The News Review:
- Clean break: Surama Village Guyana
- Western dance forms popular with younger generation
- All sinning all dancing
- Va. Tech Victim Known for Enthusiasm
- La La La Human Steps’ Amjad impressive but repetitious
Clean break: Surama Village Guyana
guardian.co.uk – Apr 21, 2007
stay with the Surama tribe in the Pakaraima mountains. Surama is a traditional Amerindian village in the forest-covered Pakaraima mountains 300km south of the capital Georgetown. It’s the home of the Makushi tribe and though you might come across men going out to hunt with bows and arrows don’t expect an after-dinner tribal dance. The Surama people run the show here as part of a community-based tourism initiative with a tour operator based in Georgetown. There are four huts just outside the village which are basic but dry and cool. Guides take you on a tour of the village to watch the pounding of cassava and on dawn walks across the Rupununi savannah and up Surama mountain. Nearby is the 30m-high Iwokrama Canopy Walkway (.
Western dance forms popular with younger generation
Economic Times – Apr 21, 2007
If its easy imagine Pyaarkiya toh darna kya. The expressions are exquisite and the steps mesmerisingmaking India’s first colour reel a truly captivating experience. Fast forward tothe era of hip hop and salsa tango and belly dancing to the age of slick movesand movies like Dhoom2 and Krrish and its magic ? Hrithik Roshan singswhile doing cart wheels in Koi Mil Gaya and Preity Zinta watching in awe. rAbhay Deol and Minisha Lamba doing a tango in Honeymoon Travels. The newgeneration seems to have taken a fancy for salsa and hip hop. Thegrowing popularity of Bollywood?s song and dance routine seems to havegiven birth to a global industry ? industrialists outdoing each other inwooing stars to dance at weddings or the emergence of a new tribe of specialistwedding sangeet choreographers or the star brigade which takes off on worldtours or gyms which hire specialist DJs familiar with the latest Bollywood hitsand remixs night clubs with dedicated Bollywood theme nights or zillions ofBollywood dancing classes mushrooming across the globe from Australia toCanada. If the big screen moves to salsa can the small screen be farbehind… In our show we borrowed the music from Bollywood because theIndian audience won’t relate to salsa unless it’s a Hindi film song? saysHarsh Rohatgi GM (marketing and content) at STAR. With the TRP reportedlytouching eight and Rs 25-30 crore collections from each episode of Nach BaliyeRohatgi is sure going to be singing Bollywood tunes for a while. Songs can make or break a Hindi film movie’s fortunes. So who getsthe credit for a hit song? ?Songs are critical to a movie. There is asense of attitude of the character which comes out which has a strongimpact? says film-maker Rohan Sippy speaking of Abhishek Bachchan in hisBluffmaster. Sippy says it is critical for the director to work closely with thechoreographer. n the case of Bluffmaster director Farah Khan gives most of thecredit to Abhishek Bachchan.
All sinning all dancing
Telegraph.co.uk – Apr 21, 2007
“It looks like a movie – it’s fantastic! We shot it in the old disgusting caretaker’s flat over Whitechapel Library and it was just vile. Vile perhaps – and also supremely seedily Weill. Never one to shirk a challenge Tuckett – choreographer of such children’s dance favourites as The Wind in the Willows and The Canterville Ghost and a character dancer of comic brilliance – has now turned his attention to material more in the dark vein of his Soldier’s Tale from 2004: here Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “sung ballet” Seven Deadly Sins. The centrepiece of the Royal Ballet’s imminent “inter-war” triple bill this is a brave commission on the part of the company’s director Monica Mason. So much so in fact that even two of the greatest choreographers ever – first Balanchine then MacMillan – had a go and found it something of a banana skin. “I did put this to Monica” says Tuckett grinning… Although only “marking” much of the music her voice is instantly recognisable as the same one that helped her self-titled 2005 debut album – a serene but also passionate fusion of folk pop rock and country – attract critical praise like a 100-ton magnet. At once girlish womanly brittle rich unfailingly musical and beautifully phrased her voice seems to be lending itself easily to Weill’s rigorous decadence – despite a complete lack of classical training Wainwright might have been doing it for ages. “I can’t believe you just said that!” she says when we meet during a break. It’s been quite nerve-racking and being around people who do their art so masterfully is a little intimidating – I want to find something to bring to the production. I don’t know whether to focus on my steps or my singing but hopefully it’ll come together.
Va. Tech Victim Known for Enthusiasm
Washington Post – Apr 21, 2007
There she is in a carpet wrestling match plying her hair-dying skills on a friend modeling her Zelda costume for Halloween duct-taped to a window in an unauthorized only-at-Tech contest to see who could stick up there the longest. Another picture showing a sign on her dorm-room doors speaks of her focus and determination: “Do not be offended but I really need to work and I will not let anyone in. “President of the swing-dance club during high school she embraced tae kwon do in college with equal passion. She had earned her red belt and was intent on getting her black belt. “She wasn’t going to get it at what she called a just sort of a ‘black-belt factory’” said Susan. “She wanted to really know it and really be able to do it. “She was an accomplished violinist… Gore & Associates was in the bag she dyed the tips red again over spring break with mom’s help. Now her sorority sisters are dying their own hair tips _ “to honor the other side of Maxine” says her mother. Ever practical Max spent the March break at home despite her friends’ efforts to entice her on a cruise. She was eager to start apartment-hunting in Maryland and get in one last dental appointment while still on her parents’ insurance. ne day she was scheduled to go to an all-day music festival with friends; instead she went to her 13-year-old brother Anthony’s soccer game. When it came time to select a college Max immediately wanted Virginia Tech. Her parents made her at least apply to some bigger-name schools.
La La La Human Steps’ Amjad impressive but repetitious
Canada.com – Apr 21, 2007
ccasionally we get a break in this robotic onslaught; tiny stunningly precise Andrea Boardman trying to bring a desperate kind of passion to her pas de deux or Zofia Tujaka — the nearly six-foot-tall blond Amazon star of Amelia — in a dreamlike chaste dance with a male “double” also on pointe. However it’s Xuan Cheng brilliant but impassive who seems to embody the female ideal in this coldly lit universe. Lock’s four men spend much of the performance joined by the hands to their partners’ waists skillfully manoeuvring the women through the choreography’s lighting quick changes of spin direction and balance swinging them in sweeping arcs away from their bodies or up toward the ceiling. From time to time they engage in odd dangerous mating rituals of their own. Impressive as the dancing is it’s hard to gauge exactly what Lock is trying to get at with this homage… Lock’s four men spend much of the performance joined by the hands to their partners’ waists skillfully manoeuvring the women through the choreography’s lighting quick changes of spin direction and balance swinging them in sweeping arcs away from their bodies or up toward the ceiling. From time to time they engage in odd dangerous mating rituals of their own. Impressive as the dancing is it’s hard to gauge exactly what Lock is trying to get at with this homage. He means to turn Romantic archetypes on their head — the sexual “awakening” of the Sleeping Beauty and all that — but his approach is both repetitious and lacking in any fresh interpretive insight. Gavin Bryars’ musical reinvention of Tchaikovsky is more compelling and illuminating. Bryars’ genius is to score the music for two violas cello and piano. Even when the familiar tunes are performed verbatim the mere fact of shifting everything down both in pitch and colour casts everything in shadow and doubt.