ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars”
A reality series featuring dancing. The wonder of it. Any series featuring only dancing. Still an amazing thing.
For how many dance shows are there upon our televisions? Even in all of cable's offerings, the DVD's on our shelves or even in TIVO's recall button?
Even more amazing, the second week of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" came in the ratings over all the other offerings of its time slot. The surprise caused so many gasps that this tidbit was mentioned in several newscasts this past week.
Dancing. Imagine that.
The premise of the show follows the reality format except for a unique method of calculating scores. Three judges, all choreographers of some repute though I've never heard of any of them, give a score from one to ten during each dance performance. On Wednesday, 6/15/05, there were five contenders left. Each dance team comes in from one to five based on the total scores from the judges. The first place team based on the judges score received five points, second place-four points, and so on.
This reality show too allows audience participation. Viewers can phone in a vote or vote online at ABC.com. The same criteria as applied for the judges' votes applies to viewer votes. Thus the couple receiving the most audience votes is awarded five points, second-four, and so on. The dance team with the lowest score using this method is eliminated from the competition.
Also, unlike other reality shows, there is a "star" associated with each dance team.
Using the word "star" lightly.
John O'Hurley played Elaine's boss in "Seinfield". Evander Holyfield is a boxer. Rachel Hunter is a model. Two other stars, a Joey McIntyre and a Kelly Monoco, also dance on the show but I'm not familiar with their work.
These are not major league celebrities is what I'm saying here. But there's enough of a name recognition to call the series dancing with "stars".
The stars are paired with an experienced dancer. Their partners teach the stars the dance steps as required then partner with them during the dance competition.
These dances are not for the mild-mannered. This is not two people getting out on the dance floor to wave arms all about and move feet in any random matter that suits. These dances are the REAL stuff, dances that require symmetry of movement between the partners. Plus that bit about throwing a dance partner in the air or sliding between one's legs might not fare well at the local nightclub.
They dance the rumba, the quick step, the jive, the waltz. Indeed all dances having actual names and with specific steps, music and partner choreography associated with each.
In my day our dances had names too. We had the mashed potato, the locomotion, the watusi. Today country music often has dances that require unique steps, often done with large numbers of other dancers generically referred to as "line dancing".
The concept of one man and one woman dancing together, actually in each other's arms, seemed a thing of the past.
Yet along comes this surprising summer offering and people are actually watching it!
I can understand why. Those dance couples do a wonderful job and each performance is a pleasant observation. Myself loved Evander Holyfield. He's a big fellow with feet that match. He asserted that boxers must be deft on their feet, thus are natural dancers.
Though, alas, Evander and his partner were eliminated this past week, I enjoyed watching this sport professional move his feet across the dance floor, his face concentrated to distortion. I thought he did a wonderful job and looked so handsome.
John O'Hurley is no small man either. Yet, dashing and debonair in his black suit and tie, his famous grey hair perfectly cut, he danced a glorious swath over the dance floor. Doing the rhumba of all things.
I am totally fascinated by the moves of each dance. The stars have to struggle at times to remember their steps, the viewer can see it in their pensive faces. I ponder how I would do under such pressure.
For there are times, when no one's around save the dogs, that I will choreograph a swath of Broadway musical inspired dance steps upon my kitchen floor to the applause of no one. I will find myself trying to move my feet in time with the music, stopping at a musical pause, stomping with a drum beat.
I taught the dachshund how to Cha Cha and that's a fact.
There's a certain skill and beauty in the dance although myself fools no one it's not in me. Or my dogs either truth be told.
But the dance I emulate is not the mindless movement of the darkened discos. There's a series of steps, a match of foot to beat, that requires a little more than beer fueled random movement.
"Dancing With the Stars" demonstrates aptly how it should be done. With handy information on the origin of the dance featured, the music required, then on to a demonstration by those who so recently struggled to learn it.
ON GENEALOGY—LESSONS IN FINDING YOUR PAST
By Joan M. Kay, author of God’s Mountain, McLaughlin’s Valley
McLaughlin's Valley Web Site
Your ancestors made history.
Wherever your folks hail from—Virginia, Jamaica, England, China—they were the very fabric of that culture. They belong in a history book, somewhere, somehow. For figures such as George Washington or Napoleon Bonaparte, scholarly biographies are easy to come by and are worthwhile reading for any student of history. But what about your ancestors? In which book do you read about their contributions to history? Unless you are a descendent of, say, Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson, you won’t find one.
You must research and display your family’s history yourself. This can be done in the form of a novel, or alternatively, a (non-fiction) thesis, or study of a town or county where your family lived. Your non-fiction work will prove invaluable to many future generations of family historians, while your fiction will provide pleasure to history lovers everywhere, though will be thoroughly distrusted by other fact-searchers, and rightfully so.
On the fiction side, if you’ve read or seen Alex Haley’s Roots, you’re familiar with the concept of putting obscure ancestors into history and letting them roam free there. It’s a fascinating hobby. And for the late Alex Haley, an extremely lucrative one—though the rest of us might just have to settle for fascinating, which is more than fine with me.
