Happy International Dance Day!

Friends! Today is International Dance Day, so I thought I would take the opportunity to wish you a happy one! 

I’m not dancing today because I seem to have done something to my left foot and it feels uncomfortable when I walk in shoes. In fact, I had to miss my tap class last night for this very reason. Maybe I overdid it in my Wednesday evening practise. But I hope you are able to spend some time celebrating dance today. I’ve been working my way through some online talks related to tap dance, such as this one, and this one. Oh, and this one.

But why is April 29th International Dance Day? Well, it was started in 1982 by the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute, for dance to be celebrated on the birthday of the creator of modern ballet, Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), particularly celebrating the fact that dance breaks down  barriers and brings people together under one common language… dance.

Enjoy the day!

Review: Tina The Musical

Two years ago I was supposed to see Tina The Musical for my birthday, and then the pandemic happened…but I finally got to go and see it last week!

I am a BIG Tina Turner fan and this musical was an AMAZING, high-energy telling of the story of Tina Turner’s rollercoaster life and career, beginning with her difficult childhood in Nutbush, Tennessee, and journeying through the beginnings of her singing career, her volatile relationship with Ike Turner and subsequent escape, her wildly successful career comeback and how she met her husband Erwin Bach. The show told the story through her most well-known songs, including hits River Deep Mountain High, Simply the Best, We Don’t Need Another Hero, Nutbush City Limits, Private Dancer and a personal favourite, Better be Good to Me.

On the day I saw the show, Tina was played by Chanel Haynes of gospel music trio Trinitee 5:7, and I was so impressed with how much she sounded like Tina! She had a very powerful voice and great Tina mannerisms. The show took us through all the emotions and even though we were all in tears by the interval, there was lots of humour, (particularly in the scenes with her Australian manager, Roger Davies) and the show ended with an explosive performance.

We were advised not to sing along during the show, but to leave it to the professionals and wait until the encore, where we could sing, dance and clap as much as we wanted to! (I heard that experiences were ruined for some by certain audience members singing along badly throughout – eek!)

The music was incredible, the singing was incredible, the dancing was HIGH ENERGY, the story was engrossing and I didn’t want it to end. I’m sad I didn’t get to see Tina Turner in concert when she was still touring and throwing it down, but this is the closest I’ll get and it did NOT disappoint!

Verdict: See it NOW!

 

Why I’ve Cancelled My Gym Membership

Sad news – my SO and I cancelled our gym membership at the retirement village! We’ve been members since November and made quite good use of the gym, swimming pool and sauna, and it gave us a boost in those dark winter months of working from home, but there were a few things that brought us to the decision to end the membership this month:

  • The gym room and swimming pool are very small. Any more than 4 people would be a squeeze. Now that covid restrictions are gone, it’s getting busier.
  • Although there is a booking system via an app, people seem to be ignoring this and turning up when they feel like it – not great in a small gym!
  • There’s always a shortage of towels and shower gel in the changing rooms in the evening – not a major thing, but when they’re provided as part of your membership, you don’t want to have to bring your own.
  • Following on from the lack of towels and shower gel, the staff don’t seem to be checking the changing rooms and poolside often enough, so nearly every time I’ve been, the rubbish bin is overflowing, someone’s left their bra on the dressing counter, there’s talcum powder all over the floor and there’s often a wet towel or two left on the recliners by the pool from earlier in the day.
  • The cost of living is rocketing here in the UK for various reasons and we could do with chopping unnecessary spends. We have our own equipment we can use for free in the garage and I still have a Rambert Home Studio subscription that I’m using to do Pilates, dance cardio, contemporary and ballet classes.
  • We’ve been very busy recently with church prep and other things, so we haven’t been able to get there much as we would have liked in recent weeks.
  • My workplace is asking us to return to working in the office at least 40% of the month (at some point soon), so I may try and go back to the university gym. It’s currently £10pm as the building renovations are still ongoing, but it’ll soon be reopening in the former sports centre and then I’ll probably do pay-as-you-go via the Hussle app. (Although I don’t miss commuting, I do miss the gym-Tuesday, tap class-Thursday lunchtime routine I was in.)
  • On a side note – I also cancelled my Spotify membership last month. I mainly used it to listen to the track for my tap dance class routine, various podcasts, and maybe a jazz mix for improvisation. BUT I wasn’t using it enough to justify the spend. If I do use Spotify now, I’ll have to live with the adverts and random shuffling! I’ve basically gone back to downloading the tracks for tap class as I used to, because it works out about £1-2 every 6 weeks or so, and I own the track and have a great collection of songs that work for practise. (I originally had a Spotify membership deal of 3 months for £9.99, but when that finished it flipped to the usual £9.99 per month and I just don’t think it’s worth it for me.)

