Michigan 2015 - An Update, Already?
I'm still here, in case you were wondering.
I'm not dead yet either, although members of my family might disagree.
I've just been busy. With other things besides writing, like, for instance, not-writing.
Just joking. I haven't been busy at all. I've been lying on the couch.
We did attend Michigan, however! Fun! More on that in a minute.
Jack and Jill O'Rama happening as I write this ...
Liberty in two weeks! I'm planning on suddenly becoming productive and writing all about it.
And the weekend after that - Fourth of July - I am going, for the first year evah, to Wild Wild Westie!
From all the buzz about this event I'm thinking this is going to be a very fun, very funny, very cooool weekend. To be expected, because fun, funny, cool people are the Event Directors: Tracy Wang, CJ Caraway, and Jay Tsai. With these three making important decisions it's guaranteed to be interesting.
We love this event. We love Doug Rousar events. They feel like Doug Rousar. They're funny, artistic, homey, geeky, street-smart, well-run, polite, outrageous, respectful, ethical, hip, humble, and real. That's a lot of adjectives, all true.
For years I've been saying Midwest events feel different but haven't been able to figure out why. Different vibe - can't put my finger on it.
Think I finally got it. What's great about Midwestern events is that they're in the Midwest.
Why Chicago was called "the literary capital of America."
And why Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Will Rogers, Hemmingway, Garrison Keillor, Vonnegut, Inge, F.Scott Fitzgerald were so good.
They're from the Midwest.
When it comes to the arts - music, dance, and writing in particular - the Midwest has always been all those adjectives I used above. The Midwest in many ways defines what is distinctly "American."
Maybe being land-locked? Or all those lakes. Or having Canadians up there laughing at you. Or that weather. Or Al Capone. Or who settled there, and the Great Migration.
Whatever it is, something makes these people interesting. In a good way.
So Michigan Classic was great again.
Canadian dancers came down in droves, huge piles of Canadians. Canadians are some bad.ass.dancers. And so niiiiiiice. And funny, very funny, they have the market cornered on funny, as I wrote last year. And they cheer relentlessly for each other.
Other parts of Michigan were good too. So many Rising Star routines, so many great Pro-Am routines.
And Classic and Showcase! And THIS!
I'm swooning!
The shapes! Silences! Subtlety! The STRETCH!
Those barely-perceptible chest expansions! Her hands!
The cleanliness!
How the music, choreography, and the DANCING are so an expression of THEM - their artsy edginess, their crazy chemistry, their hair colors that change with the seasons, their all around elegant hipness.
She's in heels by the way, in case you hadn't noticed.
Here's another thing I loved about Michigan:
Scores.
Ahhh, the sweet gentle breezes of Michigan Scores. Scores at Michigan were like chocolate. Like buttah. As Madonna, Mike Myers, and Barbara Streisand would say.
Scores were posted blindingly fast. Results available before you could gulp, swallow, or choke.
Full results! With judges names! Full transparency! Posted instantly online!
No fanfare, no special attention, just Midwestern-style matter-of-fact business as usual.
Picture this:
It's Sunday after Awards. In the hall outside the ballroom one quiet, shy piece of paper is taped to the wall. With a QR code.
No humans hanging around.
Ten minutes after Awards, still no humans hanging around. 45 minutes later, not a person. Two hours, three hours - nothing in the hall but the shy QR code all by itself on its 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, in the middle of an empty wall.
What did happen at Michigan, after Awards? People exited the ballroom, held their phones up to the QR code for a nano-millisecond on their way out, and then went about their business. It was disorienting.
You've seen what Sundays can be like. At The Wall.
The Wall of sweaty, putrescent, necropocalyptic Dancers-Turned-Flesh-Eating-Scrab-Slurping- ZOMBIES!
Waiting your turn to be squashed to the front of the pack. Whilst random rotating back-packs bang you in the ribs, phones dangle over your shoulders, and BPA-free recycled metal water bottles fall on your foot.
Whilst tiny squatting people magically appear below your knees ... stealthily rising ever taller ... until their heads are directly blocking your view of anything but their heads.
