Marianne Merten Feathers are out. Sequins and multilayered dresses are in as couples as young as six years waltz, foxtrot, tango or strut their stuff doing the samba and pass-double under coloured spotlights before eagle-eyed judges.
The glamour and easy grace on the dance floor belie the many hours of practice in dance studios in townships, the working class suburbs of the Cape Flats and elsewhere.
Ballroom and Latin American competitive dancing, or dance sport, is big in the Western Cape where most dancers come from disadvantaged communities. More often than not the whole family is involved in the sport as spectators shouting encouragement during competitions and as financial backers because commercial sponsorship is scarce.
Dance sport recently received Olympic status from 2008. At the Athens games the steps of the five prescribed ballroom dances and the five Latin American dances will feature as a demonstration sport for the first time. “I think all the hard work we put into the dance, what we get out of it is to represent the country,” says Craig Messina. He and partner Denia Denonze won the Western Cape ballroom championship last Saturday ahead of next month’s national championships at Carnival City in Gauteng.
Messina (22) and Denonze (19) train four-and-a-half hours Sundays to Thursdays with two separate sets of instructors for the ballroom and Latin American disciplines. He started dancing when he was six; Denonze when she was eight.
They are South Africa’s only 10-dance couple, competing in both disciplines. Recently they were placed 28th at the world championships in Finland.
Dancing is not only a way to get very fit, but also to stay away from the streets. “A lot of young people on the streets get themselves into lots and lots of trouble. Dancing is good to keep them off the streets,” says Messina.
In the ballroom competition the girls in their flowing, bright dresses smile and crane their necks while the guys in tails look serious as they glide together across the floor. The atmosphere becomes sultry and the pace energetic in the Latin American section.
An occasional collision with another competing couple throws no-one off their pace, after all points will only be deducted if the footwork is interrupted.
But sometimes budding dance careers are nipped in the bud because of pressure on the women from boyfriends or when a male partner decides to come out of the closet.
Despite dance sport’s popularity, sponsorship is almost non-existent for couples. The cost of a dress starts at R3?000, if home-made, tails sell from R700 and the price of the imported dancing shoes, which seldom last longer than a few months, rise as the rand-dollar exchange rate weakens. Even before a woman competitor takes to the floor, make-up and hair decorations like diamant clips and rhinestones can cost R100.
“Our main sponsors are parents,” says Messina. Denonze adds: “My parents pay for everything. When I dance I want them to be proud of me.”
And that family support was evident last Saturday when along came granny, uncles, siblings and the picnic basket to watch more than 300 couples compete for provincial honours.
Watch the Rama Gauteng provincial championships on Wednesdays at 6pm on e.tv. The national championships take place on December 2 in the Carnival City big top from 9.30am. Tel: (011) 803?4476
@On the doctor’s orders Dr Seuss has become one of the hottest properties in Hollywood, with two major films based on his work in the pipeline. But why has it taken so long for Tinseltown to discover his whimsical genius? Damon Wise Hollywood likes a cash cow, and especially one it doesn’t have to work on. Something with an existing fanbase, ideally, and definitely something that?can spawn a franchise if the results pay off big-time.
Current blockbuster?hit X-Men certainly fits the bill, tapping into the collective remembrance?of Marvel Comics’ mutant superheroes and vamping it up for those people?who, let’s face it, is most of us, hadn’t seen the 2-D originals in years.
And with the recent hysteria around the fourth Harry Potter adventure,?the movie simply cannot fail.
But strangely, up until now, one of America’s most loved and respected?writers seems to have been neglected in the bidding war. Although?responsible for over 50 children’s books, including some of the country’s?best-known, Theodor Geisel who died in 1991, at the age of 87 had only ever lent his name to a ragbag of movie titles that very few remember. And, curiously, that didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.?
“Ted was never much interested in the commercial end”, said his lawyer?Karl Zo-Bell. “In fact, a couple of times he sent back a large sum of money?because he was not happy with the way his work was being used.”
This?Christmas, however, Geisel is headed back to the best-seller lists. Or?rather, his alter ego is. Because to most people, Theodor Geisel is much better known as the cranky, inventive and insanely imaginative Dr Seuss,?whose goofy and apparently simplistic tales belied a very singular?intelligence.
Headed by How the Grinch Stole Christmas, starring Jim Carrey under a ton of green latex make-up in the title role, claims of a?Seuss revival are backed up by news that Geisel’s estate has sealed a deal for a film adaptation of Seuss’s first big hit, The Cat in the Hat, about the?gibberish-rhyming feline with the top hat and scarf.
Seuss was born in 1904, in Springfield, of all places the Massachusetts?town, not the fictional home of his bastard offspring The Simpsons. He?studied at Dartmouth College, where he showed an aptitude for drawing,?and it was here, in 1921, that he first used the pseudonym Seuss (his?middle name).
The dean of the college knew Geisel was a keen sketcher of?cartoon strips and as punishment for a minor infraction of school rules?forbade him to supply them to the school magazine. He did so anyway and?later added the Dr at Oxford University in honour of the degree he didn’t?ultimately get.?
After college, Geisel worked in advertising, and in the early 1930s made his?debut with And to Think I Heard It on Mulberry Street, a surreal little story inspired by the noises he’d heard on a voyage to Europe. It wasn’t a?success, and Geisel went into the army soon after, but when he returned?from the army he returned to his former career as a draftsman. Geisel?always had a yen to write, however, and his war experiences fed into?some of his earliest and most overlooked material, which urged the?American people to join the fight against Hitler.
Geisel had a strong sense?of moral values and his later work particularly The Star-Bellied?Sneetches, a thinly veiled satire on snobbery and class/race divides ?was actually concerned with teaching children very human lessons in life,?not simply blowing their minds.
His breakthrough came in the late 1950s, with The Cat in the Hat. Geiser had?been reading a report about declining levels of literacy in American schools and the implications depressed him.
Children were saying their schoolbooks were “boring”, and so, working closely with his publisher, Geisel came up with a list of 400 basic words that a first-grader could read with little difficulty. They cut the list to 250 and in 1957 The Cat in?the Hat launched Random House’s acclaimed Beginner’s Book series.
Three years later Seuss accepted a bet that he couldn’t work with just?50 words and responded with the classic Green Eggs on Ham, still a?comfort blanket to the great-grandchildren of Seuss’s original readers.
So why is Seuss creeping back into favour? After the inrush of irony into?American culture, perhaps the time is right for something sincere and, underneath the wacky graphics and gobbledygook, actually rather?meaningful.
In his own way, Seuss was an anarchist who wanted children to think for?themselves and see language as a tool not a burden.
“I like nonsense,” he?once said, “it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient?in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.?Which is what I do and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”
Jim?Carrey is undoubtedly a child of Seuss, as Geisel’s wife Audrey found?when she visited him on the set of Man on the Moon to discuss the new?movie.
“As I was leaving,” she recalled, “he put his hands on my shoulders,?looked me in the eyes and scrinched and scrunched and scroonched his face?into such a wicked smile that I gasped, ‘My God it’s the Grinch!'” The?doctor would be proud.