Dance Module 2

Interview with Danielle Maas: Ballet

I'm Professor Dolly Kelepecz, and this is the second video about ballet, and I'm interviewing Danielle Maas, and this is the class "Sex, Dance, and Entertainment." Thanks, Danielle, for being here today and letting me talk to you about some of your personal experiences. Like I said, this is the second video, so you've already watched me talk to you about some of the same subject matter that I'm going to ask Danielle about. So, first, I'd like to ask her to tell us a little bit about herself and an abridged type of bio. Don't go crazy. OK. OK. For myself, I grew up as a competitive dancer, doing all styles of dance, and at about the age of nine, I really fell in love with ballet and knew that was going to be my passion and what I wanted to pursue in my career. At the age of 15, I moved to New York to pursue that training at a deeper level, where I trained in New York for five years at Manhattan Youth Ballet. Can I ask you-- I'm going to interrupt you. Can I ask you, where are you originally from, and I have to say, like, having the opportunity to go to New York to do training when you're a child is pretty special, so tell me about that. Right. So I grew up in Minnesota, and I had done some summer intensive trainings, which are very common for ballet dancers, and one of them took me to New York when I was 12 with the School of American Ballet. I love New York. I knew that's where I wanted to be. So when I went back my freshman year, after freshman year of high school, I knew that I wanted to stay. So I continued to audition, got into my school there, and then that's where I continued my training in New York. Right, and then what brought you to Las Vegas? So my career kind of took a little loop around, and I did my ballet career in New York until I was 20. I decided to transition back into commercial dance, which I did in Los Angeles. I did that from 20 to 25, but I knew I was really missing doing ballet, so I decided to audition for Nevada Ballet Theater, which I joined the company at 26. So I have to say, for dancers, it's very important, the more different styles you practice or learn-- and you'll learn about those in this class, so you learn about jazz, and ballet, and modern, and there's tap. 2:13 There's many different styles. The more styles you know, the more work you get. Correct. I'm not a spring chicken, but I've never done anything but dance my entire life, so I consider that being very lucky, but it's because I didn't just do ballet, right? Ballet is an elite-- it's almost like being an elite athlete, right? Yes, absoolutely. Yeah, and there's few jobs, and many people, many little girls that want to be ballerinas, right? Absolutely. There are a lot of fish in that pond, and to be able to train at that elite level, that's why I had to move to New York, because staying in your local schools and staying in your local studios, you can progress as a dancer, but to be able to reach that top, professional level, you need to make sure that you're getting the top, elite training to match that. Yeah. And as you heard in the video before. I grew up in LA, so there were those people from Ballet Russe there that I could study from. So you're absolutely right, in the middle of Minnesota, it's going to be really difficult to find the training that you need to become a professional dancer. OK, so name your first-- you kind of did, but let's go into a little bit more detail-- your first professional experience. So my first professional experience, I would say, is with Nevada Ballet. My journey is a little different, because most people join a ballet company between the ages of 17 to 20 years old, typically, so for me to join a company at the age of 26 felt very delayed, but it was definitely the right timing for me and for my career, joining Nevada Ballet in 2016. I proceeded to continue with them for six seasons. I started as a trainee and worked my way into different rankings of the company, which I now reside as a resident guest artist. Yeah, so that's kind of a unique title. You get to learn a lot of different things, and then, at the last minute, they go, guess what, you're going to do this. So that says a lot for you as a dancer, to be able to be that versatile and be able to be motivated to learn things when you don't know you're going to get to do them. Absolutely. But if you're dedicated enough, you will be able to have the experiences that you desire, so I really like that, right now, Danielle just graduated with her BFA pro, so that's a special degree track that we have at UNLV, and I'm very proud of her for doing that, and she's going on to get her master's right now, so that's also very exciting. I find her, she kind of mirrors me, like, 30 years younger, so I appreciate her so much, and her desire to learn and always be on board with something new, something different. So, anyway, let's get back you. Enough about me. No, that's OK. Well, I just feel like that versatility that you're talking about, even in training different styles of dance, in the background that I was brought up in, it definitely prepared me for the position that I have at the company, because I have to be on at all times, constantly knowing what's happening within the company, and there's been multiple shows throughout my career with the company that I get thrown into different parts and different things that are not necessarily what I was rehearsing for, but I'm that go-to girl, so if there's something, someone gets injured, someone goes out, they have to have that really strong backup person that they know they can just throw into any part, and that's where I'm at. So, when you were with Nevada Ballet Theater, is there any one individual that you felt really honored or thought was a special experience for you? Yeah, absolutely. So, my first season, our second ballet that we did with the company was Swan Lake, and I was so honored, because it was Cynthia Gregory's Swan Lake. And funny enough, one of my very first summer intensives that I did, she was one of the teachers at that summer intensive, so it was a very full-circle moment for me, because, as a student, you train with these professionals, obviously, to aspire to be able to work with them at that level, and I did have that opportunity, as the new and young person in the company, usually you're doing typical core work, and maybe just studying and understudying, and she saw something in me while she was there and working with me, and actually gave me the honor of being able to do the part of one of the four little swans, so that was a very memorable moment for me. Right, and she's one of our honorees this year in the College of Fine Arts, Cynthia Gregory. She was very instrumental in inspiring me, because she's tall, and in the '70s-- I know, I'm 5'10'', and that doesn't seem really tall right now, because everybody's tall now, but of course, I was ahead of my time right, and so she was 5'8'', and it was really amazing, at that time, to have a ballerina like her. So in such a position with ABT, and she was a soloist, and she was tall, and she'd go and point, and she was working with Fernando Bujones and all these really famous men, so she was a big inspiration for me, so it's nice to hear that you have the same kind of experience and inspiration from her. So, next, I'd like you to-- so, in this class, we try to talk about the difference between neoclassical and classical, and I've gone into my own definition of that in the first video, but I'd like you to give me your take on that. OK. So, when I think of classical versus neoclassical, for me, it feels like classical is the foundation. It's where ballet stems from. It's very romantic ballet. And as times have evolved, as just the journey of ballet, I feel like neoclassical was born out of that, and it feels like it's taking the foundation of traditional ballet, all the steps that we know, but making ir-- I don't want to use the word "exciting"-- That's funny. It's a little more abstract. It breaks the mold of what traditional ballet is. And I think, for someone who maybe doesn't understand the history of ballet, they might look at ballet as, oh, well, those ballets are kind of boring, but someone that isn't as exposed to the art, they're seeing neoclassical ballet, and there's more energy, there's more fire, there's more excitement. And that, obviously, coming from George Balanchine, and I've gotten to perform quite a few of his ballets, and they're-- I mean, Western Symphony was one of the ballets, which is very nontraditional. It's cowboys, and it's just not your typical romantic ballet, and he was breaking that mold and creating neoclassical. I have to say, when I was teaching this class face to face, in the in-person version of this class, and I would show them classical ballet, and, you know, they'd sit politely and watch, but as soon as I would put on the neoclassical, and they're in those skintight unitards, it just was a little bit more exciting and something that they could relate to a little bit more. OK, so thank you for that. And, lastly, I would like you to leave the students with some sort of inspirational message about maybe your journey. Or maybe, you know, don't give up hope, or whatever it is that you find you've taught the students that helps inspire them. Yeah, absolutely. One thing that I always hold pretty strong to myself is just the message that, you know, you may be delayed, but you haven't been denied, and I feel like that holds really strong in my career, because it felt like just the path and the timeline in which I did things, even doing school, I started school at a much later age than typical, so even if you feel like your timeline is not matching with what you aspire to be doing, you might be swirling around in different directions, and your timeline may be delayed, but your opportunities are not denied, you just have to keep chasing after those dreams. Right, and while you're chasing, you can do other things, like go to school, or start your own business, or, you know, keep inspired, but you don't necessarily have to-- don't give up, right? Absolutely. OK. So thanks to Danielle for helping me explain a little bit more about how important ballet is to me and to her, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the videos. Thank you

