february filler
the power of dance and movie magic
February is my least favorite month of the year. It is a month that creeps up after you are already winded from surviving January. I’ve been waiting on important news this month, which has turned me into a Problem for my community. I know that things are bad when I find myself scrolling through facebook. My comfort has come from watching television (Severance hive where are you?) and reading manga from the library
Maybe you wouldn’t be able to guess this about me, but somewhere inside my body is an intrinsic yearning for choreography. For years, I have been asking my friends stuff like, Wouldn’t it be funny if we took a K-Pop dance class? Wouldn’t it be funny if we learned how to renegade? Wouldn’t it be funny if we tried to recreate Caroline Polachek’s dance in “Amanaemonesia”? I’m taking a jazz dance class at the community college this semester, and it is funny, but it’s also so serious to me.
The last time I took dance classes was at the community recreation center when I was a kid. I had a teacher whose name I don’t remember, but I do remember that she updated her playlist for me when I told her I missed when she played Rihanna. I eventually stopped dance class a few years later because I felt strange in my body; I especially hated when a spotlight was put on me to freestyle during warm-ups. I much preferred doing the same dance moves as everyone else around me. Years later, I loved learning choreography for show choir in middle school. The pride I felt when I was chosen to be in the center of the front row for our rendition of Matilda’s “Revolting Children” still feels accessible to me — I had auditioned for our (frankly, mean) choreographer a week before and felt uncharacteristically confident in my performance.
I quit show choir in high school because my school’s program was really intense (like, regularly-national-champions intense), and I wanted to focus on academics and basketball. Sometimes I feel sad when I think about all the things I quit doing when I was a kid because I felt awkward or because I was too late to be the Best.
My Tuesday night class is full of dancers of a wide range of ages, which is the beauty of the city offering free classes to all residents. Dance class gives me my radio music fix and asks me to engage my hips in shocking ways. I’m no better at being outgoing than I was as a teenager, but I trust myself now to show up and sit through the awkwardness. When I get home each week, I show my roommates the choreography I learned and they say, “wow.”
Valerie once told me that her best piece of advice for life is to “Show up earnestly.” I think this is very good advice.
The Oscars are tonight. The Academy Awards are maybe the single most important day of the year when it comes to generating conversation topics between my father and me. Just weeks ago, I had grand ambitions to watch all ten best picture nominees and release a newsletter ranking them, but honestly that Bob Dylan biopic has been sitting there in my head like a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. I know that A Complete Unknown is supposed to be quite good, and I love Timothee Chalamet. I don’t know why, but I really don’t want to watch that movie. Since that newsletter will never come, here are some of my awards season Takes:
I’ve found that The Brutalist (I gave it a 3.5 on letterboxd) is being celebrated more for its sheer ambition than its actual execution of that ambitious vision. Of course there is a lot wrong with Emilia Perez for a lot of different reasons, but if we are awarding pure ambition, …
Timothee Chalamet’s acceptance speech at the SAG awards has catapulted him to a new category of fond regard for me: Capricorn freak actors. This distinguished title is shared by Jeremy Strong.
Of the seven nominees I’ve seen, my pick would be Ramell Ross’ Nickel Boys. I went to see it with Lilou and Josh in January, and the emotional effect of this movie was so potent that it ruined the vibes between us for a few minutes as we cried in AMC.
More notes:
This past week I spent a few days in Austin. Within a few hours, I saw this school bus, which blew my mind. Can someone tell me why the wheels need to be this big?
My mom can’t stop sending me texts from the perspective of her dog (who now has a full wardrobe).
Thank you again and always for reading. I sincerely hope I have more to say next time lol
Recommended reading:
I enjoyed this a lot