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Dance Lessons in Orange County |
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Barb & Scott
"Europa" by Alturas Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort Huntington Beach, Orange County
Info About Dance Lessons
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Beyond The "Chicken Dance"
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Newlyweds are trading staid numbers for Broadway choreography and backup dancers. Jennifer Saranow on fog machings, mandatory rehearsals and the 'Thriller' revival. Michael Jackson's career may be hanging by a thread but his 1983 hit "Thriller" is enjoying a revival among some unlikely fans. Newlyweds Jimmy and Jocelyn Tsai performed a faithful rendition of the dance moves from the video, with al 10 members of their wedding party joining in as dancing zombies. Weddings have long been a competitive sport, but in the latest effort to stand out (and to get their wedding videos noticed on YouTube), some couples are putting a new spin on the staid tradition of the first dance. No longer satisfied with an old-school waltz or even a zesty tango, some couples are taking as many as 50 dance lessons to develop over-the-top routines that become the focal point of the reception. Wedding attendants are being dragged in as supporting-cast members and forced to attend multiple dance rehearsals to learn their parts. At their February nuptials, Tommy and Heidi Weclew of Orlando, Fla., walked to opposite sides of the dance floor and stood back to back as a DJ switched on disco lights and triggered a fog machine. The couple began a theatrical routine they'd been honing for weeks -- performing lifts and turns and pantomiming the sometimes vulgar lyrics of a ballad from th movie "Old School." For a finale, the groom did the funky robot. "We were trying to make it our own little Vegas Show," Mr. Weclew says. Some find these theatrics tacky, Leticia Baldrige, a lecturer and writer on manners, says brides and grooms who make spectacles of themselves on the dance floor show "a lack of judgment." She says an appropriate first dance is one that demonstrates love while honoring the importance of the event, rather than mocking convention. "We are in a culture of show-offs," she says. While studios have been offering dance lessons to brides and grooms for decades, these productions are in a different league. For "1,000, the specialty wedding-choreography company MatriMony Mony of New York will create a customized first dance routine for couples and tach them to perform it. Once production in the works is a James Bond spoof where the couple will skulk around waving pantomime handguns. The company says it designed routines for about 19 couples last year and expects its business to double this year. When 28-year-old Web developer Sarvesh Bathija married his longtime girlfriend, Ekta Tawney, last July, his mother, Shakku, was pleased that the couple chose to honor many Indian wedding traditions, including a procession with the groom on a horse and the circling of fire seven times in Indian attire. As she watched the new couple sway through their first dance to the Hindi melody "Tu Tu Hai Wohi," she says she was "proud and happy." About two minutes into the song, however, the music switched to Tupac Shakur's "California Love" and the couple began shaking their arms in a pointing motion to the beat. While it took her a few seconds to realize the change of tempo was planned by the bride and groom and to a DJ's mistake, Mrs. Bathija, the groom's mother, says she wasn't all that surprised. "Both of them are very nutty," she says. During the planning stages of an Austrian folk dance modeled on a scene from "The Sound Of Music," 29-year-old graduate student Jamie Hsu Pyo took an unusual step to make sure it wouldn't be a flop. Not only did she require the wedding party's five bridesmaids and five groomsmen to attend four three-hour practices, she chose two alternates from among the wedding invitees and asked them to learn the dance, too. When groomsman Doug Wakumoto, a Los Angeles hedge-fund manager, called in sick for one of the fial run-throughs, Ms. Hsu Pyo called her male alternate and told him to "suit up" for the final show. The dance was "like an audition or something," says Mr. Wakumoto. "It's not something I was looking forward to." Making It on YouTube Some dancing couples achieve a certain level of celebrity. Though he insists that he "really cannot dance," screenwriter Thierry Brames's August wedding performance -- in which he played air guitar and serenaded his new bride, Julie, from atop a chair -- has been prominently showcased on FlipMeDipMe.com, the choreographer's Web sit. And one couple's first dance from 2005 -- a Johann Strauss waltz that morphed into break dancing -- has been viewed more than 125,000 times on YouTube since the groom, 28-year-old Andrew Lee, posted it there. Mr. Lee calls the attention "flattering." The spread of these wedding performances is related ot a larger dance craze fuled by the