Interview with Nick San Pedro

today I have Nick San Pedro with me, and he is an artist here in Las Vegas. Welcome, Nick. Thanks for having me, darling. He's such an amazing guy. He not only works with paint and sketching. Doing drawings, but he also does my social networking stuff. So he's pretty amazing. He's an unbelievable artist. He does a lot of body work. Body paint too. So we're going to talk about body paint, since this is sex, dance entertainment. We're going to talk about body painting. So I first just want to know a little bit of history about you, Nick. So if you could tell me your background, maybe where you went to school? Or how you got into being an artist. Thank you, darling. Well I was born in Las Vegas in 1978. To a Cuban- Chinese father, and a Spanish-French mother. Oh my goodness. And from a very young age, I started drawing. And people around me thought that my artwork was pretty extraordinary for my age. And so it gave me a lot of positive feedback, and I used that as a tool my whole life to get the attention I wanted for everything that I was creating. So one thing led to another, and I got it in my mind that would grow up to be a famous artist. And eventually my grandmother taught me to paint, and I became an editorial cartoonist in high school. And that carried on to you UNLV. Where I started painting on canvas and selling my artwork. And started body painting, and it's just been an amazing world of art and creativity. I think one of the most important things that you've said is that you believed that you were going to grow up to be a very famous artist, or a very good artist, or an excellent artist. I think that's one of the biggest things that I like to try and motivate the students here at UNLV To have that sense of confidence. And then you had your grandmother who had helped you, guided you, and tell us a little bit about that. Well, I was always drawing, and I knew I was doing something profound because of the way people were reacting. So she sat me down and taught me to paint with oils. And I just loved it. And there's something so organic about creating artwork on canvas like the masters used to do. And I just painted all of the time, and I started really being inspired by music. And that led to me painting a lot of musicians. And that led to painting celebrities. And then eventually me getting to share my artwork with all those musicians. So some of the celebrities that you've painted for or done paintings of are? You'll be able to pull that up on his YouTube channel, which is pretty amazing. His stuff is amazing. It's very colorful, and who would you say you were most like as an artist? My work is most compared to Andy Warhol's pop style. And all of my work is figurative. So it's a lot of human face and body. So yeah mostly compared to Andy Warhol. Very pop-style. And so now, give us a list of some of those-- drop some names. Well musicians and celebrities began to interact with my artwork when I created a chalkboard advertising Nellie Furtado's show at the Hard Rock Hotel. And her management contacted the PR department at the Hard Rock. And said that she loved the chalkboard I created, and they wanted to give it to her. So they set up a meet and greet. And after that I was invited to create artwork for Last Call with Carson Daly. Where I did a painting of Carmen Electra. They recorded me in a time lapse. She freaked out loved it. And eventually I got commissioned to do art work for the Grammy awards in 2003. And that snowballed into an incredible effect where then I got to do custom artwork for Elton John's green room at the Colosseum at Caesar's Palace. That led to me doing artwork for Celine Dion and Jerry Seinfeld. And one celebrity after another. And it's just been incredible. I think that's pretty amazing because you started at Starbucks, right? Drawing some pictures at Starbucks. And then putting them on the wall. And it started there, and then you went to the Hard Rock. And then everything just started to explode. I think when things are meant to happen, that's what happens. They just start to roll in that direction. Yeah it was pretty incredible momentum, when it began to actually start to happen. OK so this class is called sex, dance, and entertainment. So how does what you do-- how does your art work apply to that title? Well most of my artwork is inspired by music and celebrities, so it fits into that category very easily. And I have created many pieces in my art career that were too provocative and very sexy for the places I was showcasing my artwork. I was showing pieces at Starbucks coffee showing nudity, and it created quite a problem with customers and people in management. So I got to experience a lot of really interesting things with having my artwork showcased in that kind of a venue. OK so I talked about it in the beginning. That you actually do body paintings. So tell me a little bit about that. Because that definitely has a sexual side to it or a sensual side to it. The very first time that I body painted was for George Maloof when he opened the Palms Hotel on my birthday. So that was a pretty special way to begin body painting. And then I got an agent, and she started to sell me out doing live body painting for events. And it was such an incredible response, eventually I got to body paint for Michael Jordan's birthday party. And a lot of other really high profile things that put my artwork out there. Like in a more commercial way. I was doing logos for MTV on bodies for parties. You know what's really cool about that? It's like you have reinvented yourself to actually be applicable to what's happening now. So your style of art, not only is it good on canvas, but you've learned how to use your art in a very popular way. Which is with body art right now. And I'm sure you've designed tattoos or something, haven't you? Because it's similar to that. I've been very lucky that I've been able to not only share my artwork on canvas, but also body paint. And now I'm creating artwork on fabric for many performers around the world. I'm putting my artwork on everything you can imagine. Costumes? And now I'm about to merchandise my artwork in a series of metal prints. So it's very exciting to think of all the different places that my artwork can be applied. Right? But it couldn't do that if you weren't able to reinvent your original idea of painting. You have to be open to the stuff so that you can move forward with the times. Yes. I've changed with the times. And I did digital artwork now. I work in every medium. So if there's any kind of creativity in the visual arts, I have found a way to play with it until I have mastered it for myself. OK so now I want to talk a little bit about your personal life. So how has your professional career affected your personal life? Or has it? Maybe it hasn't. Well I'm very lucky because both of my partners are in the entertainment field. Derek Barry being the world's most famous Britney Spears impersonator. And MacKenzie Claude having a very colorful modeling career. I've gotten to body paint both of them for many events. And also paint them on canvas for many things. And they've been able to collaborate with me and help me with what I'm doing with my visual artwork. Whether they are inspiring what I'm painting for my art shows or helping me frame pieces. And it's just amazing. It's nice to be around people that are all artistic, because then there's that flow that's happening all the time. Yes, when you combine two lights, you create such a more amazing light. And the creative energy-- --More colorful-- --Just flows. Yeah definitely. Yeah. OK so the next question I have are what are the positive aspects of your career? If you were to say what are the most positive things that have happened. The most positive aspect of my career is the happiness I get to create for the people that I'm sharing my artwork with. You can make somebody cry with artwork, and make them laugh, and excite them, or invoke thought in them by making them think out of the box. There is a component to this class that is art versus entertainment. And this is a great segway into that. So if I were to ask you, if you thought there was a difference between art and entertainment, what would you say? If you were going to define those two things. Well art can be entertaining, and entertainment is very artistic. So they go hand in hand. If you look though for purist definitions, art is to evoke emotion or feeling, and entertainment is for folly or amusement. And yes we do-- and maybe you want to jump in here. I believe that art can be in the entertainment realm, and in entertainment can crossover into the art realm. But I do believe that maybe they are two separate things that marry very well. Absolutely I always feel that as an artist it's my duty to create something entertaining for my audience. Something for them to enjoy. It's an escapism, like entertainment. Going to see a Broadway musical. That's very interesting that you feel a responsibility to your audience, which I think is really valuable. Because you can't just go up there and do something because it makes you feel good. But you've also learned how to make your art satisfying to yourself and also entertaining to others. I am very lucky. Yeah you are lucky for that. Because sometimes people are artistic, but the rest of the world is like, huh? I don't get it. Yeah. I've always thought it was pretty amazing that I could sit down and do something that is so satisfying to me. And paint a beautiful woman. That is so exciting for me to do. And that people can react so wonderfully to it. That's great. OK. So now on the other side. If there was one negative thing, what would you say? Or is there? Maybe there's not. Maybe you don't see any negativity. I've crossed all sorts of negative aspects of what it is to be a visual artist. Starting out it was very tricky with my Cuban-Catholic family. And I was creating a lot of provocative things. And being gay, and my father was not quite sure what I was doing. And he'd be like, what are you doing at night going to meet the client. You need have to be hooking. [LAUGHTER] I was like, yeah dad we live in Vegas, but people work different hours, so I got to work all hours. That's one thing about Vegas, you can work all hours. But it also is maybe not such a positive aspect to that. Because you do have to sleep, at some point. And you have a life during the day. And so it makes it difficult. Right? I've encountered plenty of interesting and shady characters in Las Vegas, creating artwork for everyone. So here's something I like to ask, because most of the time artists have-- it doesn't matter if it's dance, or if it's music, or if it's painting, or sketching, or drawing. It doesn't matter. They have a hard time making a living at that. So how has that been for you? Is that been easy, hard? I was very lucky in the beginning because I started pricing my paintings in the low hundreds. And they were moving so quickly out of the coffee shops where I was selling them that I had to raise my prices. And so basically, I topped out in the coffee shop world at about $1,000 for an original piece. And when I started to move into galleries, before the market crashed, I was amazed that I could create a painting in one day or sell for more than $5,000. And none of my colleagues had that kind of experience with their visual art. And all my professors here at UNLV were just like-- Yeah because you were getting a degree here. Right. In the beginning, they were a little bit discouraging you-- Right. --towards that direction because it wasn't a very classical. Exactly. You were doing your own thing. And then-- --And then they saw that I was sharing my artwork with celebrities and making a living from it. And they all had wished to be able to do that with their own career before many of them became instructors. And there's so much value in sharing your knowledge of art with students. But I was able to do it as a young artist. And so I'm very fortunate. That you've always got to do what you want to do. I feel that way about my life too. I've never really done anything except for what I trained to do since I was very young. And that was dance. I just don't want to be confusing. OK so lastly, if there is something that you would want to leave as a message for the students here at UNLV, what might you say? I had a lot of discouragement, growing up being an artist, because I knew- - many people would say that you don't make any money until you're dead. As a visual artist. If you have a dream, go for it. And take all the criticism that you get, and let it mold you into becoming a better version of yourself. Yeah, I think those are really powerful words. I can't tell you how many times I get students that come to me and go I really want to be a creative writer. Or I really want to be a dancer, but my parents say that I should get a business degree. And nowadays, an undergraduate degree is not as powerful as a master's degree. So get your undergrad in whatever you want to do. Then you can make up for it in your master's degree, if you choose to do that. So I think that's really valuable information and advice for the students. Thank you. Thanks Nick, I really appreciate you spending the time and sharing your life. My pleasure. That's very-- Thanks for having me, darling. --precious to you. Thank you

