The News Review:
- Halliwell praises Cruz’s dance moves
- Posts tagged Dance War at TV Squad
- Symposium Seeks To Save Yiddish Dance
- My husband is not Shah Rukh Khan
- ‘Step Up’ same old song and dance
- Bachchan family bonding at Jodhaa Akbar premiere
- Willie Brown Well-Suited to Politics
Halliwell praises Cruz’s dance moves
RTE.ie – Feb 20, 2008
In her blog posted on the group’s official website Halliwell said: “Victoria’s son Cruz was a little star. “We all had our children up on stage tonight and Cruz started break dancing! How cool is that? It’s clearly in the family. ” Advertisement Halliwell also spoke about ending the current tour saying: “I feel a mixture of sadness and joy. “I know it’s time to come home yet I will miss everyone from the tour. I love New York so so much and I have had a blast here.
Posts tagged Dance War at TV Squad
TV Squad – Feb 20, 2008
At 8 ABC has a new two hour Dance War then a new October Road. NBC has a new Deal Or No Deal at 8 followed by the series premiere of My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad and a new Medium. FOX has new episodes of Prison Break (season finale) and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. PBS has a new Antiques Roadshow at 8 then a new American Experience. There’s a new Kyle XY at 8 then a new Wildfire.
Symposium Seeks To Save Yiddish Dance
Forward – Feb 20, 2008
The first-ever Yiddish Dance Symposium had both. The bulk of the symposium which was chaired by Alpert and by Jewish music scholar Walter Zev Feldman was taken up by such weighty topics as ?Defining Yiddish Dance ? Contexts Genres Gestures? and ?Interaction With Co-Territorial Dance. ? A group of some 80 dance ethnographers anthropologists and devotees of Jewish dance gathered at New York University on December 9 2007 to ponder the distinctive characteristics of Jewish dance consider avenues for future research and develop strategies for revitalizing what even its most ardent admirers admit is a nearly defunct art form. Though it certainly didn?t seem defunct later that evening. After eight hours of panel discussions the event?s organizers mercifully scheduled a tantshoyz or dance party at the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant on Second Avenue. With a trio of klezmer musicians providing accompaniment ? and a few ringers like professional dance leader Steve Weintraub providing real-time guidance ? a group of around 20 to 30 dancers was soon shuffling counter-clockwise in a classic freylekh or circle dance. After a brief break for food and drink during which the musicians serenaded individual tables and Alpert became chairborne he and Feldman engaged in a kind of dance-off slapping their heels stomping their feet and twirling their hands in intricate wavy gestures… After eight hours of panel discussions the event?s organizers mercifully scheduled a tantshoyz or dance party at the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant on Second Avenue. With a trio of klezmer musicians providing accompaniment ? and a few ringers like professional dance leader Steve Weintraub providing real-time guidance ? a group of around 20 to 30 dancers was soon shuffling counter-clockwise in a classic freylekh or circle dance. After a brief break for food and drink during which the musicians serenaded individual tables and Alpert became chairborne he and Feldman engaged in a kind of dance-off slapping their heels stomping their feet and twirling their hands in intricate wavy gestures. According to Feldman that split between simple communal dancing and virtuosic solo displays is typical of Yiddish dance also known as Ashkenazic dance. So too is a light erect body posture; an emphasis on upper as well as lower body movement ?from the feet to the tips of the fingers? (hence those hand gestures); a taste for improvisation and a corpus of specific moves many of them culled from the wider pool of Northern European dance gestures and assimilated into local Jewish styles from Bessarabia to Lithuania. Unfortunately remarkably little is actually known about the specifics of traditional Ashkenazic dance. According to Pete Rushefsky executive director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance which is the principal organization behind the Yiddish Dance Project of which the symposium is but one part there are relatively few surviving films of Eastern European Jewish dance and a ?complete dearth? of high-quality modern field recordings.
