Dancers step into pop culture

Taking the cue from dancing-sequences-disguised-as-movies Strictly Ballroom and Dirty Dancing, Yale's Ballroom Café 2000 dispenses with the clutter of "plot" |and "characters" and focuses on what really matters—the shakin' and the bakin'. The result is Stay Tuned, a series of dance numbers framed by pop culture sketches featuring such icons as Regis Philbin and John Travolta.

In the opening and most successful number, Denise Ho, BR '00, and Jason Smith, SY '99, skritch across the floor as James Bond and a sultry femme fatale. Their movements show much practice, but their performance wavers between stilted and sexy. In general, the women lack the fluidity and the surefootedness of their partners, perhaps because of inexperience—many of the men are older dancers while the women are mostly undergraduate Yalies. The women's performances may be further hindered by the thorough but perhaps impractical costuming by Leslie Meenderink, BK '00. It must have been difficult for Ally McBeal (Anne Platt, SM '01) to tap dance in her mini business skirt;ditto for Cinderella (Carmen Hui, TD '01) in her lavish dinner gown.

In addition to the male-female disparity, there is also a noticeable difference between the principals and the rest of the company—as shown in the come-and-go precision of the ensemble in "Everybody in Khakis," a mock Gap ad to Brian Setzer Orchestra's "Jump, Jive, & Wail." But even though the synchronization may not be perfect throughout, the energy of the company makes the number a crowd pleaser.

Overall, the Stay Tuned gimmick is sustained with enough energy to be forgivable. When Ling (Melissa Chan, BK '02) and John Cage (Alex Scott) bust into paso doble in the courtroom, it's charming. And the cha cha in the middle of "Who wants to be a millionaire?" is on par with Regis ridiculousness.

Dance

Stay Tuned Yale Ballroom Dance Team Fri., Mar. 31, 7 and 9 p.m. Sat., Apr. 1st, 1, 3, and 7 p.m. Silliman dining hall $4

Stay Tuned is a creative attempt to bring more visibility to Yale's ballroom dancers and an original entry in Yale's performance scene. In the end, however, the show is flawed despite the obvious enthusiasm of the company. Stay Tuned seems overproduced in its staging and underproduced in its actual presentation. For all the originality of the "plot" device, the set-up sketches feel hurried and cursory, which makes one wonder whether they were really necessary in the first place. In addition, the Silliman dining hall—whose high ceiling and expansive floor space seem to lend themselves to ballroom dancing—is not efficiently utilized or lit as a setting. As a result, the dancers are often moving in and between shadows. The resources used for costumes and refreshments may have better served the show if they had been diverted to more adequately set and light the dancing—which, after all, is the thing.

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