Dec. 30th, 2006

livingdeb: (Default)
Today I watched the movie "Mad Hot Ballroom." It's a documentary about fifth graders who take a ten-week ballroom dance class at school and then compete with kids doing the same thing at other schools.

They learned five dances (want to guess?): merengue, foxtrot, tango, rumba, and club swing. The first thing that surprised me is that they learned a routine for each dance. Not only did everyone in the same school learn the same routine, but everyone in all the schools learned the same routine. It reminds me of when I was learning each letter of cursive alphabet without learning that the whole point is to connect the letters. I'm not sure these guys could do social ballroom dancing after the ten weeks.

Another thing that struck me is that virtually no one had ballroom dance shoes (I noticed only one person). At one of the schools, 97% of the kids were from families that were below the poverty level, so it makes sense. When they went to competition and dressed up, they had fancy shoes they'd perhaps never danced in before, which made me sad. But then I realized that the routines had no spinning. There weren't a lot of turns, and they were all either very gradual turns or otherwise possible to do in very sticky shoes. And since everyone was doing the same routine, the richer kids couldn't get an advantage by doing moves that are much easier with dance shoes. Awesome.

Another thing that struck me is that the kids were taught to look each other in the eye and smile while dancing. My instructor taught us to look over each other's shoulders; he says both ways are correct, but using his way you're less likely to line up your feet directly across from the other person's and thus less like to step on each other's feet.

I am very happy to not look at my partner, especially when I'm dancing with someone new or someone I suspect of sliminess. It would have been even worse in the fifth grade. But then one of the dancers said that having to look at her partner like that made her actually like him better. I'm thinking that after pretending you like the other person and acting like you're having fun, it starts to feel real.

At this age they still mostly hung with their own gender, though, even by the end of the movie. The competing couples would break up and run smiling to their same-gender friends for hugs.

I saw some moves I don't know, partly because I don't do much merengue and do virtually no club swing. But also there was an interesting tango move I've never learned.

The competition was kind of sad because dancing shouldn't be about winning. On the other hand, the possibility of winning seemed to inspire the kids more than just a straight dance class would have.

My main problem with what happened was the way the losers were treated. The thing with a competition is that by the end of it, most people are losers of some kind. The different teachers should have had some strategies in place. The best said they were proud of their kids and that their kids had done a good job, but they were crying at the same time. They themselves were just hoping their kids would win as much as their kids did.

Some of the kids said that just making the cut to be able to compete was an honor, and some kids said that they still had fun. But another big response was that the other people won because they were being judged on some things that they weren't doing. Also, some of the scores were very close. Most of the kids the filmmakers focussed on couldn't even understand how they could have lost. Because they did everything right. They did everything the way they were told. Only one person admitted that he could have done better or tried harder. No one seemed to notice that the winners were actually better at dancing the routines.

Overall, as with many documentaries, you're more likely to like it if you like documentaries and if you are curious about the subject matter, in this case ballroom dance and fifth-graders. Some documentaries are so good that you will get sucked in even if you think you have no interest in the subject matter. I don't think this is one of those. But then fifth-graders are pretty interesting.
livingdeb: (Default)
Not a very interesting day today.

Woke up at 10:00. R. was asleep so I left him a note about where I was going. (This is the only suspense of the entry, so enjoy it while you can.)

I drove to the Upper Crust to meet some people. It turns out it's closed the entire week between Christmas and New Years. Good for them. Sad for us.

Then went to get my car inspected. I had gone yesterday, but only had old insurance cards on me. So I'd driven home and looked for the current ones. I found my insurance papers, with the cards carefully removed. Where were they? After the inspection station was closed, I found the cards in a pile of papers. Now one is in my wallet and one is in the glove box.

On the way home from the inspection place yesterday it started pouring down rain. After driving home in that, I feel much better about my car. It never skidded and I had no problems braking.

Today my car passed inspection. It appears it was a close call in one area. The standard for hydrocarbons is 220 ppm, and the reading for "High Speed Emission Results RPM: 2608" is 53 but the reading for "Low Speed Emission Results RPM: 751" is 218. Next time my car's in the shop, I'll ask that related systems be checked out.

By now R. was hungry. We headed for La Madeleine but stopped instead at a new sushi and grill place (on Lamar across from Central Market--I forget what it's called). R. was very impressed; I wasn't so impressed. But then R. likes that kind of food. I thought they did the tempura best. Next time I think I'll try the tempura bananas. Officially they're considered dessert. But I'll add a side of rice, and that will be good, right? Since I'm not diabetic yet right?

Then I took a nap.

Then we watched the movie "The Name of the Rose." I'd read the book and enjoyed it once but didn't want to reread it. Experiencing the movie is much quicker, but my first impression was that the late Middle Ages is completely alien to me. I would not want to live there.

My favorite line is where someone tells our protagonist something like "Your worship of reason has blinded you to what is obvious to everyone else here." Exactly. That is the whole point of reason. It can help you find unobvious truths.

It's an exciting and scary murder mystery in which our protagonist becomes involved because he is visiting the place to participate in a very important religious debate. If you've heard about some of these very important debates, you'll know they make very little sense to us now. In this case they said question was whether Jesus was wearing his own clothes or borrowed clothes. The real question was whether the priests were supposed live in poverty. It was difficult to tell by reading the Bible. To some it was obvious that priests shouldn't have to live in poverty--what kind of craziness was that? To others it was equally obvious that priests shouldn't be living off the fat of the surrounding peasants, exacerbating their poverty.

It seems religion can only go so far in helping you figure out how to properly behave.

I won't go into the coughing. That seems to be the symptom of choice for this particular cold. I'm so tired of coughing.

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