To that end, I break genealogy down into two labors of love, first assembling your family tree and then—using fiction or non-fiction as you prefer—placing the family members in history.
The latter is my current passion, though the former, a family tree, is where we must start.
As an afterword to my novel, God’s Mountain, McLaughlin’s Valley, I show how family research led to the creation of two of MY most beloved characters in history, Hugh McLaughlin and Nancy Gwin.
Never heard of them? Until 1999, neither had I.
I’ve been tracing my McLaughlin ancestors for over a decade now and a lot of those years I have literally been at it as a full-time job, researching for the novel based on my Revolutionary War ancestors. Quite a bunch they were, enough to convince me to write a novel, something I had no experience in. But we muddled along together and finally managed to get the amazing story of Hugh and Nancy McLaughlin out there. It’s the story that won my heart; that I had found, piece by piece, long forgotten on courthouse shelves and archivists’ microfilm.
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YOUR ANCESTORS—THEY’VE APPARENTLY GONE MISSING… SO HOW DO YOU FIND THEM?
Primary Sources
The U.S. Census—your most basic search, and sometimes your most fruitful.
For research on American ancestors, your first stop in genealogy should be census records. Microfilmed reproductions of the U.S. Census (taken every ten years since 1790) are stored at the National Archives in Washington, DC; at Archives repositories across the country; through inter-library loan at your local public library (ask your librarian for help; she’s a gem, I assure you), through LDS Family History Libraries and online genealogy services, such as Ancestry.com, which offers an invaluable search engine to locate your ancestors in the census records, though you must pay a fee to access their online census images.
Privacy laws govern the availability of census records. They are not available to researchers until more than 70 years after the enumeration, so the most recent records you may research are from 1930. If you have information on your ancestors from before 1930, you’re in excellent shape to begin your search. If you can, always begin with 1930. Don’t skip back to 1870 because your great-aunt May swears that your great-great grandfather Alphonse lived in New York, New York then—find out for yourself. (If you’ve yet to reach your pre-1930 ancestors, I’ll deal with your particular stumbling block in a future column.)
Different challenges and opportunities come along with each decade’s census. The enumerations of 1790, 1800, and 1890 are generally unavailable for many areas; 1810 to 1840 include the names of only heads of households, not individual family members. All you will find in these years on dependents is an age range (0-5 years, 6-10 years, etc.) and a designation of male or female. Beginning in 1850 each family member was enumerated separately, with name, age, race, relation to head-of-household, etc. Records are broken into counties and usually several counties within the same state will appear on each roll of microfilm produced by the National Archives.
In research for my current novel-in-progress, about the Civil War, I am relying heavily on census records from 1860 in Pocahontas County, Virginia (now West Virginia). Useful to me in the 1860 records is the listing of occupation, schooling, and worth of personal and real property of each citizen. You may also find there the boundaries of neighborhoods, which is particularly useful because, historically, many families stuck close together, and the mother of the Smith family next door to your Jones relations may actually be that long-lost aunt you’ve been trying to find. Even unrelated but close neighbors hold clues to your family’s history. For example, neighbors very often emigrated together in groups. If your family were to suddenly disappear from an area and prove hard to find elsewhere, a quick search of their previous close neighbors may give you a clue to where they have moved, or moved from.
So, using a “family group sheet” to keep your records on download available HERE and starting with the 1930 enumeration, document carefully (roll numbers, page numbers, repository, etc) each fact that you find there, working backward in time through the US Census Records as far as they will allow. I’ll check back in on you soon—with more Lessons for your search.
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God’s Mountain, McLaughlin’s Valley - Joan M Kay. Hugh McLaughlin never knew he changed the world. His story begins when, as a young man, Hugh loses his father, is forced into servitude, and in order to regain his freedom, marches into the Revolutionary War. Join Hugh and the Continental Army at Valley Forge; accompany him through the ordeals of war as he is surrounded by death, infected with smallpox, wounded and finally taken prisoner. Witness how these experiences shape the character of a man. But this story encompasses more than the Revolutionary War; it delves into the personal wars tormenting each of the major characters. When Hugh returns home to the mountains of western Virginia, he falls in love with Nancy Gwin, the daughter of a wealthy planter. They marry against her family's objections and for the next decade, Hugh and Nancy battle through the estrangement of her family and prejudice from their neighbors. Finally, the full power of his life and spirit is discovered. This is a story you can get lost in.
2005, 5½x8½, paper, 340 pp. $33.00 K3280 ISBN: 078843280X
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Grandmother Blogger Interviewed by Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper
Seems my reminisce post about my childhood experiences at Baltimore’s old Gwynn Oak Park caught somebody’s attention.
As well it should as the story, HERE, written and saved for the benefit of Kaitlyn Mae that it not be forgotten, is a compelling one.
For it really happened and the beauty of the tale? It’s the simple truth.
Hopefully next week I will have a link to the Afro-American article for the story being written by Sean Yoes.
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