Whilst trying to keep your poker face amidst a wiggling mass of noses and fingers poking at those microscopic secretly-coded spreadsheets.
There was none of that.
No snapping pictures before getting caught.
No creepy feeling that YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. Security cameras catching you looking at scores for a division you didn't dance in.
No being rude because if you're not rude you will never see those scores again because they are taking them off the wall NOW and making them so CLASSIFIED Snowden would have to go t- never mind.
NONE of that.
No chaos, no confusion, no unpleasant final memories of the event.
Instead - a sweet, peaceful, stress-free After Awards Experience. Dancers off to restaurants, the airport, outside to frolic in the sunset.
Why oh why oh why can't it always be this way?
Okay, I know the answer to that. I wrote about it: Scoresheet Debates
But that was last year. I am now one year older and one year more crotchedy and impatient.
Anyway, enough about scores.
Another great thing about Michigan - Nelson was there. He is SO GOOD. And Brennar. SO GOOD. And so FUNNY, both of them.
Another great thing - Niko Salgado was there.
I love Niko Salgado. We had a brief conversation in the ballroom Friday morning, and in the space of ten minutes we discussed, in depth:
- Reflexive facial gestures and their import;
- This year's SwingDiego and Grand Nationals;
- The rise and quality of European comps;
- Grief after the death of a loved one, different ways of coping, lessons learned about life in general;
- Doug and Nicki's lesson and their excellence as teachers;
- Functioning on five hours total sleep over four days - how it affects one's ability to communicate verbally versus non-verbally through dance
Then Niko ran wildly like a crazy person around the lobby for twenty minutes while Jason and Sophy's panting, screaming, 3- and 5-year-old daughters chased frantically after him.
Then Niko took me up to the top-floor rotunda! I bet you didn't know that normal people can get to that rotunda you can see from the road teetering way up there on the tippy-top of the hotel.
To get there you just have to know the secrets. There is a secret elevator.
You know that sorcerer's podium in the middle of the marble floor, where the magic elevator button is hidden?
Don't use that.
The Secret 14th Floor is only accessed by the one secret elevator with its own secret elevator button.
[Clue: It's the elevator on the far right.]
Once you make it up to the rotunda you'll be delighted. It revolves!
[Clue: Don't stare at the floor to watch the carpet patterns spinning, like I did. You'll get dizzy and want to vomit.]
Just gaze out the glass walls at the beautiful sunset so close you can touch it, the beautiful city of Detroit hazy on the horizon, the beautiful hotel parking lot, the beautiful shopping mall, then back to the beautiful sunset.
Then Niko took me back downstairs, where we took a detour by the restaurant which is at the way, way outback of the second floor mezzanine.
The second floor is also magic. Designed as to disorient the hotel guest, like a magic hall of illusions with intersecting corridors zooming in and out of interlocking patterns. An Escher painting mezzanine.
Niko knew the secret path to Giulio & Sons - the restaurant I've written about before (we loved the Italian grotto stone and tile, the buffet, the old-world waiters.)
And we loved the jolly, elegantly-dressed owner of the hotel who ate his dinners right there with the common people, every night, and threw lavish parties in the restaurant for staff and friends, all expenses covered. Beloved by the hotel staff - everybody's friend.
I felt an urgent need to stop by the restaurant.
Because -- what I'd heard at the front desk when I checked in.
They didn't remember me when I checked in, as in all the years before. Can you believe it? VIPs like Mr. and Mrs. Genieboy Collins! Not only that - they had erased us! Deleted our history.
New management they said! Clean slate. All previous hotel guest records deleted.
So I needed to stop by the restaurant. I was worried our two favorite waiters had been canned, along with the rest of the hotel staff. 75 years of devoted service and this is what you get. The boot! No thank-yous, no loyalty, just boom! Kick on the butt out you go. Disgraceful.
So we made our way through the magical mezzanine and I go stalking into Giulio & Sons, Niko trailing politely behind, a puzzled expression on his face.