Ballet Part l Dolly Kelepecz

Hi, Professor Kelepecz here again, and this is Module 2 of Sex, Dance and Entertainment. And in this module, we're going to talk about the comparisons of art and entertainment. I'm going to talk to a couple of different people and their opinions about what is the difference between art and entertainment, and is there really a difference between art and entertainment? We're also going to cover the classical forms of dance in this section, meaning ballet, modern, and jazz. And I was a ballet dancer for many years. You watched me in the last module talking about being a showgirl. And in between my showgirl days, I started out as a ballet dancer, I mentioned that before, but I left being a showgirl and went back to ballet. I kind of flip-flopped back and forth throughout my career. A little bit about my bio, I started dancing when I was five. I'll never forget, because the bus came to our house. I'm from Covina, California. It's a suburb of Los Angeles. And the bus came to the house and asked my mom if she would like her daughter to take dancing lessons. And I quickly hid behind my mother's skirts, saying, no, Mommy, no, no, no, I don't want to do that, because I was painfully shy. I loved to dance with my Shirley Temple records and sing for my mother and father, but I wasn't really crazy about getting out in front of other people. Well, since, that's changed a lot. I guess my mom must have known something about me. But she sent me to the traditional tap, ballet, and acrobat studio. And the bus would come and pick you up, and then the bus would drop you back off at home, and the only qualification was you had to remember where you lived. You had to remember your address, you had to remember how to get back home. Well, that was a real problem for me. The first time the bus tried to drop me back off at home, all I remembered is that I lived across the street from a grocery store. Well, there's a lot of grocery stores in the suburbs of Los Angeles. So I got lost the first time I came home. I prevailed and got over that trauma of getting lost in the bus and being the last kid on the bus, but finally getting off the bus, and getting off the bus and going home, and continued, and really became smitten by ballet. By the age of 10, I was being driven to ballet class probably every evening. And by the age of 12, my mother was driving me into Beverly Hills, which was probably 25 30 miles from where we lived on the freeway, and Los Angeles freeways, we know what that's like. So a lot of traffic. My mom spent a lot of time on the freeway, driving me to and from ballet class. So I joined the ballet company when I was 13. I was qualified to do that. The ballet company that I joined was called Los Angeles Ballet Society. You're watching a DVD, and in the DVD you'll notice a gentleman by the name of David Lichine and a woman by the name of Tania Riabouchinska. They're both in the videos, the DVD that you're going to watch. They were both my teachers, and they were both the founders of Los Angeles Ballet Society. That was a really glorious time, although I was only 13 years old. And I think that was probably the biggest problem, that I really didn't get what I was doing, because I was so young. I was in this company from the age of 13 to 15 and a half, when I quit. During that time, I got to meet movie stars, because in those days, that was the only ballet company in Los Angeles. That was the place to be. And it was in Beverly Hills, where all the movie stars live. So I got to meet Paul Newman, I got to go to Paul Newman's house, I got to play pool with Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward. I got to speak to her. She was a big connoisseur of ballet and had the films of the Royal Ballet. And we used to watch them, and sit in their viewing room and watch them. And at 13 I guess I really didn't have a grasp. Now I do. I think back on it like, wow, was I a lucky kid or what? I met Charlton Heston, the Nelson brothers, their wife was in the ballet company, and actually, our Fletcher Jones, that's Fletcher Jones Jr., that has the Fletcher Jones dealership here. His father had a dealership in Los Angeles, and his sister, Stephanie, was in Los Angeles Ballet society. So everybody who was anybody was involved in Los Angeles Ballet Society. And then it turned into Los Angeles Ballet later on. After Los Angeles Ballet, I said I quit when I was 15 and a half. I went on and worked for Disney. I've done a little bit of everything in my career. And I think as an entertainer, as a performer, as a dancer, as a singer, you have to be open and you have to be able to mold yourself to whatever entertainment situation you find yourself in, in order to keep working, and that's what I did. So I worked for Disney. I also worked for a circus in Switzerland. So I've done a lot of things, different than ballet, different from showgirl, but all based on my ballet training. Ballet is the prominent base of all dance movement. To be really proficient at any dance movement, to have a good strong ballet base is very important. Doesn't matter if it's tap, jazz, modern. Ballet helps with the technique and the structure. So after Los Angeles Ballet, I went to Disney. After Disney, I came here, when I was 19. I mentioned that in the last module. And I worked on the Strip. As I worked on the Strip, there was a newly formed ballet company here called Nevada Ballet Theater, and the artistic director was Vassili Sulich. I worked for Nevada Ballet Theater for a year and a half, two years before I left for Switzerland to join a company in Switzerland. So I was not only working on the Strip as a showgirl, a Bluebell dancer at the MGM, now Bally's. But I was working in the day, and we would do our ballet performances in afternoon, in the afternoon. And they would be performed at the university, here at the university. And all of our rehearsals were done here at the university. So I've had a really longstanding relationship with the university. I even substituted some ballet classes back in 1977. So I've been around and watched this university grow, and especially as far as the arts are concerned. I've seen a lot of growth in the arts. From the Nevada Ballet Theater, which is now Nevada Ballet, I went to, I mentioned, I went to Europe. And after moving to Europe, I soon got a job with a circus. I was a ballet dancer in the circus, and I did ballet on horseback. So not only was I doing the pointe work or the dancing on your toes in the middle of the arena, I would then go out into the menage, and there was a leather loop on the side of a horse, and I was doing vaulting, jumping, and flipping on the side of the horse. So that was a really interesting experience. From there, I joined the Zurich Opera Ballet. And this company was founded by George Balanchine, also one of the names in the DVD that you're watching during this module. This company was founded by George Balanchine, but ran by a woman by the name of Patricia Neary. And I got a job in this company because there was one other girl in the company who was as tall as I was. I mentioned in the last module that I was a little tall for ballet, especially in those days. Now, no. People are just bigger now, taller now. But in those days, being 5'10, and then putting on pointe shoes and being 6-foot, that was a little bit out of the norm. So there was another girl my height, and they hired me, and that was my experience in Zurich, Switzerland. I came back to Las Vegas and joined the Las Vegas Civic Ballet Company. After that, I started my own company here, and it was called Opus Dance Ensemble. And it was comprised of everybody on the Strip. A little bit like when Nevada Ballet Theater started, where they were using Strip dancers, or dancers from the Strip, to comprise the ballet company. Only Opus Dance Ensemble was ballet dancers, jazz dancers, modern dancers, tap dancers, any kind of dance. It was more of a variety-type show. The company was around for 10 years, and then I decided, it took a lot of energy to do that. Not only was I a performer in the company, but organizing it, directing it, making sure that it stayed on track. It was a little bit time-consuming, and took a lot of effort for someone who was working full time as the principal dancer-singer at the Stardust, at the Lido show. In 1993, I mentioned that I quit working in the shows on the Strip, and I went to Houston. I worked at Houston Ballet. I was hired at Houston Ballet as the body conditioning manager. I in 1987 was certified in Pilates, and I teach that here on campus as well as other classes for the dance department. And I have Pilates studios here in town. I was the body conditioning manager for Houston Ballet, and also I did some character roles with Houston Ballet for a while. I was there for about a year, and it was a pretty great experience to have gone through, using my ballet to go not only through these different dance companies and having these different experiences out of Las Vegas, in Europe, but also working in a circus. And it's all because of my dance and ballet training. I don't want to make this module about history. I do want you to be able to identify the differences between ballet, modern, and jazz. And one of the primary differences are the shoes that are worn. And you'll notice that when talking with Louis Kavouras, who's the head of the dance department, the chair of the dance department, he talks about modern dance and how they're mostly barefoot. That's the traditional modern dance movement. But ballet is done, when you're younger, with these soft slippers on. And they're pretty flimsy. And these are what you very first start off in when you're dancing. And then as you become more proficient, you use this harder shoe to stand on your toes and do some supported work on the ends of your toes. I'm going to show you a couple of pictures now. And these two pictures are some things that you need to be able to identify. You see the one picture in the silver costume. That one picture in the silver costume shows you a neoclassical type of ballet. Neoclassical is a more contemporary or modern dance style of ballet. So it's not the traditional, inside the box, technical types of movements that you do when you do a classical ballet. The word neoclassical was coined by George Balanchine. Now we don't really use that term so much. We use the term contemporary ballet. But neoclassical was the term for the fusion of ballet and modern together when they first started doing that. And it was first coined by George Balanchine, the gentleman in the DVD. The next picture I want to show you is a classical picture. And this classical picture is in a tutu. This is a picture of Paquita, which is a classical ballet. And notice that both the neoclassical and the classical picture, they're both done in Pointe shoes, they're both standing on their toes, even one is in a leap, but they're both on your toes. Just the attire is different, and in classical work, everything is conformed to the basic ballet steps positions. There's nothing that veers from the traditional moves and the traditional box, so to speak, that ballet is put in. We do the steps and those steps are not modified. There is no modification of movement. So there is a definite difference between neoclassical and classical work. They are both ballet types of movement, but they are different because of the influence of modern dance. So we're going to go on with this module. We will talk to Louis Kavouras about modern dance, and then we'll have a guest speaker also speaking about jazz dance. So I hope you enjoy the DVDs, and I'll see you again.

Terms: Definition of Art

Pre-20th Century - All art was beautiful. Plato - Art must be fine and graceful. Contemplating beauty makes us better human beings. Artists are dangerous. Aristotle - Art is not dangerous but rather cathartic. St. Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274] - Art is subjective. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." David Hume [1756] - Art in a standard of taste. Edwin Burke [18th Century] - The sublime, to explain the unexplainable Hegel [1770-1831] - Art is a method to understand the world and the human condition. Interpretation. Clive Bell [1881-1964] - Art has to have significant form. It must be special. Arthur Dantu [1969] - Art is dead. Andy Warhol makes ordinary objects art. Suzanne Langer - A work of art is an expressive form created for our perception through sense or imagination and what it expresses is human.

