Latest news with #dancecommunity
Fox News
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
The Quiz #438 - Miss Susie Had a Steamboat
Think you can dance your way through trivia? Play. Share. Listen with choreographer and former Dancing with the Stars pro dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy. Israel vs. Iran
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Disney-themed workshop to offer dancing, games and crafting fun for kids
Young Disney fans are in for a treat next month. A Lilo & Stitch-themed workshop is heading to Motherwell and Baillieston, offering two days of dancing and creativity. Hosted by Motherwell Dance School Tap 2 Pointe, the summer workshop will run over two sessions. The first session will take place on July 21 to 22, from 9am to 3pm at Tap 2 Pointe's Motherwell Studio. The second session will be held at the Baillieston studio on July 23 to 24 from 9am to 3pm. Read more: Glasgow Science Centre launches 'extensive' summer programme - here's what's on These workshops are set to offer a full programme of dance, games, arts and crafts, friendship bracelet making, and the always-popular movie time — all with a Lilo & Stitch twist. Now in its ninth year, Tap 2 Pointe has become a staple of the local dance community, welcoming hundreds of dancers each week across its various classes and events. Those interested in taking part are encourage to message the dance company through their Facebook page or apply online at
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Ayodele Casel Links Tap to Her Hip-Hop Beginnings
Ayodele Casel knows how to pull viewers toward her when she's onstage. She's a magnet. 'There she is,' someone behind me whispered in excited awe as Casel casually stepped onto the stage of the Joyce Theater, dropping a backpack on the floor. Applause, the kind that often greets musicians, followed, which was correct: Casel makes music with her feet. 'What's up, y'all?' she said, flashing an irrepressible smile. With a feathery touch, Casel waved her hips and then caressed the floor with her feet as though strumming it. She is always pleasing to the ear and to the eye, but in 'Ayodele Casel: The Remix,' her latest evening of tap at the Joyce — a most impressive mood lifter — she has a new level of ease. She turns 50 next week, as she mentioned more than once, but she has never been more in her body than now. For all of its jubilance, 'The Remix' is a serious show, one that celebrates the intimacy of friendship and specifically artist friendships — here, among dancers and musicians. But it unspools with a casualness, too, mirroring Casel's mix of easygoing and grand. In 'The Remix,' directed and cocreated by Torya Beard, Casel shows that she can always be relied on to balance a light touch with heartfelt urgency. In this swift 70 minutes featuring her dances and those of others, she pays homage to a slice of time when she was finding her way. 'The Remix' is a trip back to the music, dance and soul of the 1990s, when Casel fell in love with tap and when it had a resurgence. During her early days, she practiced. And in those sessions, she was drawn to the music of the day, the music that she loved — the Fugees, Craig Mack, Nas. She experimented with finding, through tap, the groove and the swing in hip-hop. 'I wrote a poem, like the '90s,' Casel said in a nod to the poetry slams of the era while opening a notebook at the start of 'Q-Tap' (2025), a vivid introduction to her theme: 'I've got my backpack and everything.' The setting is laid-back, with the stage reimagined as something between a living room and a lounge, neither precious nor sleek. There are chairs and a sofa scattered along its sides; a television set has the title of the show drawn on its screen. There's even a piece, one of 13 numbers in the show, that leans into relaxation: Ryan K. Johnson's 'Sofa Vibes.' As she described her early days — rollerblading to Fazil's, the Times Square studio that shuttered in 2008 — she sang a few bars from Ahmad's 'Back in the Day,' which led into the story of how she found her path to dance, to her dance expression. 'Heavy D, Mary J., wanting to be a part of what I was hearing on the radio,' she said, 'but in my way.' As a 'Black and Puerto Rican kid raised on rhythm and rhyme,' she said, her dancing grew with her love of hip-hop, not despite it: 'It's a groove, it's a flow, sophisticated and bold.' She slipped in a lyric by the Notorious B.I.G.: 'If you don't know, now you know.' Throughout 'The Remix,' more of a living entity than a backward-looking retrospective, dancers mix and mingle with a poet, a freestyle artist and a pair of musicians along with Liberty Styles, a D.J. and dancer. Jared Alexander created the hip-hop-inflected score. As dancers cross the stage gliding in and out of formations, music references appear and disappear, giving the work the feel of a before times free-form radio station. As one piece slides into the next, bite-size dances build in complexity and elegance — Ginger Rogers was an early love, and that influence is present, too — to show Casel's lineage. For 'Push/Pull,' with choreography by Casel, John Manzari sings Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine' while Alexander, Naomi Funaki and Funmi Sofola cross the stage in airy unison. In 'Quicksand,' Quynn L. Johnson, its choreographer, starts by brushing her shoes in trails of sand. 'Little Things,' by Funaki and Caleb Teicher, is gentle and commanding, as Casel and Funaki dance with such lightness that it makes the floor seem like a cloud. In 'Unmuted,' Kate Louissaint delivers a rousing rendition of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,' considered the Black national anthem, as dancers build a percussive wall that starts quietly but grows to match her towering voice. It was a political statement, but a subtle one: 'If you don't know, now you know.' Casel's 'Audrey,' a 20-year-old work set to Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, is understated and chic — an ode to Audrey Hepburn's grace, with punctuated finger snaps and the smooth swirl of a wrist. This led to a stirring finale, 'Speak Your Name,' which showed off the entire cast, buoyed by the ever-smiling Casel, into a vessel of swinging, swaying bodies. This remix is more than a look at the past, it's a promise of a future.
CBS News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Square dancing club in Glenview celebrating 75 years of do-si-do
It's much harder than it looks, but there are several clubs in the Chicago area where you can learn square dancing. One of those clubs, Glenview Squares, is celebrating a major milestone. There are dozens of people on the dance floor at the Glenview Squares dinner dance, but they're organized and orderly. The group has been do-si-doing for 75 years. It started back in 1950, and there are about 100 members to date. "We're still here. I'm really proud of us," Janice Cha said. Cha handles publicity for the group. She's also danced with the Glenview Squares for over 20 years. "When the music is good, and the calls are challenging me, and when I'm with people I like, I'm in a zone and I can dance without stopping for like three hours," she said. "It's really a great feeling," Carolyn Lopez said Lopez is another Glenview Squares dancer. "It gets you away from other things in your life that could be problems for you." Cha explains how a square dance works. "You need four couples, they start in a square, they're all facing each other, and then the caller will begin to, you know, bow to your partner, bow to your corner, and then will give a sequence of calls that move you across the square, across the side, various places ..." And you can't just get on the dance floor, you have to take classes and learn 50 different calls just to start. Lopez and Cha said that builds teamwork, and teamwork builds friendships. For them, that's one of the best parts of square dancing. "The activity is great, being able to have those relationships is really good," Lopez said. "People just don't know how to connect anymore, and this is a really overlooked," Cha said. "I know square dancing sounds kinda yesteryear, kinda grandparents, but it's kinda really a best kept secret." The season just wrapped up, but several summer dances are scheduled to keep everyone moving. Square dancing isn't exclusively tied to country music. The dances feature all kinds of tunes.
