Artist of the day: Brandon Ballet
To answer your first question: Yes, there's a ballet company in the sprawling suburbia known as Brandon. But more importantly, the Brandon Ballet is finding unique ways to survive in an unconventional home base.
Incorporating yard sales, candle sales, bowling afternoons, special shopping discount deals at stores like Macy's as well as performances at local bookstores and civic centers, the Brandon Ballet is its own best public relations and advertising agency. It even hosted a gold night last month where members had their valuables appraised by local dealers.
Necessity is the mother of their invention, said Martha Oddo, the ballet's vice president of fundraising and marketing."It's all needs-based," she said. "We don't have an endowment so we raise all the funds ourselves to keep the ballet going."
The Brandon Ballet presents Cinderella at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Spoto High School Auditorium, 8538 Eagle Palm Drive, Riverview. It's presented in partnership with the Giving Hope Through Faith Foundation, a nonprofit group that helps families of children fighting cancer.
For more on the Brandon Ballet, click here for Kevin Brady's story.
Photo: Edmund D. Fountain, tbt* ... Read more
This weekend: Radiohead meets modern dance at the University of South Florida
We all know Thom Yorke can dance to Radiohead music -- just see the video for Lotus Flower, above. But what about actual dancers?
Choreographer Ben Munisteri gives his answer in Catalog, a dance to three Radiohead songs being performed as part of the University of South Florida's spring dance concert. According to USF, Catalog "makes use of a limited number of dance phrases, which are re-sequenced, re-metered, and re-cataloged so that they repeatedly create fresh, cohesive incarnations of texture and rhythm."
The program also includes student works by Olivia Baron-Clarke, whose One Heaven, One Earth is set to music of Dinah Washington and Max Richter; and Tyler Orcutt. Dances by faculty members Andee Scott, Paula Nunez and John Parks complete the performance.
Shows are 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at Theatre 1 on the Tampa campus. $8-$15. Click here for details. ... Read more
Artist of the day: Crunkcoco
Look: We can't pretend to understand exactly what's going on in the video above. All we know is it appears to be a spastic cover of Nicki Minaj's Super Bass, it was created by St. Petersburg's Courtney "Crunkcoco" Fraser, and it has racked up more than 4.5 million views on YouTube.
Fraser is a budding YouTube sensation, with more than 38,000 subscribers and 14.5 million views. Here he is dancing to Ciara in the middle of a class at Boca Ciega High School. Here he is going nuts to Minaj's Roman In Moscow. Here he is grooving to Lady Gaga's Born This Way.
So ... what does Crunkcoco do? He is, like many Internet sensations, simply a guy who's managed to figure out what makes him captivating. He combines weirdness, wrongness and outlandishness -- and, yes, some unique dance moves -- into one self-aware package. His persona is flamboyant unapologetic, as you can see in this interview. He's part Flavor Flav, part Tyler, the Creator and part Tay Zonday.
We will give him this, at least: His Nicki Minaj is surprisingly accurate. ... Read more
Artist of the day: Daniel Ulbricht
Daniel Ulbricht is the Billy Elliot of St. Petersburg. The unlikely ballet dancer practically grew up on stage at the Mahaffey Theater, where he performed The Nutcracker many times.
Now he’s a rising star with the New York City Ballet, but locals can see him perform the holiday classic once again — via live broadcast to movie theaters nationwide. (Look for him in the role of Candy Cane.)
Kelly Ripa will host the production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and take audiences backstage for interviews with principal dancers. ... Read more
Review / photos: Chris Brown dazzles at the 1-800-Ask-Gary Amphitheatre in Tampa
There were only 7,500 fans on hand for Chris Brown's concert Friday at Tampa's 1-800-Ask-Gary Amphitheatre. But the female fans in the audience were fervent and passionate enough that it seems they've forgiven him for the Rihanna incident.
Sean Daly was there to observe Brown's Michael Jackson-like dance skills, and he writes:
His 90-minute set was a frenzy of dance and harmless R&B hits, all performed on a mondo four-tiered stage that looked a cross between Tron (ooh, spacey) and Solid Gold (ooh, 1982 strip club-y). ... Brown was a human special effect from the start, gliding, floating, singing (or at least mouthing along to) Say It With Me and Wall to Wall all while wearing combat boots. I repeat: COMBAT BOOTS. Let's see Baryshnikov do that!
Click here for Sean's full Chris Brown review. And after the jump, get more of Octavio Jones' photos of Chris Brown in Tampa. ... Read more
Artist of the day: St. Petersburg City Ballet
Dancers in the area may have heard of the Florida West Ballet. But the name "St. Petersburg City Ballet" may not mean much.
But that'll change this year, when organizers re-launch the company this fall as a professional entity with a new, more ambitious focus.
Though Florida West has been teaching young dancers and holding performances in St. Petersburg for 30 years, instructor Michelle Starbuck hopes to transform it into a training center and professional company that explores more creative, modern forms of ballet.
"St. Petersburg needs to get its self-esteem back," she said. "There's that label that everything good comes from the major centers like New York City. I've found throughout years of travel that small villages have as much talent and raw material as New York."
Auditions for the St. Pete City Ballet were held over the weekend, but an additional round of auditions will be held from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday (8/20) at 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Street N, St. Petersburg. Click here for registration forms and details.
For more on the dance company, click here for Aubrey Whelan's story.
Photo: Melissa Lyttle, tbt*
... Read more
Artist of the day: Ricky Jaime
The Tampa Bay area is used to seeing some of its singers become famous on shows like American Idol -- think Michael Lynche, Syesha Mercado, Jessica Sierra and Melissa McGhee.
But a dancer? That's a new one.
Nevertheless, it's been a high-flying few weeks for Ricky Jaime, the 19-year-old dancer from Riverview who found nationwide fame as a finalist on the current season of So You Think You Can Dance? ... Read more
Lady Gaga coming to the St. Pete Times Forum
The wait is over. Two years after Lady Gaga performed at the Ritz Ybor, she's finally coming back to Tampa.
Yes, Lady Gaga has announced a few new North American tour dates for 2011, and Tampa is among them. She'll stop at the St. Pete Times Forum on April 16, according to her website. That gives you nearly seven months to stitch together a suit from sequins and meat. ... Read more
Tampa's secret music history: Was 'The Twist' created here?
Loyal Soundcheck readers might recall that a few months ago, the city of Largo tried (and failed) to set the Guinness World Record for most people doing the dance move known as The Twist in one place. That's the attempt, above. Click here to read about it.
Over the weekend, we learned the record attempt was appropriate -- because The Twist might just have roots in Tampa Bay.
None other than Tampa musician Ronny Elliott argues that it did, in a song titled (naturally) The Twist Came From Tampa. He says Hank Ballard, who wrote the song, and his band the Midnighters were performing it long before Chubby Checker. John Capouya makes the case for The Twist's origins in Tampa in this fascinating story about Tampa Bay's musical history. An excerpt:
In the late 1950s the Midnighters might have been playing the Cotton Club, the Apollo Ballroom, the Little Savoy or any of the other venues along Central Avenue, then the Harlem of Tampa. The liner notes to the compilation album 1960: Still Rockin' tell the same story: Ballard wrote the song "after seeing kids do the pelvis-swiveling maneuver in Tampa, Florida.'' Some say Ballard saw those twisters — it's usually girls — out on the street, stepping out of his hotel. Maybe it was the Jackson House on Zack Street where Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald and so many other black musicians and Negro League baseball players stayed, when white hotels were off-limits.
If you love good stories about Tampa's musical history, you gotta read this one. Check it out.
Photo: Brian Blanco, tbt*. ... Read more
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