The hostess greeted us in the dimly-lit, low-ceilinged passageway between the buffet on the left - homemade vegetable stew, mushroom ravioli, fresh fettucini, arugula and fresh basil leaves, fresh pesto and olives, shrimp and chicken dishes to make you faint -- and on the right homemade cheese cake with chocolate ganache, mounds of canoli, hunks of fresh chocolate, tiny lemon tarts, trays of various mousses and zabagliones, stacks of chocolate-chip-pistachio cookies hot from the oven, ice creams with pans of hot fruit sauces, 5-layer chocolate cakes ...
I forget what I was telling you.
Oh yeah, firing everybody. So I'm asking the hostess, "Are the WAITERS still here? The ones who have been here for FOREVER? Or have they been FIRED? With everybody ELSE?""
And then - from the kitchen - out pop our two favorite waiters! Wiping their hands on their aprons, wondering what's going on. It's Rich and Wally! Like Stan and Olly! One tall and one short!
They haven't been fired.
No hotel staff have been fired, in fact.
Except one person. That great, beloved owner who was everybody's friend. He was fired.
Because he was stealing ENORMOUS amounts of money. So they say. No one's been able to confirm this personally as neither hide nor hair of the man has been seen since the day he suddenly stopped coming in for dinner.
Also, he wasn't the owner, he was the manager.
I got some aspects of the story wrong.
I do love this hotel though. It has Ralph and Wally, that awesome buffet, really nice staff even if they don't save your history anymore, and crazy awesome water pressure in the showers, it's like Lake Michigan pouring on your head.
So.
Between the showers, the scores, the Doug-ness, Royston and Victor on the mic, and the particular collection of very funny staff and attendees, Michigan was great again this year.
One final announcement and I'm back on the couch:
Doug has announced the creation of a GINORMOUS MEGA-WEST-COAST-SWING bombastic extravaganza event, Westie-Con, to be held in Orlando, at the World Center Marriott Resort, Nov 17-20, 2016. Like Comic-Con, Def-Con and MozCon, only better. You want to keep an eye on this!
This "Midwestern" email was sent to me privately (I have permission to publish.) It's a bit of a description of the Midwestern WCS community, their long relationships, and their perspectives on the community. I love it.
"There is a group of us 'old' All Stars that talk about wanting a "Falling Stars" division lol!
"The Midwest team that made our way to All Stars when it started is a tight group. Those of us who teach do so for the enjoyment of it rather than to advance career-wise, or in prestige. They truly want to see their students progress, go to watch all their comps and cheer their students on.
"We got our All Star points but don't have a desire to be at a higher level. We dance for the enjoyment of it. Some of us now have families that don't afford us the free time or expense of traveling, or the time or desire to teach on a regular basis.
"I would take a private from any of my own peers... we all feel that way, we help each other.
"We just want to 'attempt' to earn a spot in finals with all the amazing new All Stars - and if not, to know we did not earn it and gladly watch finals to support our friends. We are happy to just not disappoint our partner!
"The all-star track in Denver years back is a huge highlight still for me. Those lessons lasted me years with all the info they gave us. But, with many of us having kids and other expenses, finances don't always allow it.
"So we all gladly share what we learn with each other - and then we can work on it together, too.
"It's annoying when a dancer asks what level I am, and then says 'Oh, so you teach' when I tell them the level. No, I just dance for fun. Then it's followed up with 'Why don't you teach?' Or 'Don't you have to teach, as an All Star?' Or a grumble that makes you feel like if you don't teach you really aren't worthy.
"Too much self-promotion and boasting lately. The 'I have a few spots left' posts drive me nuts.
"It's nice to know others are talking about the self-promotion and the 'must get to champion level' attitude. What happened to social dancing and supporting each other?
"Seem to be many lately who are in it for recognition and status which isn't right. Personally I would rather social dance than compete!
"Wish more Allstar and Champs would go back to social dancing more. Even just so we can watch from a distance. They get SO swarmed by other level dancers that they never get to dance with each other and that's what is so awesome to watch!