Interview with Louis Kavouras, Part I

Hi I'm Dolly Kelepecz, and I'm teaching a class here on campus called sex, dance, and entertainment. Today we're going to focus on modern dance, and I have the chair of the dance department here, Louis Kavouras. And he's going to tell us a little bit about his bio, his history, and his ideas about art and entertainment. Hi Louis, thanks for joining me. Hi Dolly, how are you? Good. Could you start by just telling us a little bit about your background, your bio? Why you started dancing and-- Yeah. My name is Louis Kavouras. I'm a modern dancer and chair of the dance department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Here. I guess I started dancing on a fluke. I had an open elective in my schedule when I went to college. And took a modern dance class. And became very interested in arts and dancing and ended up switching my major. Which was engineering. I find that, probably, one of the most fascinating things about you. That you were really left-brained, and then you went into a right-brained work and art. And I find that really interesting. So could you explain a little bit more about how maybe engineering and dance have something to do with each other. Yeah. Most people think they're so separate, art and science. But what's really interesting about it is when you get to the core level of what both are about, they really end up being about the same thing. Both the arts and the sciences. They just go about it different ways. I think science is always trying to prove existence and prove our humanity and prove it through facts. So we end up with a bunch of very tested, scientifically- formulated principles. And then art is doing it the same way. We're almost proving our existence and proving our sensation of the world, but we're proving it through feeling and through emotion and through expression. Yeah, I think if we look at almost everything in life, it all has to do with-- everything is synergistic. Everything works together. So just kind of interesting to make those connections so that we don't become so separate, but that we become more whole. And that's an interesting-- Yeah, I think in the best-- arts and sciences. In the best possible world, they're supposed to end up at the same place, coming together. Proving the same things. And I think, even as a society-- I went into art, so one of my big missions is to prove why art is important. And any society that only is science-based, loses half of its soul. And the same happens if we were only art-based. Society really needs both and needs them both in balance-- --In balance. And I think we get a little out of balance with that in the United States. I know in Canada and Europe and in South America there's a bigger influence of creativity and art and freedom of expression, as far as the arts go. I want to talk a little bit, more specifically, about your style of modern dance, which comes from Eric Hawkins background. Because that's your Eric Hawkins background. I show a video in this class about Martha Graham, and I also show a video about Isidor Duncan. They are two historians or founders of creative movement in modern dance. So how is Eric Hawkins different, or how does he relate to them? And what is modern dance? What is the definition? Right, right. It's interesting, modern dance. And I sometimes think the term is so strange because-- well modernism was a movement in art. And modern stuck to modern dance. And sometimes-- even when we're talking about modern dance, that's something that's almost a 100 years old now. So what's modern about modern dance? Some of the principles remain modern. But it's a funny term. So for anyone who's just encountering modern dance, they think it's contemporary dance or what's being done in the streets right now. Right, they get confused. They get confused. Right. I find that when I'm teaching. That they think that maybe hip hop, or krumping, or clowning. That's modern dance. Well, it's not really. It's not really because modern is a style. What modern dance is started about 100 years ago at the turn of the century. And there were several things that happened that, I think, set it up. One, there was a large sense of individuality. So society began to change, and people began to think more self-centered, rather than societally-centered. In terms of their thought. They weren't thinking about how they fit in to society, but they were thinking about how they could really find themselves. And the visual art scene follows along that same track. Oh, absolutely. So if you think about where art began, and where the dance began. So we're going to talk about that a little bit later. About the aesthetics of art and entertainment. But we're kind of on the same track. When we talk about modern art or modern dance. Absolutely. All the arts flow on the same river. Sometimes the events happen at different times, and they all learn from each one. In the same way. But what happened with modern dance largely began with a woman named Isidore Duncan. Who I know you teach in your class. And Isidora was probably very captivating as a performer. Charismatic. Very charismatic. And what she did was, she took her shoes off. She showed much more flesh and much more leg than was typically normal at the time. And she expressed herself in her dancing. So she did a lot of improvisation, and a lot of dances that had a spirit to them. And didn't use the vocabulary of ballet. Because that was traditional at that time. All we really knew was ballet movement or Baroque movement. It was very traditional, and it was very codified. She, all of a sudden, started to do things that weren't codified and weren't really set in place. She was expressing something brand new. She was expressing herself. I think if we had to say who would she be today, I think she would be like Madonna-- I was going to say Madonna. --Or Britney Spears or some very captivating star who-- Maybe Elvis. Not today, but like Elvis where he broke the mold. Anybody who breaks the mold. Or the twist with Chubby Checker. All of that broke the mold. Right. So she was that kind of person. If we said-- Isidora was probably a generation before Martha. So if we wanted to say the first generation modern dancer, I sometimes put Isidore door in that category. Of people that were in that era. That were creating something new. Martha Graham was really second generation. And their styles are so different when you watch them. Their styles are very different. Isidora was very free-flowing and very improvisatory. I always talked to the class about it being more circular. Like the movements don't look geometric. They look more flowing and circular. Whereas, Martha Graham looks very geometric. Yeah, very angular, very muscular movements as well. The thing that changed with Martha Graham that was significant is-- Martha Graham did her first concert in probably in 1929. And for many, 1928, 29 was the birth of true modern dance. Because she codified a technique to teach it. That there was a series of exercises that you could go to that class. And before, Isidora didn't quite have the same technique. There was a way of moving, and a way of getting at movement. But Martha created something that was technical. So she created the untraditional, codifying of movement. Which I think happens with anything. When someone comes up with something brand new. In the beginning, it's like free-flowing. And then we have to put it in a box, and we have to-- We find a system. We find a system because we have to teach it. And there comes science. So that's the science of it. And then there is a rebellion against the system, which was largely what happened with Eric. Because Eric Hawkins, who was my mentor, was in the Graham Company. First he was a Balanchine dancer, so he was a ballet dancer. So structured? Left ballet to become a modern dancer with Martha Graham. Structured. Structured. Just a different structure. And then left the Graham Company. And decided that he wanted to create his own technique. So he also had very strong opinions about her technique, and whether it was good for the body or not. He was more anatomical. When I think of Eric Hawkins, I think of an anatomical awareness of movements. A lot like Cecchetti in ballet. An anatomical awareness of where we are in space, when we're making a shape. And largely, by the time he created his own technique it was the 50s. So at that time, in dance, people began to think about what were the muscles that were causing movements. So they were really thinking about the inside of the body, rather than just how does it look. And how do I just get that leg in this position? So they were actually thinking about anatomy and physiology. So Eric had influence of ballet and an influence of modern dance. He created his own method in the 50s, and how did you get involved? Briefly, how did you get involved with Eric Hawkins? And then how did it influence your choreography? Right. Well Eric's technique was largely free-flow. With Martha's technique, we called it bound. Right. So it was really a bound-flow technique. It was a very muscular, lots of punch to it. With Eric's, I think he was looking for a way to soften that technique and to flow within it. And I just happened upon a Hawkin's class. And there was something about the movement that fit. I feel when I look at Eric Hawkins that it's so anatomically correct for your body. That it's pedestrian-looking. The movement is how your body wants to move. Right, right. And I think largely you're looking at a philosophy of movement that up to his technique-- his technique was probably one of the first that said, the body is not something that we conquer, but the body is something that we participate with. Yeah. I try to teach that in dance classes too. That the mind is in control, but the mind must listen to the body. So there has to be a conversation between the mind and the body. Absolutely. It can't just be the body being the boss. Do this, do this. You have to listen and give and take. That's interesting. So now, how has that helped you with your-- or motivated you? Or how did it influence your choreography? For instance, Ocean's or [? Joe? ?] Oh, I think if you look at my choreography, you'll largely see that flow. I mean that's something that-- I loved from his technique. I learned from his technique. And I really have never wanted to stray from that aspect of it. Now there's things that, in my choreography, I probably bring to it. As well as studying dance, I also studied theater. So I'm always interested in bringing a strong theatrical element. That perhaps there is a story. And largely, dance doesn't have a lot of story to it. Even when we look at ballet, where they have very complicated stories. Sometimes, they're always secondary to the movement. Right, right. That's right. Yeah, with mine I'm always looking for a way to bring theater back into the equation. So create a feeling for the audience. Create some sort of-- Absolutely. -- A picture. If not a story, but and a feeling of what's happening on stage or at that moment. What are you trying to portray? Are we in an ocean? What does that mean? Or Joe. Is this a person that's going through life telling a certain story? And what is that a metaphor for? Right. What is this ocean? Right, right. That it's not really just about water. It's really about-- each of us are our own ocean. Each of us participate with an ocean of people. And the life we live is really an ocean. So I'm always interested in looking at that. And for me, that takes art back to maybe where it started. Some of dance, early on, I think was much more theatrical. Back with the Greeks. I think, yeah. You're probably right about that. And then it got really separated from theater. So I like the fact that I'm trying to bring them back together. So we're going to show a little clip from ocean. So can you just set up what it is that we're going to look at? Oceans is an interesting piece. I really wanted to create an ocean of movement on stage. That I wanted to have so many people moving in unison, and then in counterpoint. Where you're looking at lots of things happening. Like a wave breaking on the sand, and then retracting. And how that flow happens. And there was something about sitting and looking at the ocean one day on vacation. And I thought, there's something about this ocean that we never get tired of looking at it. Even though it's the same-- Fascinating. It seems like it's the same thing happening, the same waves. Each time there's something unique about it. Or something we see different about it, right? Absolutely. So I was interested in doing that. And to create that kind of metaphor for what is an ocean? And even within ocean, that there is-- well, I was also looking at some Carl Jung. Some writings of Jung. And he talked about our collective unconsciousness. And that there was something that connected each of us. Like an ocean. Like we are all connected together. So I was thinking about those things and wanting to create a very beautiful piece of movement that happened on stage. And is it minimalistic? Or is there a lot of big movements? How would you qualify that? A lot of natural movements, but a lot of things happening all the time. And I even complicated it by creating a front projection of an ocean that created shadows. OK. So not only were there so many dancers, 30 dancers, there were also 30 shadows on the wall behind. Right, right. That's great. And then in contrast to that, Joe is a specific story about a person. So give us a brief overview of how you came up with the Joe idea. And how many Joe's there are now. How many different sequels there are. I was putting 8 solos together for a show. And I realized that each of these solos had a character to them. But there wasn't a specific character. It could have been any of us that solos talked about. So I called the piece Joe. The first one. Then I started on another piece, another solo concert. And realized I was talking about another Joe. It was another-- but this one was much more theatrical and much more of a journey. And so each of the Joe's, they're solos. They last about an hour, which is a long time for solo. But there's a lot of dialogue in the story line, and I know that you've referenced the ocean, and how the ocean can actually be our journey. And then I think you talked about with Joe, it's the river of life. Like a river that we follow. Life is like a river that you follow. And I think you've referenced that in some of the Joe-- Each of the Joe's are really a metaphor for something. One of them-- The last one I've done is called Joe river. It's the river is just a metaphor for one's life. And with that one, I looked at a lot of autobiographical things I'd written in journals about becoming an artist. So it was largely about my life becoming an artist. And going through those events. Joe is interesting in that way, that it's always just a metaphor. Or there was another one that's, Joe and Winter dealt with a relationship. How we go through various relationships. Joe, This Infinite Universe explored how Joe-- how we as individuals are similar to the universe. We grow, we expand. You know there's many ways of looking at our realities. And speaking of an artist. OK. So I'd like to talk a little bit about-- --about art. Art. Yeah. A little bit about art. The class is sex, dance, and entertainment. And I try to get them all to relate these subject matters. Get the students to relate the subject matters to each other. And then in order to really understand entertainment, I think you have to understand what is art. Not to confuse what is art, and what is entertainment. Are they the same? Are they different? Is there an art to entertainment? Just to provoke thought. They're confused all the-- We constantly-- The question, what is art, is probably a question we will always grapple with. We'll never find a specific answer that works for everyone. For me it's like a meaning of life question. It's an ontological question that the asking of it is important just because it points us towards what's important. And Lewis now is writing a book about the aesthetics of movement. Of movement and the anesthetics of dance. Right. Which would include art and that definition or your definition through research of what you really think art is. And we talk about in this class how art started with the elite having a commonality. That I say, I'm the elitist, I'm the one with money, I say the rose is beautiful. So the whole community goes, yes, the rose is beautiful. And then how art has changed to now. Art it's in the eye of the beholder. And through the centuries, through the decades, it has changed into Andy Warhol. That art is dead. And where is art now? So I think that this is a really interesting subject matter, as it is opposed to entertainment. Yeah. Art and entertainment are very different. Because for me, when I have to synthesize what's the main difference. With entertainment we're usually looking for some kind of folly or some kind of-- --Amusement. Amusement. And some kind of escape from our realities. And what entertainment usually provides us is something that is universally expected. We know what we're going to get. When we go to the blockbuster movie, we know what we're going to see. Now we got science again. Because how many formulas-- --There's a formula-- There's a formula for the movie. There's a formula for it, and we also, pretty universally, accept what is given. So those two things about what we expect, and what we accept are there for entertainment. And then for art, they usually aren't. What we're looking for is something new. The artist is looking for a new way to look at reality, a new way to express-- --evoke emotion, or feeling, or try to stimulate you in a new way. In a new way and bring out something new. And so those things are very different. Now that doesn't mean that these two ends of the spectrum sometimes don't get blurred. Right. That we can't bring art into entertainment. That happens all the time. That's interesting because we talk about burlesque. We talk about stripping. And many times when you talk about two burlesque dancers, they talk about the art of stripping. Yes. Now that's different than when you're a stripper, and you're on a stripper pole. And is there an art to that, or is that purely just for amusement? Right. And then the art for the burlesque dancer, there is a tease, there is an art, there is a-- she's trying to evoke a feeling or an emotion from you. And sometimes those words are funny, because sometimes we use them slightly incorrectly to evoke a differentness there too. The other thing I always think about as we talk about like the craft of choreography, where craft is very much a formula that we do these various steps. And then we create something. So art often times rebels against those formulas. Where entertainment often times is trying to create the right formula to evoke that-- --Amusement. The amusement and the folly and that universal acceptance, and expectation. And it doesn't mean that both aren't important. I think that sometimes for me is the big thing. Is that we really can understand the two. And we can understand when we're being entertained, and when we're being artistically challenged. Right. And then we get confused by artists like J.LO. She is an artist. She has a beautiful voice. A beautiful craft in her voice. Absolutely. Right? But she uses it for entertainment purposes most of the time-- --In a commercially viable way. Right. It's really all a balance because so much of the time artists are talked about, not selling out, not becoming too commercial. And that's that formula. That's the formula. Because I think when one ends up just taking their art and making it a series of steps, like a recipe. If I do these six things, I end up with the final product. There isn't long before there isn't any artistic challenge to that anymore. And ballet did that at a certain point. When Petipa was putting together ballets, he did that. You would see combination. A structure combination went to the right, than a structure combination went the left. And then it would go to the right again. And that would be part of the choreography. And you would always see that. You're still in reproductions of Petipa's movement. You see that balance. You see the formula. You see the formula. That's exactly right. And probably if we look at it, historically-- you'll look at why did modern dance come about? That's right. Someone probably looked at it at some point and said, this is far too much of a formula. And I'm really interested in something that's much more artistic. Yeah. Well Louis thanks. It's always great talking to you, and we talk a lot. Yeah. This was especially nice for me to have you here. And thank you for watching us. Any time. Yeah. To you again sometime. I'm sure real soon.

