An Evening With Anne Polajenko: "Dancing With The Stars"

“DANCING WITH THE STARS”: THREE CHEERS FOR THE CHOREOGRAPHERS

    I happily admit to being hooked on “Dancing with the Stars”. All in all, it’s a happy show, entertaining, generally in good taste if you can overlook the over-the-top Bruno antics which threaten to turn this family show into an X-rated version of itself. However, ratings are soaring and the show deserves the credit for turning millions of viewers on to ballroom dance.

    It’s always a pleasure to watch the contestants evolve and my admiration goes out to the pros who must make their celebrity partner look good, even when they have two left feet.

Sometimes their task is easy, sometimes excruciatingly hard.  

    I must confess that most of the time I have no idea who the “celebrities” are. So I get to know them through their dancing. Some disappoint terribly but the majority are a pleasant surprise. I also confess to having a soft spot for the male contestants because, in addition to dancing, they have to partner. And that is no mean feat. By far the one who has impressed me the most with his partnering skills is J.R. Martinez. Karina, his pro partner, really took some chances by pushing J.R. to the limit last week. I don’t think I have ever seen so many intricate lifts successfully performed by a non – professional.

    Which brings me to the subject of the day: the choreography the pros must come up with week in, week out, no matter what the talent at their disposal. This has got to be the hardest part of all and totally goes unsung on the show. I really wish the choreography could be rewarded in some way. Maybe a separate trophy at the end of the show?

    The choreography can make or break a dance. Sometimes, the dancer is criticized for poor performance when, in reality, the choreographer was at fault. I will hastily add though that it is extremely difficult – sometimes impossible – to choreograph on someone who simply cannot move nor feel music. But, a professional has to make the best of bad circumstances and frankly, some do not. I get a little irritated when I see really poor choreography from someone who should know better. I have a feeling the judges have something to say about this too, in private away from the cameras. 

    On the other hand, there are those pros who never disappoint. Derek Hough to name one. He excels at the intense creativity needed to sustain a show like this. Think about it. You can have all the dancers, costumes, lighting and music you want. But if you don’t have the dance, you’ve got nothing. So three cheers for these guys who grind it out week after week! We love you!

      ---Anne Polajenko

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      We hope you all had a fantastic thanksgiving week and for the students out there cramming for exams and finishing final papers we wish you luck and hope you all finish this semester well. 

   Love from your humble blogger,    

Top 4 Dance Related TV Shows

         So far this week we have covered 4 shows that you should give a chance to, 4 shows that we all love but must recognize are at the same time obnoxious, and today keeping with the spirit of this week I will attempt to highlight the 4 best shows that have dancing as one of their main premises. One issue though that needs to be mentioned and addressed is the lack (meaning it's few and far between sometimes) of professional dance talent that is shown within these shows.

        Here is what I mean. Though I enjoy these shows and consider them to be a solid tool for growing the love of dance in America, we cannot ignore the fact that these shows do not host many professional dancers. That there is only one show that handles the "story" of a group of dancers, meaning only one show that has dance included in it that is not a "reality tv" show. I think it would not only make for a good show but also be well received if they came out with a show about a dancer that is trying to make it big, think Fame the tv show, or something like it. The amount of drama surrounding the growth of a dancer is sufficient to not only produce a solid show but to also capture the hearts of America. Just a thought, TV producers should get on that, there is money to be made, and people that want to be entertained.

So You Think You Can Dance

     The "American Idol" of dance, obviously well received by dancers and non-dancers alike. This show not only had a positive impact on the dance community, but also made dance "cool" within culture again, so much so that this show brought on a series of shows that for the most part function along the same paradigm. This first show changed the scene and for that we are eternally thankful, plus its good television.

Dancing With The Stars

    The mother of dance shows, this show came out into production about a month before "So You Think You Can Dance", and laid out the needed foundation for all other dance shows to be able to receive the recognition they deserve. How do you get America back into dancing? Simple, get celebrities to do it and the rest will follow. This is true of the dance industry in general when it comes to the masses. When did we have a boom in the dance industry? Well, put simply it was when we started having a plethora of musicals that included dancing round the 1950's, of course it started before that and went for a good while, but recently we have not had a ton of musicals that include dancing, thus why the creation of a TV show that hosted celebrities dancing was such a brilliant move. And an enjoyable one as well.

America's Best Dance Crew

      Ok ok, I know that there are other shows that I could put here, but this particular show has always caught my interest. The amount of talent shown within this particular show is overwhelming, one can only hope that possibly in the future they will create other show focusing on a specific dance style that follow the premise of this show. Think this show with the premise of having ballet, jazz or tap as being the soul focus, it would be brilliant. I think that this show could possibly bring about other more genre focused shows in the future, and that is something to be excited about.