Anyway, thanks for reading, and happy weekend! Any plans? As well as chores and getting out for some walks in the sun, I’ll be attending a tap history talk on Zoom this Sunday evening with Lisa La Touche, so I’ll be sure to make some notes and give you the lowdown in the next few weeks.

Review: Fatal Attraction

On Saturday afternoon I went to see Fatal Attraction on stage at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, known locally as ‘the Alex’. I actually got wind of the show being on after having seen a TV interview with a member of the cast. 

I’ve never seen the 1987 Oscar-nominated movie starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, so I had no expectations of the play. In case you don’t know, the story is of a supposedly happily married man who ends up having a one-night stand, but this one-night stand comes back to haunt him and starts to stalk him and his family, making his life very difficult…One particular incident that takes place in the story gave rise to the term ‘bunny boiler’.

The play starred Kym Marsh (Hear’Say, Coronation Street, The Syndicate) as Alex Forrest, along with Oliver Farnworth (Coronation Street) as Dan Gallagher and Susie Amy (Footballers’ Wives) as Beth Gallagher. The audience were on the edge of their seats the entire time, and the sense of foreboding was constantly hanging in the air. The staging was effective, with scenes set in various homes, Dan’s workplace and the bar where Dan and Alex meet. Kym Marsh was excellent as the desperate Alex and the British cast did a convincing job with their American accents!

The Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham

The ending to the play is different to the movie, but on reading around, I believe this was the intention of the original screenplay, and also it was the ending that actress Glenn Close would have preferred. But of course, Hollywood had other ideas. You get more of a sense that Alex has mental health issues, rather than her being framed as the ‘crazy stalker woman’, and with all of his lame excuses, we actually wanted Dan to face the consequences of his actions.

Fatal Attraction continues to tour the UK, with Susie Amy taking over as Alex Forrest and Louise Redknapp (Eternal, Cabaret, Strictly Come Dancing) joining the cast this week as Beth Gallagher.

Why I’m Not Attending TDFUK This Year

I’ve been going to Tap Dance Festival UK for a couple of years now, including the virtual-only event during the last 2 years of the coronavirus pandemic, and I absolutely love it. They always have an amazing international faculty of teachers and I always get HEAPS out of it. This year the festival is once again taking place online, but (very unlike me) I’ve decided not to take part this time. BUT WHY? 

  • I’m actually busy that weekend with a trip to Kew Gardens amongst other things, so I won’t be able to join live
  • I’ve got SO MANY tap and musicality workshop recordings to catch up on that I really don’t want to add even more to the list (you know how you can end up stacking up videos to catch up on, and never actually get around to it??)
  • Although the class recordings will be available for a month after the festival has taken place, last time I just didn’t manage to find the time to do them before they expired
  • I’m happy to wait until I can go to the physical event, which will hopefully return next year

I recently purchased the recordings of two really helpful TDFUK classes that I attended last year (with no expiry!), ‘Rudiments’ with Adele Joel and ‘Drills’ with Robin Passmore and I’m going to set aside some time this month to go through them…I promise!

The virtual Tap Dance Festival UK takes place 26th-27th February 2022 

My Highlights of 2021

Happy New Year! I do hope you had a good Christmas. Unfortunately my SO and I both had COVID-19! We’re both vaccinated and I’d just had my booster, but by then my SO was already ill and he then passed it on to me. Being vaccinated at least meant we weren’t seriously ill, but it was like a type of flu for about 5 or so days (headache, eye ache, body ache, sore throat, altered taste and smell, high temperature etc) followed by feeling very, very tired. Our next door neighbour got us some supplies and my family dropped off Christmas dinner and nibbles on Christmas Eve, which was MUCH APPRECIATED (although I had no appetite for a while).

