Don’t ever let your feet stop moving, and lilt like you mean it!

This picture was inspired by the ever-popular Danzon #2 by a certain composer named Marquez. It is fantastic and should be danced to the world over. It’s so fabulous Flairé and Flaria danced to it and I tried to draw their halting, lilting, sometimes (in Flairé’s case, anyway,) twitchy dance movements or, as here, gliding, lilting, whirling, intricate dance movements. In their style of dance, there is a lot of expression with the shoulders as well as the hips and feet. There is more I could say, but I’d need a lot more room. A lot more room while I hash out different ideas and try to get down what I think about various different styles. Like they have certain leg extensions like in ballet, but they dance in circles that appear heavily choreographed (there’s no caller, and it just weaves in and out and spirals like crazy), or they dance in couples, and in that, both genders lead for different parts, and there’s a lot that resembles acrobatics (like helping your partner up so s/he can do a flip over your head and stuff like that) and then there’s single dancing, which has even more acrobatics like standing on one hand and handsprings and wild spins. Though that’s more for the fast ones. The slow ones sometimes you’re lucky to catch anyone moving. Well, not quite, but they do move awfully slowly. They move less acrobatically and with more focus on beautiful positions and reaching with their long limbs.

In this picture, they’re doing a sort of lilting, exaggerated moon-walk, mirroring each other. Although that makes me think of Leahy’s The French, which is one of Flairé’s more favourite lilty dances. Whoo.

That video is great, by the way. Gustavo Dudamel is just surrounded by a SEA of strings. And that’s not even counting the ranks of winds and brass and the percussion team! I first heard it played by the UVic orchestra, and that’s where I fell in love with it.

I overused the word ‘lilt’ today, didn’t I?

I need to dance more. I’m a blob. Ick.