Find the old guy who can't jump as high as all those kids

THEN FIND YOUR WAY TO THEATRE CEDAR RAPIDS TO SEE OUR MEGA HELLA KILLER AMAZING SHOW.

Some jetés land you gracefully on your other foot. Some jetés land you in the ER.

You know how sometimes pain can make you flop sweat all over your existing sweat? Yeah.

I’m pretty sure I just have an epic muscle strain in my calf, but the pain has been breathtaking enough that I decided to have it looked at right away. And a nice theater mom took me to the hospital because there’s no way I can drive. Or dance in the show for a while.

Shit.

Alexa ...

What are the chunkiest, dumbassiest shoes I could possibly wear to a choreography rehearsal exploding with precision-heeled sauts de basque?

Am I a backward-baseball-cap kind of guy? Because I’ve never thought I could pull the look off.

But the choreography at today's 9 to 5 rehearsal has a lot of port de bras (movement of the arms) that keeps knocking it (the cap) off my head (tête) (or cabeza) (or noggin). And I have five-alarm (humanity-endangering) hat hair, so I really have no choice but to keep it (the cap) on in some position.

We are REALLY TIRED of the Disney parks’ jazz-hands-oppressive anti-choreography-on-the-rides policies so we left the parks and came back to our room to chill

Also because I need to conserve my 50-year-old resources and turn in early so I can win the half marathon before the sun comes up tomorrow. But still.

September morn

We danced until the night
Became a brand new day.
Two lovers playing scenes
From some romantic play.
September morning
Still can make me feel that way.

With a little bit of practice and with a lot of Tuesday-night concentration, we just got all of “With a Little Bit of Luck” choreographed!

(Now a-lot-of-sick Bryant needs to get a lot of better so we can teach it to him.)

Lord and Lady Boxington are ROCKING tonight’s My Fair Lady “Embassy Waltz” rehearsal!

Check your local listings to make sure you don’t miss a minute of our debut Ländler on the upcoming all-lord-and-lady smash season of So You Think You Can Edwardian Waltz!

Three miles! 11:11 pace pace!

To alleviate the boredom of running with Rob and Scott (oops, I mean to alleviate the boredom of running), Rob showed us the final cut of his team’s entry in the 48 Hour Film Project, which we watched in this totally-not-staged selfie. His piece, “Skip Day,” which isn’t a musical so it isn’t about skipping or any other merry form of dancing, is pretty cool, even despite its dearth of literal skipping. BUT IT OPENS WITH A MEGA-COOL DRONE SHOT SO VOTE FOR IT TO WIN BASED ON THAT FEATURE ALONE, 48 HOUR FILM PROJECT JUDGES! But again: If you’re looking for skipping, you’re going to be devastatingly disappointed. So you might just want to (ahem) skip it.

Gay

Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay.

Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy: "I Just Wanna Dance"

Fun fact: There is a 2001 three-act opera exploring, parodying, mocking and even sympathizingly understanding the cultural underpinnings and social normalizations of The Jerry Springer Show. It is called (if you can even believe this name wasn’t already taken) Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Its breakout song—at least for gay men at massive circuit parties in the early 2000s—was “I Just Wanna Dance,” in which a stripper who is done being belittled and called a whore takes ownership of the actions and choices her circumstances have offered her and proclaims “I’m tired of all this trying / I wanna do some living / ‘Cos I’ve done enough dying / I just wanna dance / I just wanna fucking dance!”

Yes, there is swearing. It’s about JERRY SPRINGER.

But back to us gays and our massive circuit parties (which are massively massive dance parties with laser light shows, rampant shirtlessness, speakers the size of industrial refrigerators and deafening remixes of awesome dance songs, with the exception of Madonna’s appalling rendition of “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina,” which is in every conceivable on this and all other planets way the polar opposite of awesome and you are to NEVER MENTION AGAIN). Anyway, we gays OF COURSE made many deafening remixes of “I Just Wanna Dance,” which is an awesome dance song. Plus it’s about wanting to dance. TOTAL TWOFER.

Speaking of twofers, here’s one of the remixes paired with dance clips from every awesome genre of awesome movie musical from West Side Story to Xanadu. IT. IS. SO. AWESOME. Watch it. Love it. Sing along with it. If it doesn’t make you wanna be gay, it will at the very least make you wanna dance. I mean wanna FUCKING dance!

Alvin Ailey’s work is still electrifying

But I’ve seen more stirring architecture on a mattress store.

#HowToTurn50 #AndYawnAndStretchAndTryToComeToLife

So tap class was literally up a steep and very narrow stairway / to the feet like a rhythmically contrapuntal metronome

The front desk guard at the Broadway Dance Center gave me a disapproving smirk when I took this selfie, no doubt because of my dumbass-tourist T-shirt emblazoned with a massive NYC. But I more or less rocked the class, so it gets a big happy, paradiddly bucket-list checkmark.

#HowToTurn50 #AndTapLikeABOSS

#BigBoyTapClass #AnnualBucketList

#HowToTurn50 #AndParadiddleLikeABoss

Going for it

So this afternoon I let myself get talked into auditioning tonight for a show at Theatre Cedar Rapids that I knew virtually nothing about. And after a quick read-through of the Wikipedia synopsis and an obligatory shot of the theater’s gorgeous façade, I went in to give the least-prepared audition of my extremely short non-musical career. I couldn’t fall back on my graceful port de bras or my mad tapping skillz to mask my woeful uncertainties about my plain-old acting skills, so I just dove in and did whatever occurred to me to do in my cold readings ... and I left feeling pretty confident that at the very least I got in some solid auditioning practice. And I’ll know in 12 hours if I got anything more than just practice.

These creaky old knees don’t mess around at dance rehearsal

We have a number line!

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

I’ve got a taste for livin! I’m thinkin’ cold Blue Ribbon!

Because a befeatherhaired Patrick Swayze rockin’ mad disco chaînés in a long white scarf, that’s why.

Looks like someone had a rough night of arabesqueing dans le rue

I can relate to rough nights. This is the second time I’ve had to get up to pee. But I’m checking my phone with only one eye open so I’m still technically at least half asleep, dans le lit.