Monday 4 May 2020

Sometimes this blog will just be something like "Have you seen Crosseyed and Painless?"


 I first saw this video on Talking Heads' VHS compilation Storytelling Giant and I'm pretty sure I stopped sitting out dances soon after. Voluntarily walking onto a dancefloor and moving on the spot had never been something I'd associated with myself before, it seemed too serious and difficult, like sport. I'm not really sure what these dancers were doing that felt so different, but I loved the undercover melodrama of it, the Tex Averish sneakiness, and although I couldn't copy the moves I could happily overact to an improvised internal monlogue in time with some music, which is what I began doing after seeing this, and have been doing ever since. It's choreographed by Toni Basil.

 And like Toni, I've still got it.

 P.S. Full Shakespeare is still happening, but other than a link in my profile and maybe a weekly round-up I'm going to start letting the blog, youtube and instagram accounts do their own thing a bit more from now on. I'll still plug stuff here, I just don't want to get tunnel vision, and I want to let my eyes dart. So today's video is still uploading, but Sunday's can be watched here (controversially The Taming of the Shrew starts a hole act earlier than Act One). I hope like Ms. Basil you're all using it and not losing it out there.

3 comments:

  1. More grist for the theory that Toni Basil shaped the choreography of this nation. As a ten-year-old in a school playground, I was pretty much her core demographic.

    Mind you, the least said about her scary pink dog video the better.

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  2. I'm not sure that's the least. Is that actually the real Barbara Woodhouse? I can't tell any more.

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  3. It's Janet Brown, apparently. I don't think the real Woodhouse had dance moves like that.

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