A Pretty Vintage Poatcard

When Halloween was thought of as beautiful and magical.

Glad some of us still think so. :-)

Tickets...Finally

Judging from our grim blog banner, it's that time of year again. Bleak, slate skies and chilly winds bear the tidings of All Hallows Eve and soon we'll be carving pumpkins and looking forward to snow. For Kelly and I, Halloween means the big costume ball at St. Louis' Casa Loma Ballroom. Nothing like shagging the night away with a few hundred kindred freaks of the night. This year it's Trek gear – or at least a good approximation. Thing is, you can't dance in anything too elaborate. Well, at least you can't swing or rockabilly dance.

Over the past month we've been trying to reserve our tickets. We dance early and often so we like to be near the floor where we can catch the best tunes and that means getting a seat as early as possible. Well, I have a tip for all those of you who are interested in getting early tickets to the Casa Loma's Halloween party: don't bother calling the box office, go straight to email. I left three messages with the automated reservation system and got no response (at lest I hope there aren't six tickets waiting for me at will-call on the 31st). We sent one email and got a reply the same day with information on what to do to get tickets. I strongly recommend all my ghost friends stick to electronic communications – at least this year.

From an email we received Monday, October 5 the Casa Loma tickets have come back from the printer. Not a moment too soon! We've nearly reached the witching hour!

San Francisco Quadrilles

After taking a broad swipe at an American standard yesterday, I thought I'd go further back in time to show off one more type of sheet music cover before getting back on the subject of dance (to which this blog is supposed to be dedicated). This is the cover for a collection called San Francisco Quadrilles and it dates from 1852. The music is professed to be "arranged from the most favorite negro melodies of the piano forte" a claim which, in itself, speaks magnitudes about the attitudes of the time. The pianoforte (whether the word became merged after the printing of this sheet music or if the music cover reflects the printer's inability to spell is unknown to me) is a diminutive piano based roughly on the harpsichord – so it's hard for me to imagine a "collection of most favorite negro melodies" played on one. Probably just another indignity visited on African Americans of the time.

Embarrassing racial implications aside, the artwork is more reminiscent of the sort of work you'd expect on a stock certificate or bank note. This is common of the time – the art employed is stunning for its complexity and execution. Later cover art would become grossly more cartoonish and kitschy but in the mid-eighteen hundreds a lot of labor was put into rendering acanthus leaves and scrollwork and vistas of distant lands. Some themes persist – the abuse of people of color and the vision of the world as something to be squashed and conquered stuck around until the end.

I've actually danced a quadrille. Its – strange. You're propelled back to a time when men and women couldn't even sit on the same side of the dance floor let alone comingle and (gasp) touch. If you get a chance to try a vintage dance event, go for it. It really opens your eyes to where more modern forms come from and makes you very thankful you didn't live in the eighteen hundreds!

I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)

As I've said before I love the cover art from sheet music. It's a quirky thing, visuals to represent music before the concept of television (not to mention the music video) was a subject for science fiction writers. The artwork on the covers reflects the mores of the time: you get the ugly prejudices, stereotypes, right along with the idealized visions of what the fine life was all about. Some of it is really high quality, some of it is grotesque and cartoonish, but it always is interesting.

Today I thought I'd go trawling through the internet again, searching for a cover to write about. I went to Google images and right on the first page was the cover for a song I knew, Million Dollar Baby. The lyrics for the song are penned by the famous Billy Rose and music was written by the equally famous Fred Fisher. Million Dollar Baby was written for Rose's 1931 Broadway review Crazy Quilt and after that it enjoyed popularity as a song standard performed by various artists including Bing Crosby. I think the sentiment of finding something of great value (or, more appropriately, someone of great value) at a place like Woolworths must have been very appealing as the great depression was just getting its teeth and claws into America. The high times of Puttin' on the Ritz were gone and we weren't quite to Brother can you Spare a Dime but the trajectory had led just about ever average citizen into the bargain basement. It's a nice thought - in the middle of facing the ugliness of economic woes you stumble upon a a pretty face among the cheap, knock-offs and shoddy merchandise and realize all that's gold doesn't glitter.

The cover of this particular printing of Million Dollar Baby proudly states "With Ukulele Accompaniment". There's something you don't see nowadays. I think if you went to a show and were told at the door, "Hey, did you know there's a ukulele accompaniment?" you'd probably turn and run with the specter of Tiny Tim nipping at your heals all the way home – and I don't mean the Dickensian character! Still, that doesn't deal with my most favorite part: the artwork.