Interview with Mackenzie Claude

Hi, I'm here with Mackenzie Claude, and we're going to be talking about fashion, art, and entertainment, and, of course, the sexual side of fashion. It's a new component that I'm adding to the online class, and I think that fashion drives a lot of the sexual things that become less taboo, are driven because fashion is coming more sexual, So the first thing, hi, Mackenzie, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. And so the first thing, if you could just share a little bit about your personal experience with fashion. Your history. How you got into fashion. You're a model so if you could just share a little bit of your history and how you came up to date. Well I guess I'll start from the beginning real quickly. I grew up in foster care so I come from very humble beginnings. And after that, I joined the military. Not a lot of fashion there. I spent six years with in the Navy with the Marines as a Fleet Marine core medic. I spent three assignments in Africa. And then at 25, I had what I can only describe as a quarter life crisis, and I've had these passions and desires that I've always wanted to pursue in my life, but just was never practical to me being from such humble beginnings. So foster care and somebody not really nurturing your true desires, and letting you know that those are good things for you to follow through with. Exactly. So at 25, I just decided I'm not getting any younger, and I'm going to pursue my passion, dream of modeling, and see if there's anything to it. Did anybody that you were around before that epiphany that you had, did anybody say you should be a model or you should do this? I'm 6' 3", maybe 6' 4", depending on who you ask. But I'm really tall and so my whole life people have told me that. Or do you play basketball? Or do I play basketball. That's what happens to me. Which I don't. I suck at basketball so my only other option in life was to be a model. So at 25, I decided that better late than ever, and I can't wonder the rest of my life, what if. So I decided to seize the moment, and I packed all my belongings in my car, and drove out to LA without a plan or a portfolio or a z card and-- Like you didn't know what to do really because you didn't have any guidance. Exactly. So you just felt like I'm pursuing it. I'm going to do it, and know I'm here. Wow. So you're here in Las Vegas, what happened when you were in LA? Did it work out, the fashion thing? Or was it disappointing? No, absolutely not. It didn't. I got a bunch of auditions, and met with a bunch of agencies. And the first agency that I ever went to, I didn't even make it past the waiting room. The agent came out and asked me for my photos-- or my portfolio which I didn't have because I didn't know-- You weren't prepared. What that was. And all I had was 4x6 photos that I had taken with just some amateur friend photographer. And I didn't even make it past the waiting room. And I was in LA for two months, and I blew through my entire savings account which is really easy to do in LA. Certainly. It's expensive. Expensive. So far apart. And so I thought I made the biggest mistake of my life. Probably were pretty disappointed. Yeah. When you don't have-- I think this is really important for me as a professor, as a teacher-- I feel that part of my mission is to guide, lead, mentor. Because students have desires and things that they want to do, and they just need somebody to push them and to say yeah. I teach in the dance department so that's the thing I know, so let me help you get your reel together. You need guidance. We talk about, you have to be motivated to do it on your own, but it does take other people to help guide and lead you in the right direction. So you know you have to have a portfolio. You know the pictures you have have to be of certain quality. Or a certain size, absolutely. I wish I would have had. Then I could've saved myself two months of grief, a lot of money. And had a better plan. And so you came to Vegas. I did. I called up my friend when I was in LA and I was driving back from my last audition that I had, and it didn't go well. And I called up my friend, and I was like, I don't know what I did. I made the biggest mistake of my life. I left everything I knew in Sacramento, where I was from. And I should have never done it. And he's like well, I'm in Vegas, and it worked out for me here. So maybe you should come here. There's the same amount of opportunities, and it's cheaper to live here, more cost efficient. And everything's centered around the strip. You'll love it. So I did. I packed all my stuff again, and moved out to Vegas. And two months after living in Vegas, everything started to come together for me. Yeah, I think there's a thing that we have to-- there's a concept that you need to wrap your mind around. Sometimes we are better off being a big fish in a small pond to get our feet on the ground, to try and figure out. And maybe we always want to be that. And as I've talked before in other interviews, it's the experience in the process that matters. It doesn't matter where you're having it as long as you're having the experience that you want. So if Vegas is the place that's providing you with the experience that you want, then you're in the right place. It doesn't have to be LA. It doesn't have to be New York. Doesn't have to be Italy. It doesn't have to be those places. Exactly. If I would stayed in LA, who knows what would've happened? But instead, I took a detour. I came to Vegas. I tried that out even though it wasn't a part of the original plan. And I got my first magazine cover. I got my first billboard. Those things may never have happened if I would've stayed in LA. So that's extraordinary. So let's talk about fashion. What type of fashion do you model? All types of fashion or is there one that you particularly are more involved with? Well, I'm tall and very skinny so the taller the model, the higher the fashion. Right. Haute couture. I think my body type and my face is a little bit more high fashion, at least that's what my agents think. And so that is probably-- and runway. So you're not really having shows-- showing hip hop clothing or things like that? No, not so much. Not so much. If you can still book the job, you can fake anything. Right, right, right. And here's why I'm asking that, because that genre of fashion has changed how we dress. How the fashion industry, in general, has been changed by the hip hop movement. We dress more-- even high fashion is a little bit more sensual and sexual because of the hip hop, pants on the ground, and falling off, and really tight. Do you have a thought about that? I think there's many influences in the fashion world that make it more sensual and sexual. There's not just hip hop but there is a flamboyant influence. Right now currently, drag queens are influencing the fashion world. There's so many different influences that make it more sensual or sexual or push the envelope. And so-- But I think it's one of the things that does push the envelope. I think fashion has a lot of power. That it can push the envelope because people always want to know what's the latest and the greatest. And they can go buy that piece of clothing. You can't always be a movie star. You can't always be in those places where really famous people are doing really famous-- but you can buy that piece of clothing that that other person had on that was really famous. And rocked it in your own environment. Right, exactly. So I think fashion is just amazing in that way that it drives or is driven by or it drives the sensuality or the sexuality of our community. So next, your personal life, has it been affected by your professional career? Well, yes, of course. I had to decide to make a sacrifice to pursue my dream of modeling. And that meant that I didn't continue with the military. I completed out my contract. And that meant that I left everything I knew behind to follow my dreams. So my life is completely different now than it was the first 25 years. So we talk about reinventing ourselves as artists, but you just reinvented yourself as a human being completely. I've always had this person inside of me right, but now I'm just living it out, and it's exciting. So talking about the positive aspects of modeling, the big change in your life from the military now into fashion, and your relationships, positive aspects? And then the opposing, the negative. The positive aspects are I had to make a sacrifice to do this, but the first time I ever saw myself on a magazine cover, that is the biggest positive that-- I was speechless. That was like my ultimate dream. And when you saw that, did you see yourself as-- you approved of it? Or were you judgmental? No, not judgemental. I felt like I had done it. Oh, so good. All of the blood, sweat, and tears were for something and it felt great. So that's the positive. The positive, I get to live out my dreams. And I feel like being artistic and being creative allows me to be happy. Because I've always had that in me. And I think that if America as a government, doesn't really support the arts as much as Canada, and Europe, and those other places, and having that aspect of your life, that artistic side enjoying music, enjoying dance, enjoying fashion, all of those things make us more complete as a human being. And we kind of get away from that in the United States. It's like how do we make the money. Day to day life. You've got to make the money. We got to do the administrative stuff. We've got to raise the kids. And we forget about how important. And that's what happened to me 18 to 25 is that I felt like I had to make a check so that I could pay my bills so that I could survive. I didn't have a safety net or somebody there to help me. And so I had this void inside of me that there was something missing. You felt that it was missing, but you didn't know what that was. And I didn't know how to-- Actualize it. Fill that up. And now it's full. And so would there be any negative-- Absolutely. Sides to-- The negative side is getting started. I struggled in LA. I didn't have a plan. It was scary. I didn't know where I was going to live or how I was going to make money. I didn't know if-- And you didn't really have a family to support you so that you felt like you had something to fall back on. Exactly. Like I can go home and regroup, and then go back out again. If this doesn't work out, then I don't know what I'm going to do. So that's terrifying and that is a negative aspect because there's no guarantee that it's ever going to work out. Or how long that time period's going to last. But in that negativity, in what we see as a negative-- I don't want to say negativity, but in what you see as a negative-- you've grown. Become stronger. So there's all these positive-- Wiser. That come from that. So it could be a kind of a rough experience, but it does create you as a human being, a stronger human being. So if were going to leave a message for the students, what might that message be if you had one thing you wanted to say to them? If I was going to leave a message for the students, I would say that if you feel strongly enough about a passion or something in life that you want to pursue, then do it. Take the risk. Make the sacrifice. And go for it 100%. That's the hard part, the 100%. You can't do it kind of. You can't do kind of. You've got to be in-- all in. There's no way I could have stayed in Sacramento, continued my nine to five job, stayed in the military, and be doing what I'm doing now. It wouldn't have happened. It just wouldn't have happened. You had to completely let that go. Immerse myself. And I think that is true, too, especially in the arts. And it's always so iffy, and the rest of-- not the whole world-- but many of the outside influences are like you're not going to make any money. You're a dancer? Oh, you're modeling? Like how do you make money modeling? Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has an opinion. And you have to be careful whose opinions-- True to yourself. That you're listening to because people that aren't creative are giving you opinions. They don't understand what goes through your mind or your heart. That's right. So you have to follow what is in your mind, your heart. Listen to it. Be true to yourself And act on it. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Mackenzie. You're wonderful. Thank you, darling. Thank you