popularity of shows like "Dancing With The Stars" and recent movies like "Mad Hot Ballroom" and "Shall We Dance." At the same time, marrying couples seem less hesitant to draw attention to themselves by staging dramatic cake entrances, hiring photographers to trail them like paparazzi, or posting videos of their elaborate dnce routines on YouTube (try searching for the tems "Thriller" and "first dance"). They're also more free from parental interference. Last year, according to Conde Nast Bridal Media, nearly a thrid of marrying couples paid for theri own weddings -- a 23% increase from 1999. For many dance instructors, business if booming. At Promenade Dance Studio in Irvine, Calif., where some betrothed couples have taken 50 lessons at $80 each, brides and grooms are encouraged to start with a traditional slow dance, then surprise their guests by cutting loose into something wilder. "It's not the first dance out of the box," says the studio's owner, Joe Way. Even some traditional dance studios are changing their marketing messages. Arthur Murray International Inc., which has 218 studios world-wide and has offered wedding-dance programs since the 1960s, now suggests that first dances can involve tangos, salsas or a romantic waltz that suddenly transforms into a cha-cha. Wedding DJs, who charge as much as $800 for fog effects or $400 for a light show, are also benefiting. For $50, Miami's In the Mixx Productions will bring a machine that pumps out a ring of low-lying fog, allowing the couples to appear to be dancing on a cloud. "It really looks great in photographs," says the company's owner, Jay Chin. A 'Thriller' Revival Preparations for the first dance aren't limited to the bride and groom. When Mr. and Mrs. Tsai's wedding coordinator suggested that the first dance at their wedding be a choreographed dance routine set to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, Mr. Tsai, a California packaging company sales executive, loved the idea. He thought asking the wedding party to participate would make the wedding more interesting and give the attendants something to do at the reception "instead of having them stand around." So about six months before their October 2006 wedding date, the couple told the 10 bridesmaids and groomsmen their responsibilities would include attending four or five afternoon dance practices to learn the routine. "I didn't really believe we were going to go through with it until we got to the second rehearsal," says bridesmaid Jennifer Rizzo, a 29-year-old video-store manager from Fountain Valley, Calif., who chose to perform in the back row. "I'm not a big dancer." Later, the five groomsmen participated in a surprise number designed by the groom where they serenaded the bride with the song "Kiss the Girl" form the film "The Little Mermaid" while wearing frog, lobster and flamingo costumes. The wedding, says best-man Alex Huang, "was a lot of work." To be sure, these elaborate first dances don't always go off as planned. After about 20 dance lessons, Bonnie Lafazan, a 36-year-old graduate student in New York, was all set to stun the 210 guests at her black-tie-optional ceremony with a number that started with a slow hustle to the Bee Gees' "How Deep is Your Love" and would alter break into a fast hustle to another Bee Gees song, "Night Fever." But about 60 seconds into the performance, her foot got stuck in the crinoline hoop skirt under her dress. "All this practice and there I was on the floor," she says. "I felt like an idiot." At their recent wedding in Seattle, Nina Barnett and Marc Kriger's romantic first dance was interrupted by the sound of a record scratching. After pretending to blame the DJ for making a mistake, the couple broke into a choreographed routine based on music from the musical "Gypsy." But when they watched their wedding video, part of the dance between the record scratch and the second song was missing. The problem: The videographer they'd hired, Mitch Mattraw, had shut off his camera for a few minutes because he thought the DJ had blown it. "We were kind of disappointed," says Ms. Barnett. Sticking to Sinatra Tradition has its defenders. Frank Sinatra and Etta James still rank among the most popular artists for first dances, and dance studios say most marrying couples still opt for the classic steps. Nonetheless, there are signs that these routines may be becoming a wedding staple. In message boards on the wedding site TheKnot.com couples discuss performing firs dances to songs by unlikely rock bands like Phish and Metallica. And according to some practitioners, these performances may have the same byproduct as many other wedding "innovations" from ice sculptures to pricey wedding favors: They induce envy. After Jessica Delaney, a 29-year-old cardiology fellow in New York, entertained her wedding guests last summer with a disco routine, she heard volumes from her engaged friends at the reception. The general message: "Our dance is going to stink compared to yours."
by Jennifer Saranow | ||||||
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