More tryout details

The tryouts were held in Jill's downtown Arthur Murray studio. In the new space next door that she's recently aquired. A nicely done space and although she said the square footage was the same, it felt roomier.
John & I both left work a little early. We drove down in about a hour which for that time of day wasn't bad. The tryouts started late because a lot of people we calling: stuck in traffic. So getting downtown a bit early was a good choice.
We danced a song of swing and one of Cha Cha.
For the swing, they played the song with the chorus "Chihuahua!" from the commerical for the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua (where there's a large chorus line of dogs in Aztec headresses singing.) Dancing to that, John was singing along to the chorus, we were laughing.
Between that song and the next, one of the judges (a sportscaster) swatted John on the butt saying we're not supposed to be havng that much fun!
So we had a inkling that we might be picked...

Dancing with the Stars -2009 Road Show Tryouts

Wahoo! We made it. We're dancing at the All State Arena in January in the contest before the show starts.

Those who are in from the Schaumburg Arthur Murray:

Ben, Gail, Nancy, me, Francois, John, Staci & Ben.

Office Christmas Party

Last night, we went to my office Christmas party.

I had put the woman in charge of the party in touch with Julia, our dance instructor at Arthur Murray Studios. They arranged to have Charles and Natalie come to the party, give a demo and a mini lesson. There was about a third of the room on the dance floor for the Hustle mini lesson, a surprisingly large number!

During the demo, Charles and Natalie pulled John & I out to dance West Coast Swing with them. We’ve danced in front of large crowds before but this was a group of my co-workers and bosses. Hopefully, showing that we can dance was not considered making a spectacle of ourselves. We did get a lot of complements afterwards and we had a lot of fun.

Then we dance about every other song for the next 2 hours!
The best office Christmas party I’ve been to!

Lesson Notes

That's a lot to remember!


Foxtrot:
Jr Walks to Quarter Turn (stay close together) to Promenade to one Jr Walk to Grapevine (S S QQQQQQ) to Inside Turn (on 7, get arm up away from John’s face) , John: in turn, arm to back to lead in rest of rotation, Ann: step fwd and follow rotation.
Fwd with heal leads and back peeling foot up. Ann keep face left. Make sure when bringing feet together they are even; if off, throws off balance.

Lesson Notes

Triple Swing
Keep a strong connection. Upper arm muscles should not be moving. Practice basic step and Sweetheart with palm to palm connection to be reminded how connection needs to feel.

Hammer Lock & Sweetheart in Triple Swing
Two turns. First is a tuck turn. On second turn, lead from the core. This gives most control. John’s hand at waist needs to give a good tug lead for this turn, helps me do fast turn on first triple.

Rumba
Hold slows longer. No. Longer! Don’t brush feet.

Banquera in Rumba
Cross-body with S-Q-Q.
Slow is spiral turn. (Fwd on R, L stays on floor and twists around.)
Then unwind and close on Q-Q.
Walk S-Q-Q.
S with fast turn in and slink fwd on Q-Q.

50th Anniversary Present

30x40", Acrylic

This Fall is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. I decided to paint a portrait for them of John & I with my sister and her daughters.
Do you know how hard it is to get good reference photos with a camera on timer and 2 of the 5 people not liking to get their photo taken? And then everyone looked their best in a different photo. So I had to merge together several photos. Despite that and the tight time schedule for this painting, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Painted portrait

Cherished
Acrylic paint on canvas
30x40"

This painting is done in Acrylic paint and is almost 3 feet wide by 4 feet tall. The heads are about 1-1/2 to 2 times life size.
This painting is based on a photo that I've had for a while. I knew I wanted to turn it into a painting but it wasn't until I saw some portraits that an artist did after manipulating the photo in Photoshop that I thought I may have found how I wanted to paint that photo. Once I tried this manipulation technique on the photo, I knew that this was the technique that the photo was waiting for!

I'm very happy with the way this painting turned out. It pretty much came out the way I envisioned it could. And John likes it too.

This portrait was recently accepted into a juried art show, and it was the first thing you saw when walking in.




To see more of my paintings, visit http://artblog.oilpastelstudio.com/

Showcase Ball -September 2008

John & I have been working on an Argentine Tango routine. Very sultry and sexy. Here we performed the routine in public for the first time at the Chicago Showcase Ball.

This was a faux competition to get us comfortable with the idea of a competition format. There were judges who gave out critques instead of rankings. The judge who watched this solo dance routine said that we were ready to move onto the next level. Judges who watched us during group "heats" said that we were fun to watch. The judges also liked seeing John's dance face!

I wanted a dance gown but even used and unadorned they are expensive. So I dusted off my sewing machine and designing skills (the 2 years of fashion design before becoming an engineer still comes in handy).

And I made a teal sequin dance dress with beaded fringe at the hem and beaded lace applique in the front. Since time to make the dress was short, I used an idea I saw in a competition photo online, a slip-on sheer skirt that turned the short Latin-style dress into a long Smooth-style dress. The Foxtrot I danced with Charles (an instructor from the Schaumburg Arthur Murray) was at the beginning of the day. Then the slip-on skirt slipped off and I had the short dress for the rest of the day.

One lesson learned: Do not put beaded fringe where it will be under you when sitting in a hard chair all day...

And here we are with our dance instructor Julia (from the Schaumburg Arthur Murray) at the end of the day dressed for the formal dinner.

Here is a video of the routine.