Interview with Louis Kavouras, Part II

Louis, I'd like to talk a little bit about the definition of art, and I'm going to talk to an artist later, who does paintings. And I'm going to ask him his ideas of art and entertainment that we talked about in one of the other segments that we talked. But if you could briefly go through for us the history of art and where it started and maybe where we're at with art now. Yeah, there's several kind of main points that I think are important. I think when we look at art, if we stayed away from who the people that created the art were and looked at several kinds of movements and what changed with art philosophically, I think it's important. The main thing, I think, that's probably the most interesting is before the 20th century, all art was really considered beautiful. If you were going to express something, you were going to create something that people would look at and find very visually appealing and very visually captivating and beautiful. And that really changed later. But who decided that was beautiful? Wasn't it like the elite wealthy that would say, you know what? I say this is art. This is beautiful. Right. And then everybody would say, this is beautiful art. Whoever was probably at the top of the structure-- if you went far back, it was probably the head of a religious structure. It was the church. The church would decide. And that's why even if you look at-- if you go to a museum, go back in time. Most of the art, you're going to find is largely these huge periods of religious art. If you go further back, you might find the Greeks, where they were really trying to captivate you and create in stone replicas of human beings, gods. They were creating these visual images of what was idealized beauty. There were specific proportions that were there. Same happened in dance. Same happened in music, too. And that kind of changed later with people like Plato. Plato came about and then started to put-- I guess Plato actually felt like art was a bit dangerous. And that's really what he wanted to do was tell artists that they needed to create work that was graceful, work that was beautiful, work that didn't challenge society and make-- Make people think too much. Make people think too much or react. React too much. right. I think, basically, Plato was a very smart man that realized there was a power to art and that art could somehow change society. Whether it's dangerous or not, I don't know. But he had the foresight to say that it could change things. Yes. And then later on, one of his students, Aristotle, had a very different opinion and thought that art wasn't dangerous, but art actually could help society, because we could have a catharsis. We could have-- art could make us access our feelings, and by accessing them and feeling them, we would be better off, because we would get them out of ourselves. We'd get-- yeah. It'd be like therapy. It's therapeutic. Cathartic, yeah. And I think that another major place was in the 1200s when Saint Thomas Aquinas was the first to say that art was really in the eye of the beholder, that what you find-- That was a big change. Huge change. Big change. What you find beautiful, I might not find beautiful. And that's OK. And that's OK. Now still, art was supposed to be beautiful, but we might see things differently with that. So that was a big change for there. Later on, others-- oh, Hume came up with the fact that if we had some education, if we had some appreciation, we would understand the work of art more. So if we were exposed to it more and-- If exposed to it, we would like it more. It would change our taste, what we thought was beautiful, what we thought was art. It would change that, because we were exposed to it more. Much like wine. Yeah. The more you drink of it-- It's an acquired taste. It's an acquired taste. You'll know more. You'll be able to tell the different types. And I think I've experienced that in teaching this in class, this subject matter, because when students are required to go see art in a concert form, art as dance art form, they come back sometimes very surprised like, wow, I really liked that, and I've never experienced that before. And I'm going to go see more now. Right. And probably because they've had some tools that were given to them in the class about how to look at what they were seeing. And that's part of this, of what-- That's kind of-- and that's even where class is Hume, David Hume. Then you had some other really interesting characters. Edwin Burke then came up with the idea of the sublime, that art was really trying to talk about something that was incomprehendible. Love. Yeah, things that we probably could think about, we could try to explain, but they were inexplainable. Happy, sad. Yeah. God. These-- Abstracts. These ideas that we were trying to touch on that somehow this visual representation, this piece of music, somehow this work of art could touch that better than words or thought. So that was important. Other important people-- I think Hegel came up with that really what art would teach us was about being human. Human feeling, our interpretation, like me as an individual, I get to interpret it this way. And so I get to be more founded in what I believe. Right, absolutely. Some other important people in the history of art-- philosophers. One of my favorites, Clive Bell, and he said that within a work of art, art created a kind of significant form, that the work of art somehow had become greater than the sum of its parts. And I think we know that. When we see a work like van Gogh's "Starry Night," when we see this masterpiece painting, or when we see a dance that just grabs us-- Yeah, we've talked about that before. It's more than the steps. It's more than the brushstrokes. It's more than just the paint and the colors. Something really important comes together that's greater than-- It's a collaborative something of the universe that comes together, and it's not just, wow, look at that brushstroke. Look at that. And then largely, the 20th century, I think, has been the most interesting for art, because art so completely changed when we dropped art had to be beautiful. Once that was out of the picture, it really let artists express so many parts of the human condition. It even made them challenge us that they could create things that we would look at and not immediately see the artistic value of it. It's said it provoked some thought, so you would sit with it, or you're looking at a painting, whether it's a dance or painting, and it's provoking some kind of thought. And that's kind of what I want to do with this class too is provoke an interest in art, and what is it, and what do you sit with when you see it? So that's very '60s. Yeah. And it's largely that it's not just the thing. It's really the relationship-- That you have with the thing. Right. When people come from the modern dance, they're always saying, well, I don't know what it meant. And lots of times, it's like, well, what did it mean for you? What did you get out of it? And I think artists do that out of their instincts. They even did it as a rebellion. They would paint a painting that was only the color blue. And then people would say, well, I don't get it. But they worked really-- these artists worked really hard to make us uncomfortable, to make us think. And now where are we now in the timeline of art? Oh, I think we're at an interesting place, because art nowadays can be so many different things. I think art is even looking for the next place it will move to. What happened in kind of the late '60s, philosopher Arthur Danto said art was dead, and largely because people like Andy Warhol were putting ordinary objects out there and saying that, well, this ordinary object is now a work of art. And largely, there's big controversy about whether it's the work that's important of the art or whether it's what the artist did as a rebellion or as an action that's important. Or how it makes you feel, and how you react when you're experiencing it. When you're experiencing it. Largely, I think that's the most important thing that for anyone to get from any appreciation course or from any work of art that one encounters is, how does it make me feel? What do I see? How do I react out of it? My favorite definition of art is Suzanne Langer's. And she said that art is an expressive form. And I like that, because by form, we mean that an artist has created a structure, a thing, whether it's a bunch of steps together, which is a dance, or whether it's about a bunch of colors and shapes together, which is a painting, or a bunch of sounds, which is music. We've created this expressive form, and we're supposed to experience it through our senses. So we're supposed to be there with it. And then what it really expresses is human feeling, which is really about being human. Well, yeah, because our sense is our what? That's the happy. That's the sad. That's the love. That's the God. That's the senses part. Right. And largely, people always ask me, what is the purpose of art? And I always get back to art really teaches us how to be human. When we see a dancer leap, we see life in motion. We see living. We experience that. Same with the painting. Same with music. There's something about it, and that's why we put it-- that's why we put music everywhere. Yeah, I really feel that dance is life itself. In its final place, and science gets at it the other way-- Right. That's right. --which we said in that other interview. But when we're really good at it, it really is about life. It is about someone expressing what it is like to be alive at this moment. For them. Yes. Thanks, Louis. Thanks, Dolly

