be great! Apart some some little glitches that only us would notice, the whole show went really well. The Salt Lake audience was much more silent than what we’re used to, but they ended up loving it and standing up at the end. And yes, tears were dropping down my cheeks during our bow. It’s such an accomplishment!!!
  • Post show: Hot tub session #2 and we got to see the DVD of the show we just performed (because our videographer was that awesome!) And of all surprises, we all thought we ROCKED! Result: dreams about the show and the video all-night-long-non-stop.

• Saturday… 2nd round
  • Lovely lunch downtown Salt Lake (I can’t remember what the name of the grill was).
  • Checked in the new room, where Justin and I would spend the night.
  • Move my stuff from old room to new room.
  • Grab the shuttle to the airport and meet Justin for his arrival. Happy moment!
  • We look out the airport windows, and it snows. Yes, it SNOWED!!!! It was -2 degrees Celsius (don’t ask me how much that was in Fahrenheit) which is COLD and unexpected!… but pretty ra.
  • We rented our spankin’ shinny blue Mustang and drove back to the hotel and then to the theater a bit after.
  • Oh my goodness… at that point I thought I forgot the whole show and that I would screw up everything. So, I went through the entire choreography to keep it fresh in my mind…
  • …turns out it went just fine. Our energy was great, we had lots more glitches, but the audience was much more lively this time, yey! :)
  • Post show… some beer bang drinking and lots of pizza and nachos. Just what a dancer needs after such long stress and effort.
• Today (Sunday): prepping for the adventures
  • Slept in…oh yeah!
  • Ventured to REI for last minute camping stuff (like a little stove, some pots,…) and got on the road direction Moab, baby!
  • It took us about 4 hours (or a bit less) to get there, driving through some seriously beautiful landscapes and experienced the sun setting on those red rocks. Beautiful!
  • By the way, we drove through Provo, the city where I was born. Not much there, didn’t even bother going to the hospital where it all happened, but it was cool to finally feel like I’ve seen what the surroundings of where I was brought to life were like. It also occurred to me that my parents, at the same age, pretty much, were on the same roads as us, and went to Moab and all. Interesting!
  • We get to Moab, with no hotel reservation and cruised around the town to figure out what our sleeping options are. It turns out there is a skydiving festival, event and all the hotels seem to be booked. Yikes! We attempt Motel 6, hoping for vacancy. No one’s at the front desk and 2 couples are waiting, and on the phone with local hotels to find a room. Right when one of the couple leaves, the clerk comes out and announces he’s got only 2 rooms left!!! Yipee, we grabbed the LAST room available, which had wi-fi (but is a smoking room, aka stinks,…we got a scented candle). We high-fived many times after that and butted our chests like college best buds :) So much fun!

So here we are in Moab, planning to visit and camp in the Arches National Park tomorrow. I’m so excited, as it’s such a titanesque work of geology and it’s so grandiose.

I don’t know how much internet connection we’ll get in the next few days, so updates may be rare. But know that we are having lots of fun and packing in life at our fullest.

Hurray for Loose Change giving us a reason to be out here, and hurray for vacation!