The year I DID see Book of Mormon

Yesterday, the stars aligned, and I was finally able to see the much ballyhooed Book of Mormon. I credit the victory to logical statistics over time and also the fact that it was 19 degrees yesterday. Although I was actually surprised that the lottery enterers numbers hadn't really dwindled and that there were already a large number of people standing in the standing room line (people usually wait there for something like 8 hours for the privilege of paying $20 to stand for the duration of the show). However luck prevailed, and they called my name for the second to last pair of tickets that were front row center.

I'm not really posting this as a review of the show because the show certainly doesn't need any more publicity to keep selling tickets. But just in case my readers are more swayed by my commentary than the New York Times, it was the funniest musical I've seen (followed closely by Avenue Q, fittingly as both shows share a composer). I will say that I'm kind of surprised that the show is as mainstream as it is because it definitely has some humor that toes the line of bad taste. Then again, it's probably not any worse than South Park in terms of offensiveness, and that show has also never really suffered for viewers.

We would have had a better camera, but frankly we didn't really think we would win tickets. Note how frozen I look.

In addition to being hilarious, the cast was all excellent. I can see why both Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad were nominated for Tonys. Josh Gad is particularly funny and apparently a correspondant on the Daily Show. I haven't been watching the Daily Show much ever since I discovered Law & Order was streaming on Netflix, but I recognized him from the episode of Party Down where they cater the College Young Republicans meeting. He's the treasurer who gets a war torn flag as a gift for Arnold Shwarteneger. Which is really neither here nor there except that Party Down is also really great, and I hear they're making a movie.

The lotto dude always opens the lotto by saying "Hasa diga, everybody!" and then reminding people that the lucky winners will find out what that means (I've been to the lottery enough times to know every one of his jokes). Having seen the show, I now know as promised and can only say: well played, lotto dude.

I'm posting the photo below because it seemed to oddly tie into the theme of this post as this group looks very much the costuming of the dancing Mormons.

Practicing MJ's dance moves in the small side chamber of St. Marks Church

This was from a strange performance I did with the rest of the Thriller dancers (from the Halloween parade) at a church for a memorial service. If that sounds odd, that someone would want zombies dancing at a memorial, I thought so initially too. However, after hearing from her loved ones' remembrances and seeing a video of her learning the dance for her birthday a few years ago, it actually seemed really fitting. We're sorry she never got the chance to dance in the parade with us. It was nice to see everyone out of their flesh wounds though--we cleaned up very nice to look like a proper choir (we were in the program as the "Joyful Sounds Choir" because we were intended to be a surprise flash mob). All told it was a very surreal and moving experience (the latter not frequently associated with MJ), and I was glad to be a part of it.

Hope everyone is having a good Martin Luther King Day! I'm spending mine warm and indoors while Dinah sits vigil by her empty food bowl and occasionally sends me death stares. I don't think she realizes that keeping her at a healthy weight is actually harder on me than it is on her. I will say I feel a little guilty enjoying this yogurt in front of her.

Zombies take Manhattan: Full Sequence

Last night was the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade where I and 99 other zombies danced our way along 6th Ave from Spring St to 16th. Today, naturally my back is sore from repeated stomping and leaning back to exaggerate my Thriller walk arms. It was a lot of fun though, and, as always, over all too quickly. Because the parade was shortened from 23rd street due to budget cuts for the second year in a row, at some point it was decided that we would skip the Vincent Price rap in our music and just do the dance nearly back-to-back several times in a row. Zombie bouncers provided water, but I was still concerned I might sweat off my carefully placed flesh wound.

Several zombie and MJ enthusiasts have posted the dance online, but it's not always easy to see me in any of them (by virtue of it being dark and because I assumed my rightful place in the back). This is the best one I've found so far. At :45, you can see me Thriller walking toward the camera. I'm in the black dress and red tights, toward the right half of the screen. Next year, I'll have to wear something a bit brighter to be more recognizable.

However, that video doesn't give much of a sense of my make-up which, thanks to the gory artistry of my friend Kim, was top notch, so I'm posting a few additional pictures.


Attractive, no? Who knew you could achieve such realistic flesh wounds using nothing but liquid latex and a few layers of single ply toilet paper?

Me with a few of my zombie cohorts. People kept taking pictures of us, and it's weird because as soon as someone puts a camera in your face, your instinct is to smile for the photo, quickly forgetting you are a member of the soul-less undead. At this point, we had finally mastered the art of staring vacantly at things.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see us last night! And a merry November 1st to all my readers!

UPDATE: Here are a couple more videos: here around :38 and in this one you can see our MJ.

UPDATE #2: Apparently we're huge in Japan. They even came to our practice to watch us rehearse. You can see me messing it up (this was our last practice and everyone came in a little bedraggled and hungover from Halloween parties), in a black and white striped shirt and gray yoga pants toward the beginning.

Just dance.

