Come for the politics, stay for the dance
Yesterday commenter “davisbr” offered the following slogan for the blog, “Come for the politics, stay for the dance.”
I love it—and not least because it can so easily be reversed, “come for the dance, stay for the politics.” Politics is a sort of dance, isn’t it?—although not always or even often a pleasant one. Usually you’ve got to have some mad skills to win, not to mention endurance.
Yesterday, on that same thread, commenter “Honeyimhome” offered the following ballet comparison of the GOP frontrunner candidates:
Romney: been to the right schools, put in all the work, has all the technical skills,
Mechanically he’s all there, but not enough people are really convinced he can be the numero uno ballerina.
Newt: kind of hard to do a ballet comparison, because he’s not really refined for a ballet. Maybe a cowboy ballet. He’s the star of the show though, whatever it is.
That’s my takeoff point to tell you that in fact there are cowboy ballets, surprisingly enough. In fact, there was a certain vogue for them in the late-30s through early 50s, part of the “Americanization” of the previously-European art of ballet. Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo” was one.
“Billy the Kid” was another.
And then there was Balanchine’s “Western Symphony,” which looked a bit like “Gunsmoke”—heavy on the dance-hall girls, although it slightly predated the TV show:
All are rarely performed these days. And none suit Newt, whom I don’t see as a cowboy anyway. Romney might be able to find a place in one of them, though, if you costumed him right, as well as George W. Bush and most assuredly Rick Perry. And Obama could do a stint too, I think.
What would suit Newt the ballet dancer? I have to admit it’s a tough one. And though I hesitate to offer the following because I’m not into mockery, I have to say that it’s the very first thing that leapt to my mind when I read “Honeyimhome’s” comment. Newt supporters, please take it in the spirit in which it’s offered; it’s a clip of which I’ve long been fond, and one of the reasons is the surprising skill of the portly lead dancer’s maneuvers, and her (it’s a she, but it always looked like a “he” to me) very obvious satisfaction with herself:
And now, I’m very happy to say, I will file this post under the categories “dance” and “election 2012.” Not a combination that usually exists in nature.
Heh, that’s the one that came to my mind also 😉 And no need for an apology, taking politicians too seriously is a serious mistake.
Whoo-hoo!
The facial expressions were perfect.
Newt’s not the cowboy. He’s the bartender with the double barrel shotgun under the counter.
Cowboy Ballet? How about this one from the 1998 National Theater’s production of Oklahoma? This was the best production of a musical that my wife and I have ever seen (and, between us, we have seen hundreds). In most productions, the actors are replaced by trained dancers during the Dream Ballet. Not in this one. Hugh Jackman can dance and sing, and the Laurey character, played by Josefina Gabrielle, had been a trained ballerina with the National Ballet of Portugal. My wife knew something special was going on when she did a developé and then launched into a series of fouetté turns. From Wikipedia:
If you can’t quite imagine Newt as a dancer, here is a review of him as a writer (via James Taranto) from last July. Andrew Ferguson read all of his books and gives an hysterical summary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/magazine/what-does-newt-gingrich-know.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
You call those dances and ballets? Phoo! Now this is a dance and it also has hula hoops in it to make it extra special.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztXmzMvSXZ0
I mean just imagine Newt doing that dance with those hula hoops and…… Oh gawd no. Forget I said it.
Chris Stirewalt (Fox News) has a column, referenced today in RealClearPolitics (“Newt’s Jacksonian Revolution”), that nicely compares Newt with President Andrew Jackson, an idea that struck me yesterday, I’ll claim. A large part of Stirewalt’s argument has to do with the shocked! shocked! reaction of the nice New Englanders in Jackson’s day, and the analogous RINOs today.
My educated, cultured friends don’t quite understand how someone who grew up in a white, self-sufficient, working-class family could be so happy to see it put to the snotty University types. Newt does it with glee, and is better than any of them at their own games.
Gingrich’s oratorical technique is more like a swordsman. He’s a slasher, not a pounder. I know the music to “Sabre Dance”, but not the dancing. It has the swirling momentum of Newt in full throat, spinning out ideas.
Uh.
…I admit to having juxtaposition issues with this, (contextually and visually).
…but WTH, any excuse for a ballet.
Sabre Dance. Aram Khachaturian. Bolshoi Theater Dancers. 1964.
…I also liked this version (though the video is a bit dark).
From the original “Fantasia” – one of the finest films ever made. The sequel was just plain embarrassing.
Amilcare Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours”, heard in the clip, was used by Allan Sherman in the very popular novelty song “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda”.
We’re not recognizing Aaron Copland’s rather well-known music in these ballets. Ballet without music is what?
Years ago, I took a much-too-precocious 7-year-old to see Fantasia (daughter of a movie director and a screenwriter).
As we watched the dance of the Hippo and the Crocodile, she leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “I know why he’s interested in her.”
“Oh, really? I always wondered why myself.”
“Because she’s not wearing any underwear.”
This reference to dancing cowboys kind of cracks me up, and reminds me of the crushing disappointment I experienced as a small child when a promising looking movie set in the western outdoors, would come on; only to develop into an atrocity featuring a soft-featured male forced into a jean jacket, bellowing out a love song to a woman who obviously held virtually no interest for him, while a troupe of iffy looking types grinning insanely through paste on beards, arms akimbo, pants tucked into their boots, exaggeratedly strutted and pranced in a mannered fashion before a cardboard pine tree backdrop. Where’s John Wayne?
““Oh, really? I always wondered why myself.”
“Because she’s not wearing any underwear.””
The Maltese Falcon DVD has a bonus 1942 Warner’s Movie Night feature composed of cartoons, a news reel, and a group called the Monte Carlo Russe Ballet or something like that, doing a Can Can themed routine about some guy from Bolivia who goes to Paris. The freeze frame feature reveals that the women – who have surprisingly good legs for that era – are indeed wearing underwear.
davisbr: Neat. The first one, maybe just because the video is black-and-white, is Newt’s EEG during a debate.
It’s the perfect abstraction of Newt’s neurons at work.