Grandma's Birthday

My Grandmother decided that to celebrate her 90th birthday, she wanted to gather her family around her for a few days. So we all went on a 5-day cruise to the Carribean.

Four generations of the Tucker family.

We had dinner together each night. During the day, we went off in smaller groups to do things.

Other things like jet ski-ing.. or as Nikki did, wall climbing...

Then we all gathered for a big Birthday Party for Grandma.

Here's my dad presenting her with a digital photo frame already full of family photos.

My sister, Donna (with Mia on the way) and my mother.

My parents on formal night.

John & I not on formal night.

And of course, what cruise would be complete without dancing?

John is such a good dancer that I had women coming up to me and asking to dance with him! Not once, not twice, but 4 times!

And John & I will dance almost anywhere. One afternoon there was a Trio playing in the center Atrium and my mother wanted to watch us dance.

We had people watching us from several floors. Including one woman who told us to "hold your slow" and she told my mom that we looked like about a "Bronze 2"!

Which is the level we're at so that was cool!

While we were waiting in the long, airport security line to get our flight home, a couple said that they'd recognized us from the cruise and had enjoyed watching us dance.

Time with family and lots of fun too!

Video from Dancing with the Stars & Swing Routine

Here is the video that Ann's friend Seetha took at the Allstate Arena.




Also, here is the Lindy/Swing routine we did a few months ago.
This is here to show that we actually do know some advanced dancing!

And a photo with the Michael, the dance instructor who helped us with the Lindy routine.

More Photos from Dancing with the Stars

Here are 2 photos taken by Ann's friend, Seetha.
She was sitting on the opposite side of the stage from us.

Here are 5 of us from the Schaumburg Studio waiting before we go on.

(L-R: Ben, LaShaun, Don, Ann & John)

Here we are on stage after dancing.

Dancing with the Stars -Chicago Tour Stop

Last night we were on the dance floor in front of 15,000 people before the sold-out performance of Dancing with the Stars-The Tour.

It was a mini-competition with the 10 couples from Wednesday night’s try-outs.
The competition was 3 rounds 45 seconds each.

45 seconds!

We were eliminated in the first round. We have a lot of excuses but the main reason is that we had no idea how quick 45 seconds would be!

We did some basic steps to get into the rhythm of the cha-cha. Then we started doing the fancier steps. By that point, about 30 of the 45 seconds were already gone. So unfortunately, when the judge looked our way, we hadn’t been doing anything special.

Oh well…
It was still a lot of fun. And we learned an important lesson. When doing any kind of competition, come out with the fancy stuff at the first step!

We danced just before the main show.

Then two couples were picked to dance the final round at intermission. Both couples were from our dance studio.
At least we didn’t have to watch the first half of the show nervous about having to go out on the stage again.

The show, Dancing with the Stars-The Tour, was high energy and fun to watch. Although the tour website lists about 15 stars for the tour, they seem to take turns in groups of 5. Wayne Newton and Marie Osmond appear to take turns with singing and hosting duties. We got the show with Wayne Newton. He’s the one in the pink shirt in the winner’s photo.
The other stars were Sabrina & Monique from Disney shows, Joey Lawrence and Joey Fatone.
Of the 20+ dancers, there were only 4 I liked from the show, Cheryl Burke, Edyta Sliwinska, Louis Van Amstel and Derek Hough.

Info on stars and dancers:
http://dancingwiththestars.aeglive.com/dancer_bios.php

The show and all the dancers were great. I had just hoped to see a few more people from the TV show.

We got picked!

The TV show, Dancing with the Stars, has a road show during the off season. At each stop on the tour, they have 10 local couples dance as the pre-show entertainment.

About 20 couples braved the cold winds off the lakefront in downtown Chicago after work yesterday to try out for the chance to dance on stage before the Stars start the show.

We got picked!
We're going to be dancing on stage at the Allstate Arena!
Then when the show starts, we have front row seats.

Students from 3 Arthur Murray studios competed (Downtown, Morton Grove & Schaumburg).

Four of the ten couples picked were from the Schaumburg studio!

Dancing with the Stars

Tonight we are going to brave the single digit temperatures and take the train downtown after work.
Arthur Murray Studios is a sponsor of the road tour for the TV show Dancing with the Stars. The tour will be in the Chicago area this Friday and will have 10 local couples dancing on the stage at some point in the show. We are going to the studio downtown tonight to try out. Since Dancing with the Stars is such a big show for ABC; Channel 7, the local ABC affiliate, will have a film crew there. So it's possible that we may be on the local ABC news tonight.

Happy New Year

We had a fun New Years Eve.
We went to the Willowbrook Ballroom where they had a live band, dancing and balloon drop.
It was so much fun. We danced all night. We gave up on travelling dances like the waltz and foxtrot as couples kept stopping in front of us. It became more of an effort of steering around people than dancing. So any song we could do the swing to we did.

The night went by so fast. We shared our table with a couple who had been going to the Willowbrook off & on for 40 years. They were fun to talk to.

The Willowbrook was also one of the places that ABC channel 7 had a live feed from 11-midnight.
Most of the time the camera was focus on the host, Janet Davies. But occasionally the camera swept the dance floor. Our niece, Shannon thought she saw us.

There were balloons in nets all along the ceiling. Every so often, there would be a loud bang as one popped from the heat of the lights. At midnight, all the balloons dropped and everyone immediately started stepping on them, including us. The noise was deafening! But so much fun!