Glee

    There is a significant importance to this show, this is the first successful TV show that hosts not only great music and dancing but also follows a story line. Including a story to a dance TV show is essential, this could mean that possibly we will have a TV show about a struggling dancer in the future. This show changed the game altogether. They choose to instead of doing a dance movie to create a television show that not only is entertaining but is also very heavy on dance sequences and singing, performing in general, its a bold and magical move. Because of the success of this show we now have high hopes for the future of dance within television. Plus it's a great show, with a solid cast handling true life issues, meaning it's a show that you must check out at some point if you are not already doing so.

     One can only look forward to the certain bright future of dance within the television industry, let us hope that it continues to be a good one.

Love from your humble blogger,

Top 4 Most Obnoxious Reality TV Shows

       Not all reality tv is obnoxious. Take American Idol for example, that's a great show, or Dancing With The Stars or even America's Got Talent. All of those are legit shows about people with talent wanting to make it big, and we get to experience a good journey along the way, almost feeling like we are part of everything that happens within the show. That is good television.

       The beginning of reality tv came from The Real World then Road Rules shortly followed, and they were into getting a group together to live together and perform takes and such. It had drama within it, but it was never over the top, never did you think "Wow, that's wretched", as in never did you have episode after episode of just rotten trash. What I mean by this is that we have a few show now days that are extremely popular but have crossed that line to the point that the line is no longer even in sight. They consists on every episode being around the crud of human life, how horrible or dramatic life could be, and really never come off of that funk. As in Real World you got some drama, it was never overpowering, there were never a series of events that occurred every episode that made you cringe (at least not in the first few seasons).

      Here are a few shows that I believe push the line, in fact they don't just push the line, they get on a flight and see how far over the line that can get. Don't take me wrong though, I've seen all of these shows, and sometimes I've enjoyed them myself, I know what the appeal is, but again, one must learn to critique everything in life, specially the things we approve of.

Jersey Shore

      I feel like this one is an obvious choice. Every episode you can count on: someone taking their shirt off, them getting drunk, hooking up with each other or other bi-standards around the cities they are at, there will be cursing, fighting, trash talking, and will portray women in a light of not only "non-intelligence" but also "sleaziness" that in the end of the day hurts the image of what it means to be a woman. Even when it comes to men as well, if we are to take this show as an example of how men and women ought to behave then honestly there is no hope left in the world. With all that said, I still find it funny, and sometimes witty, but it is still obnoxious.

Real Housewives

      I could pin point one of the many versions of this show as being the worst, but honestly they are all pushing the limit. This show makes me never want to get married. If this is the norm for marriage relationships then why should anyone ever want to get married? No wonder marriage is on a decline. I think there should be a warning logo in the beginning of the show saying something like *Warning: The wives in this show are the scum of the earth, by following their example you will also become a scum of the earth, do not attempt at own risk*. In fact I think that warning label should be on all these shows. *end rant*

Keeping Up With The Kardashians

     Take the "Real Housewives" and get them to breed with the "Situation" from Jersey Shore and you got the Kardashians. That's really all I can say about this show, it's by definition obnoxious. The warning label for this how would read *Warning: This is not representative of what a family should look like, we found the richest most messed up family we could find, so do not attempt at own risk*. Can you imagine the amount of damage one episode of this show does to a girl with low self-esteem? Think about it, hence why this show made it to the obnoxious list.

Survivor

       The new survivor "Redemption Island" is on it's way doing it's whole survivor thing, which can be a fun event over all. Survivor is a show that had big press then died and now is being reborn, but there is a distinct reason for this show being obnoxious, one very important fact that we as American's forget, and that comes off really offensive to everyone else. In the show Survivor we are sending Americans to live at places for a few months THAT PEOPLE ALREADY LIVE AT! we're talking there are full civilizations there starving, with little medicine and so forth, and instead of helping those people we go "Hey, you know what would be awesome? If we sent some Americans to try and live like those people! Man, I could never imagine living that way." The whole thing is obnoxious, can you imagine the guy that grew up his whole life on the harsh regions seeing that show and going "I survived 60 years of this, can I get a million dollars?", and of course he can't, cause he's not American and we care more for entertainment sometimes. Not all the time, don't take me wrong, we rock when it comes to helping other nations, but one should be able to understand where I'm coming from with this survivor thing, it's just a tad insensitive.

      And there you have it, the top four obnoxious shows that happen to the on the top 10 most popular shows in America. If you watch any of these shows that does not mean you are a terrible person, I watch some of these shows as well, chances are most people recognize the obnoxiousness within them and that's the entertainment level of the shows. I am concerned about the kids that don't know that these shows are obnoxious, and think that this is the norm, and trust, those kids exist. We need to spread the word that being smart about the things we approve is a must always, we must always take the time to analyze what we are watching and what kind of impact it's having in the world around us.

   Think about it,

  Love from your humble blogger,