Gheorghasbord: Dance in Your Pants

Some of my favorite folks in the world of dance have been making moves lately, in ways both expected and not so much. 

Starting close to home, my wife and I had a pair of opportunities to see our kidlet dance live for the first time in nearly two years down in Richmond. VCUArts presented a student showcase in late October, which was the first time our daughter ever put her own choreography on stage. It was funky and a bit eerie and weird. Which is just how she wanted it. The event included a Q&A with each of the choreographers, and she got a laugh from her classmates when she said that she had a "unique movement style" and that she was seeking to create "ugly dances". Unconventional and quirky, just like her. 

A couple of weeks later, she danced in two different pieces as part of the school's Senior Showcase, which features senior class artists debuted their capstone works. Neither event was filmed, so we'll have to settle for this odd perspective of one of the rehearsals for a piece entitled 'Sacred Chaos' by Sarah Grace. Click through and you'll see it. My kid is the little one with a mullet wearing all white in the video. She got a lot of love from the crowd during a brief spotlight in the piece, which was dark and moody and insistent.

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Much farther afield, the adventures of our favorite choreographer have taken a very unique turn. We first met Jimmie Manners here at GTB when we celebrated his impact on my then 12 year-old. He's toured as a dancer with Jennifer Lopez, taught kids, and choreographed music videos. And now, in a twist he never saw coming, he's a member of the coaching staff for ION-Wheaton Ice Skating Academy (ION-WISA), teaching hip hop to world-class ice dancers.

He called to tell us about his new move over the summer, and we all thought he was punking us. Not so, as it turns out. In September 2020 the International Skating Union announced that street dance rhythms would be a required element of ice dance competitions for 2021-22. Several ice dance teams contacted our man Jimmie about working with them, and after he realized they were serious, he took on a new project. 

Jimmie and a couple of his teams just returned from Austria, where they competed in the Graz Ice Challenge. Here's video from a few weeks earlier, where Caroline Green and Michael Parsons finished third at the ISU CS Autumn Classic International 2021 in Pierrefonds Montreal, QC.

You can catch several signature Jimmie moves in the piece, including the concluding sequence. 

It is such a very cool thing seeing people create and bring something new into the world. When it's people you care about doing that, it warms one's soul right down to the ground.