The truly faithful amongst my readership will remember the parade I Bollywood danced by through back in this blog's infancy. It's okay if you don't. At any rate, this annual event came around yet again this year, as annual events so often do.But this year I wasn't in it. I had considered joining the group that I performed the dance to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" with in last year's Halloween parade, but strangely every time they had a practice, I had something better to do. Sometimes it was a tin whistle class, other times my weekly bar trivia night, and many times it was just the fact that it's rained basically every day in the last three weeks of May and dancing in precipitation is not nearly as fun as Gene Kelly would have us believe.

However, while I was not up for the participation aspect, I certainly wanted to cheer on my former MJ stylin' brethren. Also, the day of the parade just happened to be the first time the sun had been out in six days, so it seemed a shame to stay indoors. But now it's back to raining, and so I'm back indoors and ready to share some photos from the day (none of which I took)!

These dancers had some of the best costumes and energy level in the parade. They made me want to be Bolivian in a way that few dance groups can.

There were a lot of kids in the parade who were incredibly enthusiastic about the experience (including a pair of 7-year-old salsa dancers who far surpass the salsa skill level I even aspire to), and then there were those who had clearly been dragged from their preferred childhood activities. Such as this little boy--the saddest little flag carrier in New York.

Pole dancing has become an acceptable fitness routine now, so why not be featured in the parade? I give this woman props for bravery both for hanging on a pole on top of a platform ridden by a bicycle through the streets as well as for having the guts to show quite so much of herself to parade spectators.

The official "Grand Marshal of the Dance Parade." I have no idea what she did to get this gig, but it seemed like a pretty easy job. She didn't even dance.

The unofficial Grand Marshal of the Dance Parade. I remember this guy from last year. You can't see it, but he has a decorated baby stroller he carries the dog in. Also, the bird on his head is a trained parrot, not a rogue pigeon.

Okay, that's one more Bolivian dancer for the road. They just make every photograph so effortlessly composed (and I can say that having supplied none of the effort in the composition of this photo).

You might have noticed there are no photos of Michael Jackson impersonators above. Alas, I was not the only Beat It dancer who had defected, and the practices were so sparsely attended that the group pulled out at the last second. I guess there are only so many times you can expect people to volunteer time to transform themselves into pop song gang members in a single calendar year. I hope everyone is back into fighting shape by Halloween though. I know I will be.

The pluck of the Irish

There are so many reasons to appreciate the month of March. The weather is finally starting to come around and be a bit more forgiving. Piles of trash snow are a thing of February. Crocuses are starting to poke up any place that isn't paved. More importantly, March is the month of St. Patrick's Day. You'd think it's just a day, but you would be incorrect. At least if you live in New York City.

Every card shop I go in (I have been in them a lot lately as I know a lot of March birthdays), has wiped the shelves clean of Valentines Cards and put up their St. Patrick's Day offerings. I didn't realize people sent St. Patrick's Day cards, as I myself am lucky enough to get out the Christmas ones. But they make wholes shelves of them, so surely somebody must be on their game. Either that or the greeting card companies just haven't figured out a way to pimp Lent yet.

In New York City, St. Patrick's Day kicks off two weekends before when everyone piles onto the PATH train and heads to Hoboken to get drunk in the day time. Much like the Times Square at Midnight thing, Hoboken at St. Patrick's Day is a tradition I'm willing to forgo. Both involve far too much waiting around in huge crowds of drunk people without proper bathroom receptacles. A few weeks later on the actual day itself, there is the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Apparently this parade is the oldest (the first one was marched 14 years before the Declaration of Indepdence) and longest parade in the world. I've never actually gone to it because since I've lived here St. Patrick's Day has fallen on a weekday. That and I'm not much for parades, so the long-ness of this one really wouldn't be a draw.

So why do I like St. Paddy's Day? So much so, in fact, that I spent the last one enjoying the greenery in Dublin? It isn't a particular affinity for green beer, but rather an irrepressible love of Irish music. I don't know if I've mentioned it on my blog before, but I've been learning the penny whistle for the last year or so at the Irish Arts Center. I'd love to learn the fiddle too, but alas those are more expensive and can't be dropped in one's purse for ease and portability.
Also appreciated is the opportunity to wear silly hats.

I also enjoy Irish dance a lot, but I realized a lot of what I enjoy about it is the music and the way it works with the music. There are so many patterns to Irish music that eventually you start to feel a familiarity when you hear a song, like you're remembering it from your childhood, when you've never actually heard it before. The other day I was practicing before class at the Center and a fiddle player came up and started playing along with me, just learning it by ear. Granted, that's probably because he's a more talented musician than I am, but still I credit the wonderful ease of Irish jigs and reels to be able to sound good in casual groups. He was even able to make me sound good.

I'm actually of German descent, but enjoy being mistaken for Irish sometimes. (It helps that I have curly, lightish hair, but really anyone who isn't blatantly Asian will get mistaken for Irish at the Irish Arts Center.) In the month of March, we all get the chance to be a little more Irish.