My husband is not Shah Rukh Khan
International Herald Tribune – Feb 20, 2008
I preferred the home viewings because that would usually include food as well and nothing improves a movie like food. It also gave us something to do as the spools were being loaded onto the projector or we were waiting for a film break to the spliced back together. In those days we felt like part of an exclusive group a chosen few who understood the nuances of Rubenesque actresses dancing around trees with their lovers or the unique emotions involved in bursting out into a heart-wrenching song just when the handsome young leading man died. Today the Bollywood-style Indian movie has become ubiquitous. You would expect these movies to be popular among the Indian expat population but it's more than that. Beginning during the Cold War Russia imported and enjoyed Hindi movies dubbed in Russian… Last year the Bollywood Dance Night at my daughter's international school in Delhi was predominantly attended by Scandinavian women who not only knew the songs but the steps as well. And when I went to Istanbul over the Christmas holidays and was walking through the Grand Bazaar one of the shopkeepers saw my husband and shouted out “Hey Shah Rukh Khan!” SRK may have been the only Indian the shopkeeper knew and he was desperate to sell that carpet but try telling that to my husband who now firmly believes that he and SRK are amazingly similar in appearance. Now Bollywood itself caters to audiences abroad. Most movies have some portion that is filmed outside of India. Switzerland and England were favorite places during the '70s and '80s; currently the United States and Australia are more popular locales.
‘Step Up’ same old song and dance
Massachusetts Daily Collegian – The Massachusetts Daily Collegian – Feb 20, 2008
“Step Up 2: The Streets” is proof that without any original thought expended on your behalf you too can make a $30 million box office hit – although it’s a bit harsh to have any expectations when a movie’s tagline is “It’s not where you’re from it’s where you’re at. “The cookie-cutter plot is used loosely as a means to lead up to the scenes of extravagant dancing composed of nothing the average movie-goer is unfamiliar with. The film follows a talented young female dancer named Andy (Briana Evigan) who leads the double life of a troubled teenager under the care of her deceased mother’s best friend by day and break dancing hooligan by night. Particularly comical is the movie’s first scene in which the film painfully tries to set up this forced mother-daughter relationship. The scene begins when Andy and her notorious dance crew the 410 decide to stage a highly-choreographed dance routine in a subway car which soon sets off a police chase. Upon seeing the highlights of this in the news her mother figure decides that these are the kind of people her dead friend would not want her daughter associating with. Andy defiantly protests with dialogue that is so banal it is hard to believe someone took the time to write the script.
Bachchan family bonding at Jodhaa Akbar premiere
Times Online – Feb 20, 2008
The almost four hour historical epic hasreceived critical and commercial success in India and abroad. It iscurrently in the UK box office Top 10. Is Ash worried that mainstreamaudiences may be put off by the length of Bollywood films? She tells me: “Welike the song and dance emotional drama and duration of our films. This maybe alien to some but global audiences will adapt to Bollywood as it is. ”Fans of the golden couple can look forward to seeing them sizzle on screenagain in Mani Ratnam’s next film. Looks like plans for a baby B has been puton indefinite hold!… Looking smart inblack trousers a grey tweed jacket and a black and white scarf the ‘KingKhan’ was obviously not in a shy mood when he later wowed the crowds bybreaking out into a song from his blockbuster Om Shanti Om. He did draw theline: he refused to break out into a jig. “My kids make fun of my dancing. Iwork very hard at it but I am not a good dancer. Hrithik Roshan and Govindaare better.
Willie Brown Well-Suited to Politics
NPR – Feb 20, 2008
He also notes that to be a successful politician a person must tolerate different views — some of which may prove to be better at building a consensus. Throughout his career Brown says that when he’s been in a position to select candidates for various positions he has put women and racial minorities first. “The only way to actively break that ceiling [faced by women and minorities] is to eagerly and aggressively and affirmatively push for those who have been blocked by that ceiling” he says. These priorities make the current race for the Democratic presidential nomination — between Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) — a particular dilemma for Brown who says he does not support either candidate. But it’s a dilemma that he characterizes as “delightful… I tell them “Now let’s get it straight. There’s gonna be everybody wanting to take a picture of me. And I may not sit at any one table. I may have to leave you at one table — I’ll introduce you to friends there and they’ll look after you. But you may not see me for another half an hour. And I may dance with fifteen people before I can get around to dancing with you. But I love to dance and we will eventually.