never ever

She never wants to see another dance where people throw themselves on, around, or over, walls – walls with holes, or walls with sticks poking out of them, or movable walls, or tilting walls. No more wall dances. She never wants to see another dance with dancers heavily throwing each other onto the floor and rolling across the stage with furious velocity. She never wants to see another dance where someone holds their leg up to their head while turning. She never wants to see another dance where somebody shakes uncontrollably for an extended period of time. She never wants to see another dance where someone leaps from the side of the stage up into the air as if they are taking flight while forcing her to pretend that she doesn’t know that there’s a mattress off stage. She never wants to see another dance with helium balloons tied to the dancers’ bodies. You get the drift after the first jerk and bounce. She never wants to see another dance to a Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, or Meredith Monk song, which basically cuts out most new modern dance student’s dances. She never wants to see another dance where a large group of people do the exact same percussive gestural movement to a pounding beat in rhythmic unison, which is practically every dance made in the 2000’s. She never wants to see another dance where at some supposed pivotal moment, the whole troupe comes down stage to the edge of the fourth wall, stands in a line facing the audience, and stares blankly forward and shifts their hips from side to side, another one of the 2000’s unfortunate staples. She never wants to see another dance that has a cartwheel in it, or a handstand, and definitely not a dance with a back handspring. This limits most dances on prime-time television or the Disney Channel. She never wants to see another dance where the dancer lip syncs the lyrics of the song they are dancing to, a dance where the women get lifted and the men don’t, or a dance where everyone is wearing nude unitards – sadly, something she herself has done numerous times in her life. She realizes this means that about 99.9% of all dances she never wants to see. Ever. She is totally fine with what this says about her.

Full disclosure: She is guilty of choreographing ALL the dances listed above EXCEPT a dance where someone holds their leg up to their head while turning, and a dance where someone leaps from the side of the stage up into the air as if they are taking flight. If she did make these two dances, she would have the person holding their leg to their head while turning leap onto a mattress on stage. Now THAT would be a good dance.