Television: Ballet on Miss America

[askaherm]

I was just watching the miss america pageant on tv, and miss north carolina did a dance on pointe to vivaldi's four seasons. she wasn't bad. what did you think?

[mom2]

It isn't on here! I live in Canada, but do get a number of US stations. Watching figure skating (US Nationals) now.

 

I look forward to hearing what others have to say about Miss America and ballet.

 

m2

[msd]

There were actually 3 dancers who performed in Miss America...all wearing pointe shoes. One, as mentioned, was to Vivaldi's 4 Seasons, one performed to the Spanish variation from Nutcracker,and one did "jazz on pointe" (how the m.c. described it) to a Broadway show tune. Dear dancer daughter, who was watching with me, said something to the effect of how these girls are working full-time on being pageant girls...so they're not going to get the dance hours they really need. Diplomatic child, huh?

[dwcgirl]

I only saw the Spanish variation and the 4 seasons one...I thought the Spanish dance was a mess!!! But the other girl really wasn't that bad

[pointeprovider]

I only saw the last one, Miss North Carolina, who did Vivaldi's "4 Seasons." My impression was that she had had some good training, and, for someone who probably does work full time on being a pageant winner, it wasn't bad, but my sense was that she was a little afraid to dance "full out" because of what looked like a shiny, slippery floor. I have seen DD dance similarly when she has had to dance en pointe in places with regular floors which could cause her to slip. On the screen, they did show words for the viewers, telling where she had danced, and I can't remember the first set of words, but I think that the second set was: "High Point Dance Academy" or something similar. Moderators, feel free to remove if my guessing is inappropriate.

[Momof3darlings]

High Point Ballet is an Honor company with SERBA. So I would make my own assumption that she has had good training as Honor status isn't given out lightly. The pieces that High Point generally gets picked for SERBA are more contemporary in nature though. That doesn't mean squat in terms of how good their training is or the contestant is in general. Just that it isn't a Dolly Dinkle school by any stretch of the imagination.

 

I hope this will be repeated. I only saw a couple of contestants but think maybe I was watching the 2007 repeat instead of the 2008 version since the last contestant I saw didn't do ballet.

[msd]

I agree with the idea that the flooring looked scary to dance full out in pointe shoes! And although I liked the new format of the show, I felt (especially for the Spanish dancer) for these girls -- they apparently didn't know what order they would be performing in (or at all, as there were more "cuts" before performance). Suddenly, you hear that you get to perform -- now get yourself up on stage. Yikes!! As a watcher however what bothered me was the camera work -- the camera kept doing closeups of the dancer's feet...right when I would have liked to watch their entire body doing a turn! Wish they had just kept the camera angle wide enough to see the whole dancer, the whole time!

 

For those who missed it (or like me, missed part of it), it's being re-broadcast frequently on TLC -- the cable network that had the show. According to their listings (all times Eastern), it will be on 1/27 at 2:00, 2/3 at 9 pm, and midnight. I'm sure there will be other opportunities to catch it as well.

[Laschwen]

I think I am going to have to log off shortly. You have me looking forward to the recording I made last night. I also saw all but one of the Miss America reality series where they were trying to retrain the girls on their image. I never noticed anyone getting caught on camera practicing, though they did do little background bits on some of the girls.

I haven't watched anything like the pageant in years but I met a former contestant last year and stuff she said about it and other pageants got me interested. Now I am really psyched to see some ballet on there.

 

Laschwen

[Momof3darlings]

I got to see the re-showing today and felt the same way I did the last time we discussed it here. Dancing on that floor seems impossible in pointe shoes and the dancers seem uncomfortable. I would much rather see them in flats and being able to perform gloriously than in pointe shoes and having to tread lightly and stay turned in to help them keep from sliding. That is not a reflection on the dancers themselves or their individual abilities. I'm not sure anyone could look fabulous on the type of flooring it looked like there was, almost mirror like.

 

And the point of the camera man staying on her shoes over 1/3 of the time was?

[jbw]

I was just reading this discussion and started looking online for videos of the ballet performances...... and stumbled upon photos and name of the winner.... Kirsten Haglund from Michigan.... and realized that she was at the Burklyn Ballet SI with my daughter a couple of years ago! She didn't perform ballet in the Miss America competition (she sang "Over the Rainbow"), but we saw her perform ballet at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Burklyn and she was lovely.

[Natalie M]

gosh i couldnt imagine dancing on the slippery floor. I only saw the 'jazz pointe' one and the spanish one. I wasn't intently paying attention to the jazz one and it took me the longest time to figure out that she was en pointe! I was thinking she was tapping and it was just mic-ed poorly so you couldnt hear the taps... silly me