Guest Appearance: The Genius of “So You Think You Can Dance”

I did not seriously become interested in “So You Think You Can Dance” until season 8. I know. I am a newcomer. I thought the show was silly, that it was just another “American Idol” riff off, but I was so wrong.

I remember, one day, when my mom and my sister were watching the show. They had previously recorded it and were trying to get caught up so they could actually watch the live show. They spent hours in the basement that day, and I could not help but be curious.

As I started watching the show, seeing both the fantastic dancers and the terrible auditions, seeing the unique choreography, costumes, hair, and make-up, I instantly knew that this was not an “American Idol” knock off.

In season 8, I fell in love with Melanie and Marko, just like the rest of the dedicated watchers of the show. In my opinion, they were, by far, the most phenomenal dancers. When they danced together, they constantly lit up the stage.

The first of their dances that truly amazed me was the statue dance. Anybody who even partially watched season 8 knows what I’m talking about. They danced to the song “Turn to Stone” by Ingrid Michaelson, and the whole thing was absolutely beautiful.

For starters, the white on Melanie’s and Marko’s face and body really made them look like statues, and it really added an amazing depth to the wonderful choreography. Because Melanie’s hair was so short, she looked just like one of those Greek statues, and the way the two of them pulled off “awakening” out of the stone and then turning back into stone was incredible. It was the best dance I ever saw on the show.

Another amazing dance with Melanie and Marko was the light bulb dance performed with the song “Skin and Bones” by David Roch. Though this one is not always counted among the greatest performances on the show, it will always be my very favorite.

The costumes and hairstyles were simple, even so far as to be called basic, but it provided for a more intense effect in the areas that mattered more: the choreography and the meaning of the dance. Their gray clothes signified their inner darkness, and, as Melanie was reaching for the light, Marko was pulling her back, keeping her from what she really wanted. And, in the end, they both remained in the darkness.

The piece was full of emotion and symbolism, and I was a little miffed that it did not receive more acclamation than I thought it deserved.

Anyway, now that season 9 is in full swing, you can expect to see more great dances, more great costumes, and more great hairstyles. Although the hype and excellence of season 8 will be a difficult shadow to come out of, I believe there are plenty of capable dancers and choreographers that can surely pull it off with finesse.

By Kassandra Konecny

Though Kassandra Konecny has only begun writing professionally about six months ago, she has been writing creatively for years. Recently, she has worked to become an expert at writing blogs for different beauty schools in Utah.

Tips: Connection in WCS

A few days ago, I stumbled across this dance tip by Two Step Tidewater. Since I also had the opportunity to go for one workshop with Melissa and Chuck about the connection, I want to share a few tips from that class as well.

What's important to note when having the connection is that the lead should not overlead and drag the follower along, and the followers should know how to control their movement. The basic rules still apply that the lead must step out and give a visual signal at count 2, and the follow must keep moving in the direction that they're lead until the lead stops them or redirects them. From the article, the follow has been likened to a car, and the lead is the driver; there should be only one lead at the first count ie: counts 1 & 3 only, and done with only one gentle push. This is an intermediate/advanced concept that I think shouldn't be applied to people who have yet to know how to travel back and fourth properly, so stick to the no autopiloting rules first.

In a previous blog post, I have talked about tension. The neutral position in the connection is when a tension is established, and that there's still enough rope to lead moves. Also, one should always feel like they're being pulled both upwards from the torso onwards and downwards to the legs as they dance, so the opposing movements will help place emphasis on your feet pressing to the floor. This connection helps establish the flowing movements in West Coast Swing.

For the more experienced dancers, a natural tendency for my classmates - perhaps to other dancers as well - who follows is to take the statement of "stay away from the lead to create tension" literally. This habit can help prevent injuries during social dancing with newer leads, as they too have a tendency to lead too strong. However, it gives a very heavy feeling that more experienced leads will have trouble adjusting to. I have experimented with leading, and when I dealt with "heavy" ladies, I found that my stamina would dwindle quickly. I'm sure the leads would have the same complains. So the followers should adjust themselves such that they post at a lighter tension before swinging back at counts & a 1.

