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Now look here. I went to see this show called April Fools. OK so I was exhausted but I knew I could not miss this show. When you get to be my age, you don’t go to just any show, but this show it was tap dancing so I had to go see it, you know what I mean.
Well when I got there it was a Vaudeville, like a circus show, a carnival with one of those questionable Master of Ceremonies, you know what I mean. When you get to be my age, you’ve seen everything. I remember my grandfather took me to a tiny circus and he spent a very long time in a fortune teller’s tent. But that is another story.
So you see here. I was very happy to be there with the Vaudeville because they are kind of cartoon characters up there and of course you have to start with the juggler lady who jiggled real good, made me laugh so hard and she could juggle too.
All the old characters were there, that Maurice guy from France I think it was him, and Mickey from the early days, and Charlie with those inquisitive eyes, and shades of the guy with the big nose, and of course Sammie charmed us and made us stop yelling so loud for a minute or two.
Of course when you get to be my age you see those old singers and tappers sticking their heads around every corner. The guy sitting next to me is a real good tapper and he would call out those old names, maybe it was Bonnie or Honey or something.
But what a guy my age sees mostly is the angels dropping down in between and on top of some of these characters. So you see, these angels talk to me, right, and they say, “Don’t miss this life. Don’t miss a minute of it.” So well OK, I can’t go to sleep so I don’t miss a split second of this two hour April Fools show.
There was the lady pickpocket character and she was in love with Sammie, you could just tell. But I’ve got to say there were two characters that were very hard to play. The pretty girl was perfect but it is very hard to play the pretty girl. Even in real life it is very hard to play the pretty girl because you got to cover up so much hurt down there somewhere. You know what I mean, how do you play all the parts that are covered up down there?
The exception to that rule is when you hobble two beauties together and they tap dance together like you have never seen and well its like twins grinning beyond cute. So then you don’t have to have two dimensions, you just have to have cute and cute.
Well the other part that is hard to play is the Mama. Everyone knows that the Mother is always wrong, right? Never can do anything right for having somebody yell at her, that’s the Mama. Well, how do you play a cartoon character of that? Enough said on that.
Well I have to say that at my age I have to be grumpy about something so I do have one complaint. They let me and my wife in even at our age, and they kept us laughing until we cried, greasing every minute with million mile an hour tapping. And you know about tap dancing with all those quick stops and trick red lights. It’s hard on the heart. It’s like when you get ready to go through a door and the green light says go and then the door slams shut. Light says go, oops gotta stop. Light says go go go, whoa wait a minute. Then light really says go now go oh oh uh oh. Then finally light says yes yes now go oh go oh oh oh ahhhhh. Well the whole show was like that with more excitement that one heart can take.
And well back to my complaint, after all that, they didn’t provide any free stretcher service to get us out of the place. Now what do you think of that?
So what do I have to say about this April Fools show? Well, I have to ask you this. Do you want to shimmy back through every rip roaring Vaudeville act you have never seen? Do you want to tango through the back streets of Buenos Aires? Do you want to ride on top of the smoothest, gutsiest, the funniest, the most sentimental rhythms you have ever felt?
Well, if you do, what are you waiting for? Call them up, these Tapestry people and you tell them I told you to tell them, “I’ll be right over.” And you know with these Vaudeville types you can’t take no for an answer. You tell them what I told you. You tell them, “I’ll be right over.” Then you ask them in one of those rhetorical tones, “You do this Vaudeville thing every night, right?” You ask them that. And then you say, “Hold the curtain.” No don’t say that. You better say, “Hold me a seat.” They’ll understand what you mean.
Tapestry’s April Fools, 4/1/12, By Tim Hurst
ONE Chell Parkins
Open Points to Life
Beginning Pulsating Power
TWO Ellen Bartel
Center Points to Life
Wishers Intersect
THREE Alvin Rangel
Fin Points to Life
Yearning Union Tangential Tango
ONE Chell Parkins Points to Life
One dimensional bodies powered to life. Wake to it. Climb to it.
Call out to electrified alternating light for dimensionality, curve into it, live into it.
Call out where stillness presides, shaking habituates, where fingers intimate mysterious capacitors within themselves.
Call out to princess wailing morning stories from towers hidden in foggy bays, surprising all bodies with waves of blue and orange and green and purple and red.
Call out to the power of death and roaring all waters ending the thinness of dimensionality, interweaving every spectrum into the bodies light.
Call in the decisive moment of bubbling movement, limb and life forever.
TWO Ellen Bartel Points to Life
Metroline. Escalator line. One lies; One rise. Both scream a stationary line.
Trains and rains and birds ripple to washes of guitars and bells.
Personages skooch in doubles and singles. Personages pile upon personages without condiment. Wishers decline ladders; gapers pass doorways never waiting even for port’s fog horn.
