Rants & Raves of Jasmine's Fiction

So You Think You Can Dance?

Oh yeah baby, step aside!  Dance Diva coming through.

Last night marked the first time I’ve gone back dancing since a long spell of inactivity due to injury (dislocated ankle requiring 8 months to recover), illness (fiddly drawn out nonsense), very active social life (party party party) and just plain laziness (snore zzzzz).

But since last week when my sister brought home 3 episodes of freshly downloaded, brand spanking new season of So You Think You Can Dance – I got bitten by the dance bug and I HAD to go back.

For those of you who don’t know my dance history, I’ve been dancing since I was about 6 years old. I did Ballet of course, and yes I did spend a lot of time in a frilly tutu.  Then when I was 12, I hit the ‘professional’ stage.  [In dance terms when we say professional we mean paid in $$$ and the work is considered commercial]  I got work performing at product launches, tourism shows, grand openings, recitals, shopping mall carnivals and even on the special events like Christmas and New Year galas.  Then from the age of 17 to 20 I went commercial fulltime during my college years.

It was only in my final year at university that I stopped all professional dance activities and went free raving.  Then after an abortive stint at working a ‘real job’, I left and started teaching fulltime – Ballroom, Latin & South American being some of the subjects that I taught.

When I finally switched to teaching English fulltime did my dancing career dwindle down to social dance parties and the odd salsa competition and the sporadic practice runs at my ‘godfather’s’ studio.  Right up till the point when my ankle decided to become a resting cushion for my fat arse during martial arts class.  Oh well.

But now, I’M BACK!  Last night’s cha-cha-cha showed that even after a year of inactivity, I still got the moves. My technique although a bit rusty is still impeccable; my hip movement still sexy; my arm styling still original; and the steps I got back after a basic run through, proving I still got what it takes. WOOHOO!

Now I need to widen my repertoire of dances.  One of the reasons why I love So You Think You Can Dance is because they showcase many different styles and the talent pool is just simply incredible.  For those of you who are uninitiated about the format of this show, it follows [insert preferred country] Idol to a T because the executive producer and co-creator of both Idol and Dance is legend Nigel Lythgow.  So it starts with auditions in front of 3 judges, you have 45 seconds to impress them with your routine. If they think you are awesome, you go straight through to Vegas. If you suck, you get the no and you go home after bitching to the cameras. If they are not sure, you get sent to the choreography round where you have to learn a routine and show it off to the judges, proving that you can pick up steps.

It’s much more awesome than Idol because there’s seriously less bitchy diva behaviour. And did I mention the talent involved???  There’s the hip shaking Latin dancers, the floor rolling fan kicking Lyrical artists, the lindy hopping Swingers, the acrobatic Breakers, the robotic Poppers etc and the judges!!! I mean, Wade Robson!!!  OMG!!!  And Shane Sparks!!!  And Mary Murphy!!!

But I like the concept that the top 20 dancers are paired off at random and they pick the dance for the week at random so everyone gets a different genre and a different routine, regardless if they’ve danced that style before or not. Then dancers get to work for a week with a very renowned choreographer and performance night they show off how much they’ve mastered the style that they’ve picked. Then it’s up to the viewers to vote for their favourites and the bottom 3 couples will each have to perform a solo to stay in the competition. Here’s the best bit.  Unlike Idol where it can sometimes be more of a popularity contest than a talent contest, the decision on which 2 of the bottom 6 dancers gets kicked out is decided by the JUDGES – ultimately preserving the integrity of the talent pool.

So, if any of you folks on my side of the planet would like to start dancing or have any ‘non-mainstream’ dance styles that you’d like to recommend to me (cardio pole dancing included) please don’t hesitate to drop me a line. And gentlemen, seriously.  The ability to dance really does up your market value.  Now if you would all excuse me, I need to fix my blisters.

Gillls, Fins & Tails

i couple of weeks ago I went for dinner with a mate and somewhere between my salmon steak and his pasta we started talking about our underwater exploits.  The deep water kind - NOT the deep throat kind!

The discussion was going swimmingly (pun intended), right up till we started talking about sharks.  Yes, the largest carnivore on the planet.  About 500 kilos of pure muscle and with 300 odd teeth that grow constantly, these aerodynamically shaped killers strike awe & fear into our hearts and overactive imaginations…  Personally I think sharks are fascinating creatures.  I have a healthy respect for them but when I’m underwater, I do not go out of my way looking for them! 