Mastering the connection will help you learn the other elements of West Coast Swing a lot faster, but it still doesn't make the dance any less difficult. Don't be demotivated, though. Sometimes the concepts are introduced at a later stage so that you can still have fun dancing without worrying too much about how you should move around.

Bite-Sized Dance Stories: Romantic Novels Don't Translate Well In Real Life

My body trembled out of nervousness. This was a dance venue that I have never been to, and boy was it crowded. If there's anything that I learnt about salsa dancing in slots and tight spaces, this place was pushing me to the ultimate test.

Standing by the sidelines watching how each dancer was able to narrowly miss each other summoned cold sweat down my face. I didn't know anyone who was there and I couldn't spot any familiar faces from my dance school. These dancers also seemed to produce an aura that I wasn't familiar with, and it was intimidating to just watch how they could flaunt their style flawlessly. I felt awfully outclassed and started to think twice whether going alone was a good idea after all. But before I could do anything else, a stranger offered his hand to me. I accepted his offer for a dance out of courtesy, and had my toes crossed wishing myself good luck, or rather, break a leg.

The guy I was dancing to was a good-looking Latino. He struck up a conversation with me as we danced in our allotted slot on the dance floor. He asked me who I am, what I do, and other mundane questions. But when it was my turn to ask him, he didn't reveal much and cracked a few jokes along the way. Somehow, that piqued my curiousity, and found myself slightly attracted to this guy. Throughout the dance, he's been giving me gentle leads, and was also nice enough to apologise when he messed up a move.

As we continued talking and dancing, these positive thoughts about him made me feel like jelly on the inside. It was like going on a date. Consciously, I didn't know that it had been affecting my performance on the dance floor, until at one point, I tripped forward, and fell onto him. Luckily, he was able to sense my imbalance and caught me in time.

It was at that moment I realised that our bodies were pressed against each other. I looked up to see his impish smile and his dark brown eyes piercing into mine. In that moment, it seemed that time had frozen for a split second and it had been just the two of us getting more than the connection we have while partner dancing. And then, a realisation struck me: this is just like the romantic novels, in its heightened ecstatic glory of meeting your potential love of your life. In those instances it seemed that his face glowed more and his hair was gently swept by the wind from the air-con. It's too surreal, and I felt lightheaded from all these thoughts and possible responses I should do. When I was able to gather my thoughts, I did what I knew had to be the best solution to such a situation.


Run out of the dance floor shrieking like a banshee, never to return again.

Exciting Events: Singapore International Salsa Festival 2012

The next big Salsa event in Singapore in coming really soon! From 12-14 October, party it down at Downtown East at Pasir Ris Close to the hottest artistes and DJs like Santo Rico Dance Co., Terry and Cecile, Alberto and Mika, and other famous international acts. DJ Mauri, Javed, The Professor, and Jason would be there to spin some hot salsa hits to pump up the dance floor.

Even our local talents from Mosaic Dance and Attitude Dance Studio will be performing on the event, so that's something not to be missed.

Jitterbugs's student team Salsa Swingapore would also be performing at the event itself, so if you're going to SISF do say hi to them for me! Unfortunately I doubt I would go as the ticket prices are expensive and I am still on a strict budget. But I would definitely be seeing some of you at the Inter-Tertiary Salsa Competition socials.

You can check out more details at the SISF website for the pricing info and other juicy details. Mercury's messenger in training, Swinging Salsera, over and out!

Guest Appearance: My Wife Doesn’t Even Like My Dancing

There was a time when I thought I was a great salsa dancer. I used to frequent dance clubs with my wife before we were married, and from my own perspective; I thought I was a great dancer. Nobody ever told me any different.

After I married my wife, we still went to clubs on occasion just to dance and have fun together. Still, I thought I was pretty good. Whenever I danced at dull weddings or parties, people generally followed and eventually everyone was dancing and having a good time. I thought I was rhythmically blessed.

Eventually, I got into a conversation with co-worker from the Dominican Republic, who just so happened to be into salsa dancing. She laughed when I said I was a pretty decent salsa dancer. I was too embarrassed to start a dance with no music, and all alone, so I challenged her to call my wife and ask her. She accepted the challenge.