Michael Jackson-ing up 6th avenue

Last week I promised you an update on the Village Halloween parade and my not entirely pivotal part in it. The parade itself was a lot of fun, and definitely better than my previous attempts to try to watch it without participating. The only downside with dancing in the parade was that this was the week autumn weather finally came to New York. Last Wednesday it was an unseasonable 70 degrees, but come parade day it was more like 40. I figured that wouldn't be a problem because dancing would keep us warm. What I didn't take into account apparently was the 3 or so hours before the parade began that we would be standing on a very cold and windy Broome Street.

My group was performing two separate dances, both in tribute to talented pop icon Michael Jackson. The first was the dance to the "Beat It" video, complete with the fight scene that our fake Michael restores peace to. The second is the lesser known, and much more difficult, The Drill. I haven't found a video of us doing it online yet, but this is pretty much what we looked like, if a little less like Phillipine convicts. Also, there were less of us. Per the usual, I can't upload anything, but here's a link to the reasonable facsimile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKtdTJP_GUI

Our costumes were more suited for the Beat It part of the exhibition. We were divided into two rival gangs: those in leather and chains and those in torn jeans and bright colors. Naturally, I opted for Team Bright Colors because leather is expensive, and I already own torn jeans. Here I am looking as punk as is possible after just buying most of my outfit at H&M:
80s gang member or middle class poseur--you be the judge.

And here I am with a few members of my posse. In this one you can see that I put some red hair dye in my hair to add some more bright colors. It's a little more permanent than I thought, so I may be strawberry blond for a few days:

What a bunch of bad asses, am I right?

Now the moment you've all been waiting for: video footage of my first successful dance parade experience. As you can see, the videographers were slightly more interested in our awesome Michael Jackson impersonator, but you can totally see me trying to be thug in the background (the giant number 2 on my shirt does help). Here's the link: http://www.wpix.com/videobeta/77fc5a22-3a88-484e-bc20-0ba98dbd6983/Community/Parade-Costumes-Beat-It-Mob-Dance

Also, and this is totally unrelated to the dancing aspect of the parade, but who would have guessed that Chilean miner would have been the 'it' costume of 2010?

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween as well!

Update: Someone posted a video the us doing The Drill. You can't really see me, but trust me, I'm back there somewhere try to keep up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSR4IZioR8Q&feature=related

Dancing with a few other people

Yesterday, I participated in New York's annual International Dance Parade. The Bollywood dance class I've been taking for a couple of weeks was participating, and even though I barely knew the steps to the dance they would be performing in front of hundreds of people along Broadway, I decided to participate.

I had some trepidation about the parade because dancing and rhythm are two things that don't come particularly naturally to me. Also, the last "dance performance" I attempted had not gone well. It was at the end of term party for my Irish step dancing class a year ago. Of a group of 20 jig-happy classmates, only one other person showed up. None of my friends were able to come to watch, and after making small talk with middle-aged Irish people and getting my fill of soda bread, I'd been planning to slip out the back exit without performing. Unfortunately for me, the one other girl who showed up had brought with her a boyfriend with flowers and video camera in tow ready to record our rendition of the reel. There was no escaping. The reel would be performed. We decided to skip the dramatic two stepping entrance that with 20 people looked quite nice, but in our case would only serve to highlight the fact that there were only two of us. The only positive thing about only have two people was that the space we were allowed was actually quite small. So small that in doing the first side step I manged to kick the cane out from under an older woman who was sitting (thankfully) very close to the sidelines. Our entire performance ended up (according to other girl's boyfriend's digital camera) being about 47 seconds long. Easily 20 seconds of that is me profusely apologizing to the woman for kicking her cane and then trying to figure out how to regain the steps. I sometimes wonder if this video is on youtube somewhere.

At any rate, it seemed like a good time to face my fears and tackle public organized dancing yet again. I figured, despite not being confident in the steps, at least I could hide in the middle of a crowd of dancers. In the end, only five people showed up. One of them was the teacher of our class, the only person who really looked good doing the dance, who also happened to have a stress fracture in her foot that kept her from moving too much. We planned to do our choreographed moves to this song: http://www.bollyfm.net/bollyfm/mid/1396/tid/7816/song.html, which would play out of a reasonably powerful boom box. Other dance groups had more sophisticated sound systems, however, including the group with a truck full of speakers blasting Lady Gaga right behind us. The first half of the parade was spent trying to distance ourselves from the truck as much as possible so we could hear our music. By the end of the parade though, we had loosened up a lot, found our groove, essentially learned to co-exist with both the truck and the aggressive swing dance troop behind us, and the whole experience was a lot of fun.

I'm including some pictures of the dance parade for those who couldn't attend:
I'm not sure why I look bored here. Also, this picture make it look like the parade was sparsely attended, which I swear it wasn't! I only picked this picture because it was one of the, sadly, few in which I'm doing basically the same thing as the other people. For whatever reason, the belly dancers were more popular than we were.

My next goal is to take a class in whatever the hell this is.
Although I don't have a picture of them actually dancing, I can assure you that these guys removed my long-held prejudices about needing water in order to credibly perform synchronized swimming.