Because we felt rubbish and couldn’t leave the house, we watched A LOT of Law and Order. We made a point of watching a carol concert from the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House’s Nutcracker online for all the Christmassy feels, and we also watched several movies…

My COVID Christmas Movies:

  • Back to the Future (1985)
  • Uncle Buck (1989)
  • Mrs Doubtfire (1993)
  • Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1994) 
  • Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)
  • Lady in the Van (2015)
  • The Fugitive (1993)
  • US Marshals (1998)
  • K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)

I had some actual Christmas movies, like Home Alone, lined up, but we haven’t got around to watching those yet. We did get to see family properly later on in the week after Christmas, including a lovely (yet windy!) walk along the beach at Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex.

 

Thinking about the craziness of 2021, I struggled to recall what stood out to me as highlights of the year, even though I know there were many. Here’s the list I came up with…

My Highlights of 2021:

I’m now having a think about my goals for 2022, but I’m not putting myself under any pressure right now. The main things on the list are a bookbinding course, improving my tap dancing, more writing… but I’ll come back to my 2022 goals in another post 🙂

What were your highlights of 2021? 

Show Me Jericho

Image: BBC Strictly Come Dancing

Hey! Hope you’re ok, hope you’re well? Sorry I’ve been MIA for a while. Things have been a little busy round here, and as you can see from my last post (and the photo above), I’ve also been engulfed in the world of Strictly Come Dancing – or should I say the World of AJ Odudu & Kai Widdrington? At the weekend, they performed an outstanding, champagne-quality Quickstep to Benny Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing, followed by a beautiful, sensual Rumba to Maria McKee’s Show Me Heaven. I mean, STUNNING! Anyway, it all comes to an end this weekend with the GRAND FINAL. Unfortunately, I’m hearing news of injury today, but whatever happens, they’re my WINNERS anyway! (Plus, we’re all really hoping they’re more than just good friends 🙂 )

In other news…

  • Tap classes finished last week for the Christmas holidays and I am determined to keep practising the routine we’ve been doing to the swing number Jericho by Hot Sugar Band while I have the space to work on it. I might also try to get back on the exercises I got from the Tap City tap festival this summer.
  • There was a talk by Tap Dance Research Network UK last week on the Whitman Sisters, which I had to miss because I had my class. I was happy to hear they would be sharing the recording with members for a limited time, so I set aside the afternoon to listen to/watch it…but they took it down early! I’ve sent them an email!
  • Here’s a helpful co-ordination exercise we did in one of our classes this month – I only recorded it on one side, but you keep switching sides:

Keep dancing! x

Strictly 2021

BBC Strictly Come Dancing

I do this every year – I say “Oh I’m not bothered about getting into Strictly Come Dancing this year”, and then I get completely engrossed and I’m watching the live show, the results show, all the weekday It Takes Two shows and I’m all over the social media! Well, this year my favourites are the stunning AJ Odudu & new pro dancer Kai – AMAZING chemistry and fantastic routines, especially their sizzling Argentine Tango, which I can’t stop watching, a banger of a Jive on week one and THEN on Saturday night they pulled off a killer Charleston. Yes, I’m obsessed! I definitely think John & Johannes and Rose & Giovanni will be joining them in the final –  it’s such high standard of competition this year!

Are you watching?

Back in the Gym!

I can’t believe how excited I am to be back in the gym!! If you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know that before the pandemic, I used to go to the university gym near my work every Tuesday and then to my tap class on a Thursday, and I found that worked quite well for me. I’m rarely in London anymore, still working from home, so my SO and I decided to try and find a local gym we could use. It wasn’t easy to find something nearby first of all, and then something that was affordable…but then we looked outside the box and found a great little gym (with swimming pool and sauna) in a retirement village – don’t laugh! The beauty of its location is that it is pretty deserted when we go in the evenings 🙂

I’ve had really bad nasal allergies and eczema on the tops of my feet on and off since the end of August, but since I’ve started working out more often and drinking more water, I feel like things are easing up quite a bit and I feel a lot better in myself. I don’t know why it’s so hard to make myself drink water when I’m working from home! Maybe because I’m moving around less – I was pretty good at staying hydrated in the office and refilling at the water machine quite regularly. Anyway, I’m keeping a large bottle of water by my desk every day to encourage myself to drink!