Category Archives: Television

Dance, Dance!

So You Think You Can Dance?

It’s so awesome to see dance as a mainsteam form of entertainment. I suppose it’s always been that way in music videos, and as the music video generation grows up, it makes sense that it would somehow resurface in the form of family entertainment. There’s something incredible and magic about dancing, and maybe it’s just because I love dancing myself, but the most magical part is watching how the dancers transform when they’re doing what they love.

This season especially there is one particular girl, and several guys that are nothing spectacular just standing there, they all have their charms, but when they get out there dancing these skinny little boys and awkward young women just change and out there on the floor is a sensual sexy confident dancer that of course disappears again the moment the music stops. Heidi and Ivan in particular, but Ben and Benji as well. Benji especially cuz he’s such a goof every other moment. If you haven’t watched yet, try and catch it once. It’s a lot of fun, and they do all ranges of dancing, lots of hip hop and even krump, not just ballroom like Dancing With the Stars.

The Envelope, Please…

While we’re talking about dancing, those of you that know us know that both the kids picked up the dancing bug from me (which is one of the greatest joys of my life, being able to share that with them). This year they both took ballet exams in their respective grades with the Royal Academy of Dance and both passed with flying colours! There are 3 ways to pass – a simple pass – 40-54%, a pass with merit – 55-74%, and a pass with distinction – 75-100%.

Gryphon passed Grade 2 with merit (66) and Gwen passed Primary with distinction (83)!

And for their encore…

In April, not long after taking their exams, they also auditioned for the National Ballet School’s Junior Associates program. It’s not the full time professional program, which starts for children entering Grade 6 in the regular school system. It’s still a prestigious program, and would mean exposure to other children to who love dancing as much as they do – something especially important for Gryphon.

I was able to watch the audtions (which is probably the only reason I survived not knowing this whole time) so I had some idea of how they did. Gwen’s been a better technical dancer so far and did very well in her audition. Gryphon is just as good in other ways, and being a boy has an advantage there. He didn’t dance as well technically as I know he can, but he remembered all the set work and just really showed how much he loves dancing. So this whole time we were trying to guess who stood a better chance of getting in, and if we’d be lucky enough that they’d both be accepted.

Once again, they both did marvelously and they were both accepted!

Gwen was also accepted into the competitive track in her gymnastics club (which isn’t a surprise, she was invited to do it this past year, but couldn’t because of conflicts) and Gryphon is very excited to be doing a week long dance camp with another dance school this summer. Although I think his favorite part is going to be the family he’ll be staying with. He’ll be staying with another boy who is a student of the school, and they took to each other like glue when they met.

All in all it’s going to be a very expensive summer and next year, but I can’t think of a better way to spend our money.


Power Voting Should be a Mortal Sin

Ok, so I like the musical competition shows. I’d say it’s a guilty pleasure, but I really don’t feel guilty about it. I enjoy seeing the good and the bad, rooting for a favorite and finding out who ends up staying and going. I HATE power voting.

I understand getting behind someone from your community, even if they suck, but this isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a job interview. Winning these contests does not guarantee a successful career, it guarantees a shot at a career. Putting someone into the winner’s circle because they are from a particular province not only cheats more talented people out of the prize, it wastes the time and money invested by the sponsors and the record execs that have to put out an album that only 10, 000 people want, even though there were magically 2 million votes cast for said album.

People, please, just because you want your person to win really bad doesn’t mean you should vote 10, 000 times a night to try and make it happen. If you feel you have to vote all night to keep your person in the competition then you need to recognize that this is not the person that should win. Unless you are going to buy 10, 000 albums, t-shirts and concert tickets, DO NOT VOTE 10,000 times.

Vote for the number of albums you are willing to buy!

If you are going to go down to the record store and buy all their copies of your person’s album to inflate their album sales, by all means vote that many times. But if you’re just voting for the cute boy because nobody likes him, and you have no intention of buying his album, DON’T VOTE FOR HIM!

Contests like these are our opporunity to tell record companies what music we really want to hear, what artists we really want them spending their money on. For years we have complained that the music record companies put out suck and they only care about formulaic artists that follow the current fad. Surprisingly their response was to let us audition and choose someone we want to hear from, but they’re not going to keep doing it if we chose people and then don’t buy the damn albums.

Power voters: STOP FUCKING BLOWING IT!!

I will never forgive you for compelling me to power vote, myself. Fuck, can’t we all just vote ONCE instead of all of us having to sit on the phone for two hours to make sure our own votes carry the same weight?

I would be very happy if these shows went back to charging for votes. $5 is not an unreasonable down payment on an album. If $5 is not worth it to you to see your person through to the end, then you shouldn’t be voting. But it would be much nicer if we could all just vote once and go home.