March 3, 2007

• Dancin' Fool

  
  
  
  
  

  My mother loved to sing and dance, and I inherited my love of singing and dance from her. My first exposure to music came from my mother. She would sing country and western standards made famous by Hank Williams, Jim Reeves and Jimmie Rodgers, the singing brakeman,  while she was cleaning house, or cooking. I can still remember the words to these old songs, and for me, this kind of introduction to music, through the family, is right and proper, the way music has been handed down for generations, long before radio or CDs appeared.

  
  

  I received both my first lessons in singing and dancing from my Mother. She taught me to dance the jig to an old Irish standard, "The shillelagh my father brought from Ireland." The family spent Saturday nights in singalongs or watching and performing playlets and musical numbers. In elementary school, we had classes in square dancing. I sometimes wonder if the modern world is better off than my generation, having been handed down a musical legacy by family. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was performing in both church and school. My brother and I became "The Nyiri Nuts", wearing wigs, and singing Beatles songs in front of our elementary school peers.

  
  

  In junior high, we were taught ballromm dancing, and then after classes on Friday nights, there was a school dance for the seventh and eighth graders. I always drew praise for my steps, and I loved to dance. At times, even in eighth grade, I would "clear the floor" with some of my "moves".

  
  

  Dancing is a strict undertaking, and dances are made up of choreographed steps, learned and perfected during hours of practice. I never furthered my dance instruction after the eighth grade. No ballet or tap. In high school the boys didn't take the interpretive dance classes. Those were strictly for girls. I adapted my clogging and tappiong skills taught to me by my mother to the art of the improvised rock and roll dance. Since most of the dances during my youth featured rock and roll music, the various methods of frugging, twisting, shing a linging,  mashing potatoes and jerking were all sort of free form. I listened to the music, I felt the beat, and I danced. In time, I developed my own "style", which mixed elements of tap, swing, and ballet.

  
  

  I still have some fantastic memories of commanding attention on the dance floor at a few rock and country bars I frequented back in the 70s. At the end of the decade, my left leg began to hurt terribly because of a congenital defect which pinched my blood vessels in the hip. I stopped dancing somewhat. At the age of 40, I had to receive a hip replacement in order to alleviate the pain. When the hip started to heal, and I broke up with my then girlfriend Pat and roomed in the garage in our house until the lease was up, I would dance all around the garage with my stereo cranked up high, revelling in the fact I could dance again.

  
  

  In 1991, at the age of 38, armed with my still relatively new video camera, purchased in 1986, I recorded some of my "moves" and "steps" on VHS tape for posterity or for use in future video projects. I just completed a new "MikeVideo Internet Movie" which captures one of the improvised performances I taped. I was still in great pain, and this was before the hip replacement. I recorded some interpretive dance, some country clogging, and some swing type dancing to big band music. A performance to two swing tunes, Artie Shaw's "Begin the Beguine" and "Lady Be Good" are included on the video, which lasts just over 4 minutes long.  

  
  

  
  

  Don't forget to disable the music player in the sidebar to the left before watching the video.

  
  

  I'm being quite either quite brave or possibly shameless showing this footage. I don't think I'm a particularly graceful dancer, and as I wrote above, this is purely improvisational, performed "in the moment" back in 1991. Even though I couldn't perform leg kicks and splits at the time this video was recorded, as I was previously able, I do think this is somewhat entertaining, and it is part of the history of MikeVideo. I shot this footage as test footage, and never decided to shoot an actual "musical number" a la Fred Astaire, after I saw the results. I  am wearing the standard t shirt and jeans outfit, and I rolled up the jeans so the pantlegs wouldn't get in the way of my feet. I am wearing white socks so that I can see the individual steps better to ascertain whether or not I made some mistakes. This footage was not meant to be displayed, but it has a historical value now. Many people videotape their dance moves for YouTube. This is 15 years ahead of it's time! I've also added it to my YouTube Channel.

  
  

  EDIT: 3/4/07: 7:00am pst. It's a Video Weekend for Mike. I am just now uploading another video to Google that I constructed yesterday, working with both my Pinnacle video editing software and the new Sony Vegas software that I've been experimenting with for the past month. By the end of today, I will be presenting the complete almost half hour 1989 MikeVideo "Moviola Dance" of which a segment has been on YouTube for a year, copied from the VHS. Part 1 can be downloaded from my own website HERE. The MikeVideo page which will contain the three parts will be online later HERE. (the link works now but the page is under construction) "Moviola Dance" contains multiple segments of musical numbers from different MGM musicals, "manipulated" with a CAV laserdisc player back in 89, and mixed to different music. In fact, Artie Shaw's "Begin the Beguine" is used in the video, accompanying footage of Astarie and Eleanor Powell. MFN

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