I was pretty excited to make the phone call since I was almost 100% positive she would respond in my favor. When she answered the phone, I asked her, almost jokingly:

“Hi dear, this girl is here making fun of me and telling me that there is no way I am a good salsa dancer.”

I should probably add at this point that I have never been formally taught in the art of salsa dancing. I just watched a few videos, had pretty nimble feet, and tried to mimic what I thought was quality salsa.
Anyway, I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, but my wife’s response verbatim was:

“Well, I would have to say, you have your own………………style?”

Any passers-by may have thought my co-worker had just won the lottery with her response, minus the maniacal laughter. I, on the other hand, was absolutely dumbfounded. Still, I cannot believe my wife let me tippy-toe around the dance floor, utilizing my own salsa style.

Later, I asked my wife what she meant by her definition of my dancing, and she said she never wanted to hurt my feelings, or have her opinion make me stop dancing. I guess I should be flattered that she had so much fun dancing with me, but there is still that image in the back of my mind of her snickering whenever she envisioned me doing whatever it was I did when I thought I was dancing.

What I learned from this experience can easily be broken down to a few items:

• Never assume you are a good salsa dancer without proper training and a trusted opinion.
• If you aren’t facing certain humiliation, your wife cannot be considered a trusted opinion.
• If you are facing certain humiliation, your wife will not only tell the truth, but launch into a myriad of embarrassing stories causing irreparable damage.
• Lastly, you can’t stop a heart that pumps a salsa beat from attempting a salsa dance!

Bart Vale is a writer for Sports Mall who enjoys writing about personal experiences to enrich others’ lives. Most of his leisure time is spent at this Salt Lake Swim and Tennis Club to stay in shape. He leaves the salsa dancing for when he is home alone, but is still quite the dancer in his mind.

5 Dance Dares To Try Before You Die

**I'm going to make an important disclaimer here. I am not responsible or any injuries that occur on the dance floor because of you attempting these little stunts. Use dares with caution.

1. Swap your roles.
You heard me. Leads will follow, and follows will lead. This is going to screw up both you and your partner's coordination badly, like how the leads are supposed to step with the left foot first for both salsa and West Coast Swing, whereas the follows have to step with their right foot first. Let's not forget that leads have to be the one holding the weight of the follower's hands, and that anything wrong that happens is the lead's fault. So girls, if you're really thinking about doing this dare first, I respect your imaginary balls, now panic and run! Either way, it'll help you respect the other party's role in making the dance look good.

2. Dance blindly.
I would take that phrase literally. Blindfold yourself, or at most squeeze your eyes shut and don't peek. Let the feel of your partner guide you through the dark abyss that is blindness. Pay special attention to the tug, the cushioning, the spins he guides you to, and note every signal you get from your arms properly. Be sure not to auto-pilot...or crash into any object or person for that matter.

3. Be a major chatterbox.
It can be a very distracting thing. Mutter a tongue twister, keep talking about your day. We'll see how much focus can the lead or follow have in a dance while having external distractions such as an annoying voice. It'll be hilarious to see the screw-ups!

4. Get dizzy.
Before a dance, turn on the spot 7 times (without spotting!) And then dance like you've downed 15 shots of booze. All the better for you to move around and adjust to your environment when you realise that your slot is really tiny at the dance floor.

5. Lose a limb
Whether it is by holding a crutch as you dance, or using only one hand to lead, this would help you appreciate the fact that you have all four limbs to dance and express yourself with. I know there are some people who can lead with one hand throughout a dance, but let's see if the follows could do the same!

Reflections: Entries On Socials archive 13-18

The Entries on Socials series have been discontinued. I'm archiving them here for future references.

14th August
So I decided to check out Mosaic's WCS social dance floor (before university work starts to pile in) just to see how different it is than Jitterbugs's scene. Apparently the same people are there (with the exception of some other people who take classes at Jitters)

I found out one of the primary reasons why my knees feel like jelly everytime I'm done with socials - my centre of gravity is too low. So I took Zee's advice and brought it up to the core instead of below it, and I felt a lot better, looked a lot better, and had more stamina.