Terms : Sex, Dance & Entertainment

Sex (seks) n. - Either the male or female division of a species, esp. as differentiated wit reference to the reproductive functions - The fact or character of being male or female - The attraction of drawing one sex toward another Dance (dans) - To move rhythmically in a pattern of steps, esp. to music - To leap, skip, etc. as from emotion - To bob up and down - To perform - To cause to dance -A group of rhythmic bodily motions, usually to music - The art of dancing - A social gathering for dancing - A piece of music suited for dancing Entertainment - Amuse - Divert - Consider (to entertain an idea Fashion (fashen) n. - A prevailing custom or style of dress, etc. - Conventional usage in dress, manners, etc. - Manner or mode - The make or form of anything Art - The creation of provoking works, for example, painting, music, or writing - Beautiful or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity - A branch or category of art, especially one of the visual arts - The skill and technique involved in producing visual representations - Creation by human endeavor rather than by nature Arts - The activities enjoyed for the beauty they create or the way they present ideas, for example, painting, music, and literature - Nonscientific and non-technical subjects at school or college Ballets Russes: Classical ballet is codified which means that each movement has a name. Women typically dance on the half point or on their toes. Men only dance on the demi or half point, meaning on the ball of the foot. Martha Graham: Martha Graham is the mother of Modern Dance. This form of Modern Dance is very geometric in shape. It is considered very angular and very muscular. Most of the time these dancers dance in bare feet. Bob Fosse Chicago: Bob Fosse's style of Jazz included very small movements. This could be as small as the fingers only moving or the eyes moving side to side. His movement also included isolated movements of the hips or shoulders, but also included these quirky smaller movements. That's Dancing: This is Musical theater. This dance is based on Jazz but has elements of classical ballet mixed in. There is usually singing that accompanies the dancing. This is the style that is used in most movie musicals