The brilliance of not wishing pulsates life’s baseline. Singular man states foot, slaps chest, searches hip. Singular woman slips into ice until one person digests metroline screams into a personal melody, until one person’s body draws endless escalator lines into one hug, maybe two. Then one body deserves a spin by another and all personages can now enter a rise and fall of the cavernous breath of life.
TWO AGAIN
The roar stops. All doors open as an echo. I step in alongside the many.
Something about the Metro, the Underground, the A, the C, the L, all leaving only one lingering screech that drowns out a lone person’s song. Yes, there’s something about the sub-way to nothing extraordinary, to nothing connectable, to everyone leave-able.
My sadness resonates to the length of the subterranean cave, something like a long guitar line, neither untractable, nor subtractable, certainly not subtle, and definitely without a leaning toward hilarity. Yet when the moving platform jolts and I am still standing, life is imminently breathable.
THREE Alvin Rangel Points to Life
Man to man. Tango to the death. Flags fall. Man covers.
Spin a story of punctuated violin and high pitch surprise.
Yearning union, fingers embrace earth, grip scalp, seek infinite spectral caress.
Three Points to Life, UT Dance MFA, 03/09/12, By Tim Hurst
092111 Tim Hurst
A friend came to Movin’ Easy for tap shoes to begin tap dance at Tapestry Dance Academy in Austin. I said, “This will be a great opportunity for you to deal with all that confusion in your life.” I was speaking from experience since dance is my friend in this respect almost every day.
She asked me, “What do you mean?” I said, “Have you taken Tai Chi’.” “Yes.” Do you remember how it felt to shift slowly from one side of your body to the other?” “Kind of.”
“That’s the point. Tai Chi integrates the breath as you shift left side, right side. That seems subtle to us.
“Tap dancing requires clear commitment in moving from one side to the other. You shift from using one side of the brain, then the other. Plus you are sealing that commitment into the hard wired rhythmic part of the brain. Or at least you are getting into your psyche through a set of wiring used since the earliest humans.”
http://www.tapestry.org See them Sept 24 for an opportunity to implode all cells to awake the brain.
Encoded sound is the way we make the day go round. Each sentence we use is our lively rhythm or our sedated avoidance.
Scientists say we listen and our brains go click click. We have to listen and tap the sound to make our brains go click click and clack.
Now only our youngest ones remember that our brains require our bodies to recreate the musical intricacies of our delight.
http://www.balletaustin.org/ Stephen Mills musicaliy brings an extraordinary dimension to Mozart.
Children’s brains eat Mozart like candy. What are adults waiting for—a ballet to illustrate Mozart for our stalled out brains.
Cartoons won’t do. Only the deepest level of intricate movement and emotion can explode Mozart’s full delight into our senses. Only a Mozart ballet feast will integrate the playful melodies we take for granted, send rhythmic delight bouncing through our lethargic cells, and insist that we rearrange our thoughts to take courage once again.
Musicality in dance goes beyond the delight of hearing Mozart with Stephen Mills and Ballet Austin http://www.balletaustin.org/
Support alert for Tapestry taking tap to China, performing and teaching. Come see in Austin, Sept 24th http://www.tapestry.org Can’t come? Donate Now.
The Dance Zone is hosting a Pro Dance Prep Workshop and Team Training Camp on April 30th from 1-4pm taught by instructor and owner, Liz Walter.
You will learn style-specific routines from professional dance teams, kick lines, special pro team specific workout moves to get you in your best shape as well as tons of other tips and tricks to help you prepare for the upcoming audition season. Including how to get the judges attention, what the directors/judges for each of these teams is looking for ie: what to wear, how to do your makeup and hair, what technical skills to focus on most in your private lessons, why you should add cardio classes and whether or not this is really right for you.
Special guest and Dallas Cowboy’s Cheerleader, Alyssa Sarasani, will also be
attending and is eager to share her extensive knowledge about auditioning for professional dance teams. Sarasani began her dancing career in Austin by taking Walter’s UT Informal Street Jazz classes before The Dance Zone opened in 2003 and since then she has danced and cheered with the Ice Bats Batgirls Dance Team, Texas Wranglers, Dallas Stars, Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Cowboys. She will be an invaluable source of information regarding the audition process for these professional dance teams.
To RSVP ASAP for this event email liz@inthedancezone.com
Pre-registration is open and recommended.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=199546603412908
Tapestry Dance Company presents Are You Listening To Me? @ The Long Center Saturday April 9 @ 2pm and 8pm, Sunday April 10 @ 2pm, a spring celebration portraying the journey of life through the love of rhythm.
“This Tapestry production challenges the audience to not only be observers but to find themselves in the characters we are portraying as we take them on a rhythmic journey with tap and spoken word. This is not your average tap dance show!” –Brenna Kuhn
512-474-9846
For tickets www.thelongcenter.org
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