However, I'm still having a hard time juggling two seemingly contradicting rules in West Coast Swing, that is the travel a lot rule with the take small steps rule. I'll try to figure this out with time.

Acronym of the day: NTU WCS CCA FTW. I am so doing this organising thing.

Update in 2013: I decided to take on a dance scholarship rather than organise a west coast swing club in my university...I wonder how different will my dancing life be then?

17th August
I got really tired on the second half of my socials and I have no idea how. It came like a cloud of lethargy hitting me hard on the face and suddenly I was going off beat in WCS more often than I usually do.

However, in the first half (meaning the salsa half), I felt fine. But I'm beginning to see that my salsa is subpar compared to my west coast swing. I can still follow, but I think I've shied away with styling and became less daring since my shines vocabulary is still limited. I have to buck up somehow, but I am seeing myself enjoy west coast swing a lot better nowadays. Unless my new salsawesome 3 classes kicks my butt and go DO THIS COMBO AND THAT COMBO AND PUT IT TOGETHER YOU GET SOMETHING AWESOME. Or that I'll need to watch more salsa videos. Or stuff. Idk.

One memorable quote from yesterday coming out from a stranger to Zee (aka Mosaic Dance's director) : "How good are you?" (in the context that she was completely new to the scene. She had no idea what was coming.)

25th August
You know you had an eventful social dance night...when you had to sustain multiple leg injuries (aka getting stepped on), having your salsa teacher scream "KING OF THE WORLD!" out of the blue as he lead the titanic in class before socials, and getting cut in to go for a dance while you're trying to lead the whip on your girl friend. Ahh, it was fun for me last night.

I also found out one of the primary reasons why I always take big steps in both partner dances was because I don't clip my inner thighs together (I guess this is where the duck walk comes in) and I still have the bad habit of turning on my heels when I lose balance (mainly because WCS heels have a bigger surface area)

Aside from my faults, I finally figured out how the touch and go New York prep double turn works now! This is how the lead gets you to switch to left over right crossed handhold to lead into the titanic. I may want to elaborate more on the technique soon, but right now I want to catch up with my beauty sleep. Till then!

1st September
Today's socials had more people in it, maybe it's due to Melissa Rutz and Chuck Brown being there to party it up. I didn't have my chance to dance with Chuck though…

I feel like I'm hitting a plateau in my technique nowadays. Hopefully by going to Melissa and Chuck's workshop I can better myself in West Coast Swing. As for salsa, I'm beginning to lose my interest in it, but hopefully it's something temporary, it's still a fun dance!

8th September
It's fun to be the lead once you grasp the concepts down for WCS. The only pain is that I gotta know how to balance and root myself down so that I can redirect the follow better in the whip.

I've also got my salsa game back on! I feel like I can follow better now, but I still have to stop taking such big steps when dancing. The weird thing is that I find that the steps I take in west coast swing feels ideal, yet in salsa they feel too big. I wonder why?

16th September
I now realise what is it I'm doing wrong with the whip. I'm not squaring out during 3 & a 4, and not whipping the follower during 5 6. I shall get to a tutorial on the whip soon.

Anyway, doing salsa 3 moves on socials have been fun. Observing the tense look of the leads while I try to execute what was learnt in class - it's quite like doing choreographed partner work. If your guy fails, you have to make up for the mistake and still make him look like he's doing the move right. Along with that, I realised that I haven't been using my salsa heels for a long time, so my calves have been hurting since two days ago.

Moreover, I'm thinking about refining my dance technique further and joining the DAP programme, but I'm not sure how that would affect my studies. I don't want it to be like last time when I got into the salsa team and set my expectations up high, only to turn the offer down later because my parents don't agree to it...

Guest Appearance: A Lid For Every Pot

Michelle loves dancing.  It’s fun and she loves being part of something that makes her feel so alive!  She always gets a thrill when she first walks in and sees the dance floor.  The only problem was she was starting to have a hard time getting anyone to dance with her.  Darryl wouldn’t dance with her anymore and she didn’t understand why, his face seemed to be healing nicely.  Sean won’t even look at her, as if a black eye is any reason to avoid eye contact.  It looks like Dale is still wearing the cast on his foot, guess she won’t be asking him to dance.  It’s hard to believe that he was hurt that badly, she only weighs about 100 pounds.  Felix is only limping a little; maybe he isn’t mad at her anymore.