Interview with Anthony Coppola

We're here talking about jazz today for the second module of Sex, Dance, Entertainment. You've already heard from myself about ballet and Louis Kavouras about modern. And my guest today is Anthony, or Tony Coppola. He is a very famous tap dancer as well as a very accomplished jazz dancer. Thanks for being here, Tony. Thanks for having me. First, I'd really like for you to share with us your bio, a little bit about-- well, kind of a lot about the tap thing, because I know that's where you are like the superstar. So I would really like-- Thank you. Yeah, I'd really like to hear a lot about that. But this module focus is really not tap. It's jazz. And I think some of the rhythms may be applicable to one another. Right, which is actually how I got into it. I grew up in a musical family, and the two threads in my life were music and sports, which I think has aided me a lot on the choreographic side of what I do. I grew up playing drums, so I already had an affinity for rhythms. Interestingly enough, when you talk about jazz, as jazz music progressed, tap was the first form that was done to jazz music. And then it progressed into social dance and what we think of as jazz dance today. Jazz music kind of grew up by playing add-on with instruments. It went from ragtime, which grew out of European polkas. If you add instruments to ragtime, you get dixieland. If you keep adding instruments, you get swing. And by that time, we're all familiar with the kind of social dance that we would associate with swing, jitterbug, Lindy, all that stuff that people competed at in the '30s and '40s. So jazz dance is interesting in the sense that it is one of the few forms that started as social dance, and then became a form that dancers studied as well. So you were a tap dancer, and so you started in sports. By the way-- Gymnastics. Oh, OK. Not football. That touchdown that that guy made-- that was amazing with his two little tippy toes. It really shows that there's so much grace and coordination in sports, and there's so much athleticism in dance. And the society tries to separate the two, but they're really not separatable. I think it's getting better. They're appreciating us more with the advent of some of the TV shows. A lot of ball players are studying ballet if they're smart, and the catch that you're alluding to was way balletic. That was really a work of art. So tell us a little bit about your success in jazz-- in tap, sorry-- in tap first. Well, as I said, I grew up playing drums. My dad was a guitarist, and I grew up with music. And I always have an affinity for rhythms. And I think for me, tap was just meant to be. It just kind of fell out of the sky. I actually was playing drums in a show here in Vegas and went to the music store to buy drumsticks, and there was a dance studio next door. And I heard the sound of tapping. And I wandered in to watch, and just was instantly hooked and started studying. And you were so used to hearing all those rhythms that it was almost second nature. You just had to coordinate your feet now with the countersyncopations and the syncopations and the on-beat, and that's-- The technique of how to do what I heard in my head. And, fortunately for me, I went to Los Angeles. I got with a good teacher for a while, but he had a terrific philosophy. And at the point that he thought he had taught me all that he knew, he said, you need to go find other teachers. Who was this teacher? His name was Ted Howard, and he was into a style of tap-- well, prior to that, I had started here in Vegas with [INAUDIBLE] Anderson, who was-- And you know Henry LeTang? Yeah. I used to work out over at Henry's, the late Henry LeTang, who we all owe a debt to tap dance. And as I tried to make the rounds of different tap teachers, I was dissatisfied, because as a drummer, I heard more in my head. So then it became, how do I do this? And I actually went through a period of maybe six or eight months, where I took all my percussion books from college. I laid them down on the floor, and I would say to myself, there's a bar of rhythms. I have to be able to do that with 10 different variations of tap strokes before I move on to the next bar. So at that point, I educated-- So it was almost mathematical. --myself. Oh, it's very mathematical. Yeah, it's mathematical. I mean music is mathematical, but then in the process, you took it to a whole other level. You brought a tap shoe with you, and I'd like to just talk a little bit about the taps. So I know there are different types of taps. And I'll let you get into that, because it is not my expertise. Well, I think of this as a musical instrument. I try to get my students to approach it as a musical instrument. It has different pitches. If you look at a tap shoe, whether it's an Oxford or a pull-on or even a tap boot, you'll notice that it has a strong heel counter, a very strong toe box, because we do many things up on the toes. Toe stands, yeah. Sometimes they have a split sole, or they can have a solid shank like this. Under the taps, there's fiberboard, which gives it a little more acoustical pop, and taps react a little bit like a drum head so that if you're on a tight floor, you'll loosen the taps. If you're on a floor that has some give, you tighten the taps. Taps come in many gauges and configurations and stuff, but it's basically hard metal that really pops. It sounds terrific on wood. Now, of course, we have to tap on Marley as well, so we really are-- we get in there, and we see how we need to mic that to make it acoustical. And then the other ingredient is there's rubber behind there, so-- So you don't slip. --we can do our turns and have some traction. Right, right. But now, tell us a little bit about the Coppola shoe. There was a shoe named after you, right? Yes. That's pretty fascinating. I think that's amazing and wonderful. I was very honored by Capezio to be the first living dancer to have a shoe named after me. In fact, we were teasing at the time, because all the shoes were named after people who are dead and gone. So after they named the shoe after me, they might just bump me off. But I was very honored, because I was out doing lots of seminars and conventions. And I had a guy who was making my tap shoes for me, and people would come up and say, where can we get these? And I said, well, you can't. And they were trying to order them from my cobbler. After a while, he couldn't keep up with the demand. He said, let's go to Capezio and show them what we're doing. Oh, that's so interesting. They liked the idea, and we ran with it, and the shoe ran for 14 years. Yeah, I know a lot of my students that when I said, did you know that Tony had a shoe? And they're like, yeah, we used to wear them. They were really popular during this time. So that's really wonderful, and I know I had you guest in my in-class class, not my online class, and learned so much about the different television shows in the '80s that you appeared on as a tap dancer. And so I want the students to understand that tap is a part of American heritage. Very much so. But it comes from the African and Irish rhythms. Exactly. And it really probably could only have evolved here, because that's where those-- The melting pot. --cultures combined and blended. A lot of the visuals came from Irish step dance, and then there were West African rhythms that were combined. Originally, it was a form of communication as well. People used to send messages with their feet to figure out plans to get out of the bondage they were in on the plantation system and all that sort of thing. Then it became an art form. It's like, well, he did something with his feet I can't do. I'd better learn how to do that. There you have technique and the beginnings of a form. And competition, human nature. Challenge. Competition, challenging one, challenging the other. And it evolved from there. Yeah, so I feel a little bit like I'm getting a twofer here with you, Tony, because I get the tap part. Now we really need to get into the jazz part of it. And maybe, like you had mentioned before, there was some sort of transitional connection between tap and jazz and a little bit about your jazz background and just jazz in general history. I got all my jazz training in Los Angeles. I was there at the right time, because there were three or four very strong jazz teachers, several of whom had just relocated from New York. And they were kind of blazing trails and changing jazz. And one of the things worth talking about is that jazz is performed that always incorporates and includes the trends that come along. Yeah, and that's true. Like you can put jazz and ballet together. You can put jazz and modern. You can put jazz and tap together. It kind of modernizes, so to speak, or puts things in the present day. Not only that. It blends the trends that come from social dance, club dance, all the way back to whether it was rock and roll, and then we had disco. And then there was pop locking, and now there's hip hop. All those things get blended into part of dance's vocabulary when it comes to jazz. So some of the famous jazz-- Fosse. We hear the name Fosse, and they're going to be watching a video online of Fosse's stuff in Chicago. Who else? Who else is a famous historian? Luigi, Matt Mattox. Matt Mattox. Frank Hatchett, Gus Giordano, Joe Tremaine in Los Angeles. All were people who had a very important influence on what the jazz vocabulary is today. But I think in reference to what is relevant here as well is the sexual side of jazz. If it came from club dancing, which a lot of it did, you have to ask yourself, why do people go to clubs? Well, they go to clubs to meet-- Meet somebody. --each other and hopefully-- there's no graceful way to say this-- hopefully to not go home alone. Right, right. So there is definitely already a seductive side of social dance that when it blended with jazz music, had that intent. And you hear that very clearly in the music. If you listen to a lot of classical music, it's structured a little more mathematically. It squares off in a way. That's right. If you listen to jazz, which has continually been influenced by blues, you hear horns and guitar strings that are constantly bending. And to me, that represents the undulation of the human body that relates to sexual movement. When we hear it, that's how we process it, I think, as human beings is that the sound is like this kind of a sound instead of a square sound. That's how I think we really process it in our mind. And in jazz class, to be able to do that kind of movement, there used to be-- and I think people are kind of going back to it-- there used to be a section of jazz class that was dedicated to isolations, so that you learned to move body parts independently, which allowed you to move seductively. Yeah. And so now the students will be asked to kind of compare and contrast all the different art forms. And we've talk specifically about rhythm being related to tap, but rhythm is related to every form of musical-- anything that we do musically, whether it's singing or ballet or jazz. We have to find rhythms within it. Otherwise, it becomes very flat. So I think that's one thing that maybe is a common denominator with all of them that the rhythm is a common thing. And then in reality, sexuality is a common denominator, because we take our sexuality with us wherever we go. We can't take it off and leave it at home. It's the constant radar that's going on all day as people pass each other. Right. It comes with us. So when I'm-- I could just be sitting. I try to tell my students this all the time. I could just be sitting in a chair, and the dude in the back row could be going, oh, she's hot. And I'm not doing anything, right? Well, some of that even has to do with gesture and body language. How long did your eyes lock and all that sort of thing. Right. And in fact, I try to give my students a little education in body language and gesture and how to observe that in the course of the day, because-- and back to the rhythmic side of that, what you said, in jazz class or ballet class or modern class or anything, I tell them to work from the bottom up, because if they lock the rhythm of the feet in and punctuate that, then they can punctuate rhythms from there on up with the music that much better. That's pretty interesting, because in ballet, Alexander Technique is very prevalent. And Alexander teaches you to lead with your head. Like wherever your head goes, your body follows. But I think that there's something to be said for that. And I then, in turn, tell my students, you know what? I think some movements can be led by the head, but I think some are led by the feet, and some are led by the pelvis. But interesting to conceptualize it like that. But since we're bipeds, we're always obligated to kind of know what's going on with our feet in terms of our weight center being supported. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So history of jazz-- we've talked about some of those forerunners of jazz-- Gus Giordano, Bob Fosse, Matt Mattox. Luigi. Luigi. And Fosse, I'm so glad that you mentioned Fosse, because that's really an asterisk. Fosse is probably the most sensual style of jazz. Because of the isometrics, right? Those isolated movements. The isolation movements that are prevalent, because in fact, it was not very-- as he progressed, his dance became less athletic and more sensual and really gravitated to the subtle moves of what we're talking about, rather than the big giant moves that he did early on like Sweet Charity. Sweet-- I was going to say, yeah. That had big moves. And even him as a dancer, he was very athletic as a dancer. When he started. When he started in musicals. And then he got that-- everybody's looking for their thing. Their niche. Their niche, and then he came up with those little quirky moves. And that was his identity. But you see, he came by it naturally, because he grew up in a burlesque house. When he was a little boy, that's all he saw around him. And we've talked a lot about burlesque. And so he saw the world through those kinds [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, that's very, very interesting. So this is a very controversial thing that I want-- and I try to-- I try to add it in. And hip hop in the conservative classical dance world, not just ballet classical, but classical jazz, classical tap, classical ballet, classical modern-- hip hop is-- you know, you get the hm. What is that? So give me your take on hip hop. Because the kids are so interested in that. I think to roll your eyes and do that at it is very elitist. It's burying your head in the sand. I think you're absolutely right about that. Hip hop is here to stay. Whether it changes or it becomes incorporated and blended into-- It'll always morph. It'll always morph. I've gone out on the road to see some performances that the kids are doing. I've seen hip hop blended with pointe work. I've seen it blended with almost everything. It's here to stay. And I think that's something that colleges and universities need to be more aware of and need to address more, because if the kids come up deficient in that area, we're shortchanging them to go on in the professional arena and express themself with every form of dance. Yes, that's kind of the responsibility of the teacher that's teaching the jazz art form, the tap art form, because if you are going to be a cutting edge instructor, you have to know what's happening cutting edge in your field. You have to stay on top of it. You do have to stay on top of it. Even in the beginning jazz level class here, I will combine not pure hip hop, but I think where hip hop and jazz meet we would call funk jazz. So I even do that style to kind of introduce them to that movement. And there's a huge benefit in the movement of hip hop in the sense that it's very quick. You've got to fire off quick to do those kinds of moves. So I think that it's of great benefit to the dancers. And the isolations, again. Yes. A lot of hip hop is really intense isolations. You bet. I find it so fascinating. Again, I like the fusion of it, hip hop, with other forms, because straight hip hop can be a little bit too much for me. But that's just my preference in what I like to look at. A lot of people like to see that hard hitting all the time. Well, I think there's another thing. Because you think you see the big picture of dance because you're involved in it, I think where hip hop needs to grow is in the area of staging and levels and using the area, because right now, they're just concerned with the moves on an individual body. Yeah. Maybe you're right about that. And I think as it grows, we're going to see it learn from the rest of dance. Right. Right. Right. Everybody needs to keep an open mind about that. And speaking of keeping an open mind, the next question-- I know you've just written a book, which is completely awesome. Thank you. Kudos to you, because it's a hard thing to do. It's time-consuming, and just the whole process is a huge process, so. It was a labor of love, but there were a few tedious nights. Yeah. Yeah. It's wonderful. And the name of the book is? Invitation to the Dance. Right. So hopefully, we can use that in our Dance Appreciation classes. Mostly geared for Appreciation, but definitely, several chapters are relevant to-- Sex, Dance, and Entertainment as well. So that's a good thing to know. So on that sort of an aesthetic writing of the book about appreciation of dance, let's talk a little bit about art and entertainment. Do you see them as the same? Do you see them as different? It's something that we talk a lot about in class. I'm glad that you asked me that question, because again, I think I run into an elitist attitude, which says, if it entertains an audience, they translate that to a spin called pandering to an audience. And they look down upon it. I consider entertainment an art form. I consider theatrics an art. And I think there are many, many creative, highly creative people in the arena that you and I would refer to as entertainment. So I don't separate the two. Entertainment's an art form. And I think that-- I think they try to say-- and I don't know that there's a clear definition. I know that there are opinions on it. But I think that with art, they try to say that it evokes emotion. It's not for pure amusement, but that it evokes emotion. It makes-- it tries to make someone, when they look at something, if it's a picture, an art, a painting or something, to evoke a feeling or an emotion from someone and not just purely to be there to sit back and not engage with, not just to look at. So I think that's where they come up with that [INAUDIBLE]. I understand what you're saying, and it really isn't cut and dry. But I think a good performer entertainer engages and pulls you on that journey with them, even if it's-- and when we talk about the emotions conveyed-- And that's the art of what they're doing. That's the art of being a performer. And the emotion conveyed can be pure joy. And in many arenas, I see the joy of dance neglected. So we could go this far too. We could say that entertainment can be art if the entertainer or artist is drawing the public in to be involved. If they are a high level entertainer or artist, they can pull the audience in to participate with them. Yes. But then there would be that flat type of artist as well, who doesn't do that, who doesn't pull the audience in. So it is up to the artist or the entertainer. Yes, and I think there's another thing, which is, are you exploring new ground, or are you recycling something to the point that it's trite? Those are factors as well. And one of the nice things about university situations is that we do have a chance to explore, take the chance, make mistakes. This is our place to learn, and that's the good side of it, because we're not always obligated to entertain an audience seven days a week. So that's the good side of that. And I think both are valid. Yeah, I do too. And I think it's good for us to understand that, like to explore it. Not to say it's this or it's that, but to explore it. For me, the difference is that it shouldn't be self-indulgent. An example of that would be if I'm in a room alone, and I'm moving to have an emotional release, that's valid. If an audience is there, I must pay homage to the fact that they are an ingredient. So then if I continue to do this, and I'm not able to pull them in, and I'm just there for myself, that's self-indulgent. I think you're right. And artists tend to maybe get a little bit in to that area. Before we go, I want you-- I know you brought your jazz shoes, and I want to talk about the shoe. And you've brought a jazz boot, and it's almost like borderline tennis shoe with a split sole. This is called a jazz sneaker. Now you will find a range of jazz shoes from very thin, very light. The common ingredient would be that you have a soft arch that you can point your foot in and that you have two rubber surfaces for grip to stop yourself on turns, et cetera, et cetera. So this one's a jazz sneaker. It kind of blends almost from jazz into street stuff into hip hop and funk stuff. You can do more funky stuff with this because of the style of the shoe and because that's what's really happening now in jazz. So if you were taking a jazz modern fusion class, this probably wouldn't be very appropriate. No, it wouldn't. You want that streamlined softer Oxford-looking shoe. Yes. You know, it looks like a modified ballet slipper a little bit. But if you're going with the newer trend, and you're fusing it with hip hop, that's a beautiful shoe. It's for that. I find now that even the kids kind of go with what they're comfortable with. And a lot of them are even depending on what style we're doing. If we're doing something lyrical or contemporary, they will change their shoes. Some of them are even still comfortable barefoot, that way like we would be in modern class. Good point. So jazz-- the art forms of dance, they're all fusing together and becoming almost one and hard to differentiate between. Music, sometimes, is what helps us to differentiate. Wearing a shoe, not wearing a shoe, what type of shoe kind of helps us to differentiate. But they're not set clad set in stone things. It's all breaking down. The categories and the labels are kind of going away. We're living in the age of hybrid. Just one of the chapters in my book about that. And I think that's a healthy thing that they're blending and learning from each other, and it's almost nice that you can't put a label on it sometimes, and you just sit back and you go, it's dance. Yeah, it doesn't have to have a label. And we are such a society of labels-- tall, short, fat, skinny, beautiful, ugly. You know, it's like, gosh, can't we just be and not have to pass that judgment? OK. Well, wow. I got a twofer. I got a good interview from you, Tony, so thank you very much. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed talking to Tony. And I'll see you next time. Thanks for having me.