[Mb-hair] Kenny Ortega's a winner

[Michael Butler]

Thanks for sending this
XO Michael

> Oct 19 2004  |  Los Angeles Times
> 
> http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/segal/cl-et-choreography19oct19,2,2438885.st
> ory 
> CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
> Winning moves
> Artistry and back-patting highlight the American Choreography Awards.
> By Lewis Segal , Times Staff Writer
> 
> If dancers are usually nothing more than sideshows or special effects in
> contemporary Hollywood, the annual American Choreography Awards allows them
> one 
> long evening of delirious self-celebration and empowerment.
> 
> Divided into eight categories, the awards honor achievements in dance on
> camera and often confirm the worst about the dancers' status quo. But the
> event 
> itself is more a carnival of the dispossessed than a conventional,
> celebrity-laden trophy giveaway.
> 
> As the nearly four-hour 10th edition confirmed Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre,
> the show releases the commercial dance world's deep sense of family loyalty.
> Consequently, the people responsible for sleazy, derivative dance numbers from
> the most forgettable film musicals or TV shows will frequently earn titanic
> ovations, compared with the polite approval granted the greatest concert-dance
> choreographers of our time (Paul Taylor, for example).
> 
> However, it's the concert-dance world that invariably contributes the most
> indelible live performances. On Sunday, these highlights included the
> phenomenally pliant Matthew Rushing in Alvin Ailey's "A Songfor You," the
> magically 
> buoyant Marty Lawson in David Parsons' "Caught," and the daring,
> hyper-gymnastic 
> members of Diavolo Dance Theatre in excerpts from "The Wheel."
> 
> Soulful ensemble choreography by Ka-Ron Brown Lehman, fierce and buoyant
> martial-arts gymnastics by Matt Mullins and the Talauegas' spectacular display
> of 
> "krumping" (the re-Africanized, militarized successor to hip-hop) also
> punctuated the proceedings.
> 
> In speaking about the late Walt Disney during one of Sunday's special
> tributes, his brother Roy O. Disney called movies "a rhythmic medium" and drew
> attention to the Disney animators' focus on "the analysis of motion."
> 
> This focus linked Disney's dances to Parsons (whose "Caught" exploits the
> same perceptual quirk that allows us to see a series of still drawings as a
> moving image), to Mullins, to the krumping segment and to all the other
> choreographies (live or taped) that attempted something more purposeful in
> movement terms 
> than just a pileup offlashy diversions. And it suddenly made you view Walt D.
> not only as a film innovator but also as an unlikely but genuine
> postmodernist.
> 
> Along with Walt Disney and Lehman, choreographer/director Kenny Ortega
> received one of the special (out-of-competition) awards ‹ and would have
> deserved it 
> had he done nothing else in his career but the bracingly politicized theater
> piece "Declare Yourself" at the very end of the program.
> 
> Co-directed by Ortega and Robert Egan, this collage of pithy spoken and
> danced viewpoints on millennial America provided a reality check for the whole
> event. If it jolted dancers out of their self-obsession long enough to send
> them 
> to the polls on Nov. 2, Ortega and Egan ought to get a special public service
> award next year.
> 
> 
> Honorees and Winners
> 
> 
> Innovator: Walt Disney
> 
> 
> Career achievement: Kenny Ortega
> 
> 
> Educator award: Ka-Ron Brown Lehman
> 
> 
> Feature film
> 
> Tie: Sylvain Chomet for "The Triplets of Belleville"
> 
> Dave Scott, Shane Sparks and Robert James Hoffman III for "You Got Served"
> 
> 
> Short film
> 
> Édouard Lock for "Amelia," La La La Human Steps
> 
> 
> Television special
> 
> Tie: Jason Samuels Smith for the 2003 Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon:
> Opening Number
> 
> Paul Taylor for "Acts of Ardor," PBS "Dance in America"
> 
> 
> Television variety series
> 
> Monie Adamson for "Mad TV," "Regional Championships"
> 
> 
> Episodic television
> 
> Fred Tallaksen for "Malcolm in the Middle," "Jump Jump"
> 
> 
> Music video
> 
> Hi-Hat, Anwar "Flii" Burton, Cicely Bradley and Olisa Thompson for Missy
> Elliott's "Pass Dat Dutch"
> 
> 
> Commercials
> 
> Fatima Robinson for Target, "Changing of the Guards"
> 
> 
> Fight choreography
> 
> Tie: George Marshall Ruge for "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the
> Black Pearl"
> 
> Keith Adams, Sonny Chiba, Quentin Tarantino and Yuen Woo-Ping for "Kill Bill
> Vol. 2" 
> 
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