Here we see a dear lass of the era holding up a tiny curio that is staked with a price of 10¢. In fact everything in the background bears the same price, 10¢. Makes you wonder why it's called a FIVE and ten cent store if everything in it costs ten cents? Maybe she's shopping the Bergman Sacs of bargain basements. None of that cheap five cent stuff here, we only carry top of the line! That taken as given it still doesn't explain the fact all of the prices are mounted on stakes that apparently are driven into the merchandise. Maybe that's why the stuff's being sold at a discount? De Havilland forgot to fire that batch of china – no problem, the poor sods in the states who'll buy it, mark it ten cents! Or maybe she's shopping in a store that specializes in marzipan that's shaped like dishes? Not that you'd want a stick driven through your dish-shaped marzipan but, it's an explanation (albeit not a good one).

By the way, a brief aside. When is the last time you typed the symbol for cents? Ever try to find it on a computer keyboard? Don't waste your time, the old lazy "c" isn't there any more. You've got to delve deep into the special character set to find the thing. Sign of our time, I guess. Still I like the cent sign a lot better than representing everything as some decimal part of a dollar. I mean can you imagine if the song had been called "I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a $0.05 and $0.10 Store"? There is no poetry in decimals, no romance at all. Not to mention they play jolly hell with the song's rhythm!

Turning my attention back to the artwork and away from the skewered dishes around the subject of our desire, I'm struck by a few things about this lovely, dime-store find. Firstly, she's a bit heavy handed with the blush don't you think? I've seen clowns with cheeks that weren't as fructose-infused-fake-apple red as this picture implies. Not to mention she's apparently applied her blush from bottom eyelid down past her cheekbones and back to her ears. Maybe that's not her fault. Maybe her roommate, Kongo the Gorilla, applied her blush this morning. Gorillas don't know a whit about good makeup. If you don't believe me just try to name three really good cosmetologists who are gorillas. Can't do it, can you? See, I told you.

Her posture is a bit troubling too. I can't decide if the artist was attempting to imply some weird perspective or if our million dollar baby should be wearing a back brace. I tend toward the perspective angle because when you take it in tandem with the circular matting around the picture you get the impression she's being watched through a hidden, dime-store peephole. Maybe she lives in a state where there's a thriving dime store peep-hole fetish community? I almost can hear the heavy breathing of some hot and bothered clerk. If you look closely she's casting a sloe-eyed glance toward the inferred spy with a smirk that makes her seem a lot less like the innocent victim. Oh, knows she's being watched...and she likes it! "Follow me to the gardening department if you're brave enough, you dime-store savage, you!"

There's one more thing I noticed. I don't mean to be crass but – does it look to you like she isn't wearing a bra? I mean, to use the parlance of the fashion channels, the girls aren't exactly well behaved. They seem to be off on their own individual errands if you get my drift. Drift does seem to be the appropriate term there. This of course means that our "Million Dollar Baby" is, in fact, a bra-less dime-store perv with a bad back and poor grooming habits. Good lord, now I've creeped myself out!

Medals and Trophies

If you've read my dear wife's post, you'll know that recently we attended the Fred Astaire Medal Ball to see Quinn and Ralph (sister and brother-in-law respectively) do a showcase dance they've been working on for the past two years. Two years working through the emotional and physical (Ralph fractured a foot – not sure it was dance related) trials of getting a routine polished to the point it can be presented in front of an audience is a tribute to their dedication to dancing. I don't know if I'm that dedicated. Really, I don't like hard – it's hard. I want to give kudos to them for riding out the rough spots, mustering through, and pulling off the best show of the lot. Yes, I'm biased…so?

The Medal Ball gave me a chance to experience two new things: The Murat Shrine Arabian Room and an organized dance event where participating in the dance wasn't the main event. I'm all about new experiences; they open your mind and give you a new perspective. The Medal Ball definitely was no exception.

The Murat Shrine on Mass Ave was constructed in 1909; back about the same time the Indy 500 track was getting its first surfacing (gravel and tar) in preparation for an August opening. It's fashioned to look like a mosque, with faux prayer towers and striped masonry making the building a representation of all things exotic east (at least in the opinions of 1909's Shriner community). When I heard that the Medal Ball would be held in the Shrine I was thrilled. I'd always wanted to dance there and I had visions of ornate, gold-leaved opulence dripping from every wall and ceiling throughout the building. The reality was a lot less glamorous. We parked off North Street, walked across the lot to the main entrance, ascended a rather institutional looking set of stairs, and emerged in a cramped hallway just outside the Arabian Room where the event was to be held.

The Arabian Room is really very modern looking. A coffered ceiling with a night sky motif replete with fiber-optic twinkling stars is the outstanding feature of the space. The dance floor is parquet over (what felt like) a concrete slab and the walls are plain. The Medal Ball décor was very classy, a tasteful job, but the space was less than I expected. Maybe that's the down side of having a great love of historic spaces – whey they've suffered the indignity of what This Old House would call 're-muddling' I come away feeling a great and lingering sense of loss.