Maybe she needs to be honest with herself and face the fact that she just isn’t a very good dancer.  It just doesn’t make sense to her.  Sure, when she dances she likes swinging her hand outwards for every turn that is lead, popping her elbow as a form of styling in close hold and when it comes to the shines she won't hesitate to kick her leg out to accentuate her height.  Is it her fault if someone ends up getting hurt?  Of course, people are a little put off when she hits them in the face, kicks them, or steps on their feet, but there is always a chance that someone is going to get hurt, right?  I mean, isn’t that part of the excitement?  Maybe not, since no one seemed to want to dance with her.

Although it was a little disheartening to see the injuries of her past partners, and yes, she had to admit, nearby dancers were sometimes injured when she tried a particularly bold move, she refused to stop dancing.  She just needed to find a new partner, someone who didn’t know her.  She hated to think about it, but maybe she needed to look for a new venue.  Taking a final look around before she left, she noticed someone that she didn’t recognize, standing alone.  She took a chance and went over to introduce herself. 

His name was Nicholas, and he said he usually went to a other places to dance but had decided it was time to move on.  She asked him how he liked it so far, and he said he felt comfortable here, it looked really familiar with all of the injured people.  Quickly changing the subject, Michelle asked him why he wasn’t dancing.  He said that he wasn’t sure if he even should be dancing and Michelle realized that she had been having the same thought.  After pressing him for a while, he finally admitted that he was clumsy and was always tripping his partners and injuring them.  The shocked look on his face when Michelle burst out laughing made her admit to him her similar problem.  After sharing a good laugh they looked at each other and then at the dance floor.  With a mutual shrug they got up and headed to battle, I mean, to dance.

How do you think their first dance went?

Jim Liston is a guest blogger whose interests include playing insane fast bluegrass on his mandolin, reliving his childhood by collecting Beatles memorabilia, and reading e-books on his Kindle.  Visit him at http://jimsgotweb.com

Exciting Events: Inter-Tertiary Salsa Competition

Ladies and gentlemen, NTU presents to you the Inter-Tertiary Salsa competition 2012! The theme this year will be Sapphire Masquerade, so be sure to dress with flair and carry an air of mystery. Masks will be provided on the day itself, but you may bring your own to add to the mystique.

When: 25th August, 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm
Where: YMCA International House, 1 Orchard Road, Singapore
Price: $15 for students, $20 for public.
Contact Chloe of En Motion Dance Studio on FB for more info on how to buy the tickets. Please provide your name, mobile number and amount of tickets you would like to buy in your message.

This competition has brought about fierce competition between skilled salseros and salseras at tertiary school level, their choreographies are not to be missed! Along with that, there will be DJs spinning the hottest, spiciest salsa tunes to social dance into the night. Refreshing drinks will also be served.

I'll be going for the event itself, but I doubt that in such a short timespan I'll be able to find a partner and train enough to be at a competitive level. Either way, I'll see you there!

Trite Trivia: TWCSRadio Tricks

While browsing around tweets on west coast swing, I came across a trick that may intrigue you guys. Do anyone of you want more music to practice with instead of hearing your same old playlist over and over again? Well, with TWCSradio.com, your problems are solved. All you need is just a laptop and a good wifi and you're all set.

But for those who depend on the iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Android, there are other methods to accessing the radio.

For iPod, iPhone & iPad:

1. Download SHOUTcast Radio - AOL Inc.
2. Go to the stations tab
3. Search for "TWCSradio" (all in one word)
4. Press play

For Android:

1. Download Winamp for Android
2. Go to the shoutcast tab
3. Search for "TWCSradio" 
4. Press play

And you're all set to hearing a different mix of songs on your mobile now! While you're at it, you can also play around with the search tool and see if there are salsa or latin stations as well. It can help salseros and salseras find new music too.