Anyway, my mate was talking about the time he went diving off the coast of Sabah in Borneo, looking for hammerhead sharks.  Now these sharks are not exactly the friendliest things on the planet- they’re extremely territorial, perpetually pissed off, they have been known to munch on humans AND they swim in schools.  So by default if you go looking for one hammerhead, you’re going to find its brothers and sisters as well!  Now call me chicken but I have a very healthy fear for an (or in the case of hammerheads, 50 or so) animal(s) that has a very high probability of making me its afternoon snack.  I’ll explain my reasons later but to keep from digressing, on with my mate’s story.  He was diving with 5 other people, all hoping to catch a glimpse of these awesome underwater meat eaters and he was swimming at the back of the pack, lagging behind.  Suddenly as he closed in on the group he realises that they have all stopped swimming and are all pointing and waving at him.

Now usually when people wave and point at you the first thing most people do is to check their person for something amiss; which is exactly what my mate did.  The pointing and the waving then continued at more frantic speeds and FINALLY my mate who was probably high on oxygen got what they were trying to tell him – that there was a hammerhead swimming right behind him!  He spun around just in time to see its tail before it swam away into the blue yonder…  Of course he had to be the only one that didn’t get to see any sharks and he was understandably, suitably upset.  To make matters worse the others took the piss out of him the whole trip back.  Not the funnest of dives, he tells me.

My story with sharks is a little more ‘personal’ in the very up close sort of way…  I was in the islands with a girlfriend and we sailed a two man catamaran out to the open water.  We (stupidly) sailed so far out that we actually lost sight of the shoreline.  At that point I was ready to turn back – without my scuba gear and a very large knife I’m a little nervous about open water like that.  But my dear mate (she’s the person who organises the Fear Factor reality TV series so you can only imagine what kind of girl she is) is quite fearless and she decides that it’s hot and the water’s cold and very inviting, lets go take a dip!  I’m obviously a little freaked out but not wanting to be a chook, I idiotically agreed.  So with a splash we are swimming around the boat when suddenly BUMP!  Right against my right leg, just above my knee!  Imagine getting hit by the bumper of a mid to large sized car going about at 20-25kmph.  The bruising is approximately from hip to about mid-calf and it lasts for about 3 WEEKS.  Anyway.

So obviously I was boggling WTF?!?  I yell out to her that something VERY LARGE, leathery and very rough just rammed into my leg.  The next thing we both see circling the boat is a MASSIVE, and when I say MASSIVE I mean about 2 metres long, torpedo shaped creature with a very scarred dorsal fin crest the surface.  If your marine biology is up to scratch you would know that the ONLY two living creatures on this PLANET that is shaped like a torpedo with a dorsal fin attached is a dolphin…   Or a shark. 

Tell me YOU won’t freak out right there and then if you were in our places – I’ll show you a liar.

The shark (I know its not a dolphin because sharks, like all cold blooded fish wave their tails from left to right; dolphins and other mammals wave their tails up to down and this bugger was DEFINITELY waving its tail from left to right) then circled the boat with barely a ripple and then BUMP!  My mate was the next to get hit.  There and then, all her courage evaporated and she started to scramble back onto the boat.  Trying to get back onto a catamaran without help and when you’re panicking is no small task.  There was a whole lot of splashing involved and that’s bad because sharks like splashing because it indicates an injured fishy and that in turn indicates a Happy Meal. 

As calmly as I could, I told my mate to stop splashing about and just as she clambered back onto the boat BUMP!  She was tipped back into the water as the shark charged into the boat.  We watched in horror as the carnivore circled around us again.  At this point I honestly thought that we were going to be eaten.  I saw the torpedo shaped shadow coast towards me and then (I was expecting the CHOMP) BUMP!  Again it knocked into me!  The creature then surfaced again, disappeared and BUMP!  My mate was hit! 

The shark circled us several times after that without (thankfully) confrontation and then, deciding that is was bored of us or something, it swam away. Just like that.  And of course, without further ado we both dragged our very bruised and scratched up posteriors onto the boat and sped back to shore!  I never examined the boat to see if it the shark took a taste sample of ‘us’ but till this very day I thank my lucky stars that neither my mate nor I got to feel 300+ teeth making our body parts part with our bodies.  Neither do I sail a catamaran out on open water anymore! 

So now, the only close encounters I have with sharks are mostly done with crabmeat, some vinegar and a spot of brandy.  YUMMY!