Beyond the space, the experience of a Medal Ball was a whole other thing. I've witnessed ballroom dance competitions on our local PBS station. They're interesting but edited with all the tender attention of a sausage making. Sections are hacked out of context and mashed together to fit into an hour time slot with no sense of continuity. This weekend I got a chance to see what happens at what I can only assume is a similar sort of event (even if it's not a competition). If you're going to be a part of a Medal Ball here's what you should expect: the evening will unfold as a series of testing out of medal levels, progressing from Bronze I through the highest level of student participating in testing out, then there will be showcases and demonstrations interspersed through the evening. If you're lucky there'll be a bit of open dancing between events.

Our interest, of course, was one particular showcase - Quinn and Ralph's. With luck their routine happened third in the rotation and (again in my totally biased opinion) was the high point of the evening. No other routine had people clapping to the music – so I'm taking that as my evidence.

It was an experience, seeing what goes into one of these events. In the past few months, Kelly and I have witnessed the steady ratcheting-up of stress. Our normally bubbly dance instructor grew more and more serious and the dance studio gradually went from calm to buzzing with nervous energy. Every lesson there were at least two couples practicing their routines and fretting over costumes, shoes, or that step they just couldn't nail. Several times one of the instructors told us we should do a routine next year – I don't know. It's an investment that shouldn't be undertaken lightly and I don't really know that I want to make my dance experience so serious. Dance to me is an escape and escaping into the pressure of an upcoming performance in front of a live audience when Kelly and I have already decided we're not into the 'medaling' experience…well, I don't know.

Showcase and Trophy Ball

If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear? - Stevie Nicks

My sister and her husband successfully performed their dance routine at the Showcase and Trophy Ball at the beautiful Murat Temple last night. Quinn said they made some mistakes, but I sure didn’t see anything wrong…it flowed beautifully from start to finish. Here they are (plus my mom's head :-) )

For those of you that don’t know, this event is combination of an elegant dinner-dance, student testing, and dance routines…kind of like a recital for dancers. Quinn and Ralph’s routine was fabulous; a 50’s inspired number with lots of cute moves that matched perfectly with the music, a testimony both to them and to their teacher, Melissa Smith, who is Gary and my teacher also. And speaking of our instructor (the best in the world, by the way), she and her husband Mark did a rumba that was awe inspiring and HOT…exactly as a rumba should be. Wow. All of the routines were good. Another accolade to Mark and Melissa and all of the staff. Quinn and Ralph’s was the best.

Well…it WAS.

Anyway. Think for a minute about what a “routine” entails; for a 3ish minute song that means every beat of the music is choreographed. Every beat, in other words, has a prescribed movement, facial expression, flourish, or hesitation. Every one. Can you imagine how hard that is? And not only do you have to learn that, you also have to practice what to do if you miss a step…you can’t go back to the beginning.

And that leads me to what I really wanted to talk about. I could go on and on about how good my sister and Ralph are. I could speak volumes about their costumes. I could comment about their technique. All of those things were spot on. But more important than all of that was the doing of it. Both Quinn and Ralph have overcome much to accomplish this. The learning and the practice, of course. But also curve balls and difficulties. They were supposed to do it last year, but Ralph injured himself. And Quinn, like me, does not like public performance.

But they did it anyway. Ralph could have gotten discouraged after he couldn’t do the routine last year. Quinn could have decided it was just too scary. But they persevered and did whatever it took to obtain this lofty goal. It was so wonderful to see them afterwards; Ralph looked happy and proud. Quinn was like…champagne is the only word I can use to describe her…bubbly and effervescent.

As Stevie insinuated, perhaps for magic to happen there must be some kind of dragon to slay. If anyone could just go out there on stage without practice, fear, the threat of injury, or other personal demons a performance wouldn’t be special.

Sigh. And it was.

PS. That was MY SISTER out there!!!!!! WhoooooooooooHoooooooooooooo!!!!!

OK. I’m done now.

Antisocial Social Dancing

Is it so wrong to be an antisocial social dancer? I mean, last night Kelly and I headed out for a Friday at Riolo with the Brickyard Boogie Dancers and when we got there the parking lot was noticeably empty. I counted heads two thirds of the way through the evening and got about 44 members in attendance. A small crowd, to be sure, but I have to say I liked it that way. The Riolo (I'm sure I've mentioned before) isn't a big place and when the whole club is in attendance the dance floor can be kind of tight. Toss in a few people with marginal floor manners and you're dodging elbows and knees all night long. Friday, even with me feeling tired after a tough week of work, I never really felt overwrought.

So I guess what I'm saying is that, every once in awhile it's not such a bad thing to have an empty house!