Deck The Halls

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Um...as a dancer I am trying to understand the comment about "reusing dance moves." I was hoping it was a joke, as well.

While it is true that choreographers can use certain combinations more often than others, it isn't as if there is an infinite supply of "moves." The choreography is driven by the music and the story, and isn't just random movement in time to a beat. History’s greatest choreographers used the same set of steps in a variety of combinations in any number of dances; it is nature of the art. You don't criticize singers for reusing notes or musicians for reusing chords.

Did that make sense?
 
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Nic said:
Um...as a dancer I am trying to understand the comment about "reusing dance moves." I was hoping it was a joke, as well.

While it is true that choreographers can use certain combinations more often than others, it isn't as if there is an infinite supply of "moves." The choreography is driven by the music and the story, and isn't just random movement in time to a beat. History’s greatest choreographers used the same set of steps in a variety of combinations in any number of dances; it is nature of the art. You don't criticize singers for reusing notes or musicians for reusing chords.

Did that make sense?
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I understand that dancers will and can re-use certain dance moves, but when you're re-using these dance moves in the same venue, for multiple shows, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Raising their hands in the air and doing that dip thing is what makes the Jitterbugs the Jitterbugs in Night Beats. Are there so few dance moves in the world that Busch Gardens had to duplicate dance moves for two shows? I think not.
 
This is what I was trying to say before, but my comment sounded really stupid, so again, I send my apologies!! :( I totally agree with you guys that dance moves can be reused, just like singers can reuse notes...I just thought, like Malsdad said, that they probably should have not used the same distinct dance move in Deck the Halls as they did in Night Beats because they are two shows in the same place during two consecutive seasons of BGW.
 
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Zachary said:
Big question, is that a net positive or negative?
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In my opinion, right now it's a net negative. (See my summary on the CT thread.) Others in my group liked some of the changes that I didn't. Half the fun is seeing how people have can opposite reactions to the same thing. I'm willing to give it a few more watches before my opinion solidifies.
 
Zachary said:
Big question, is that a net positive or negative?
Click to expand...

Definitely negative. This show suffers from the same choreography issues I saw at Miracles, all hops and circles, where are the lifts!? I'm not sure how long the show ran the last couple of years but I saw it twice yesterday. The first time it seemed short so I timed the second run, 21 minutes. I'm sure it was right at 30 last year. What does shortening the show by a third get them? There were only 5 shows on the schedule so it isn't more shows. They cut several songs. The "intermission" where the singers performed while the dancers changes has been removed, took out the snow miser song, I am not happy :irritated:. If you didn't know the show before I'm sure you will find it entertaining but knowing what it was it's just sad if this is the direction the entertainment is going.
 
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Big negative for me. The current choreographer was at several shows we saw. The same monotonous moves mentioned above.
 
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So I managed to catch a showing of Deck The Halls last thing last night. You see I've never been a huge fan of the show since the Rising Stage was taken out, and since then it has progressively gotten worse for me. This year, I'm very neutral on the changes.

Let's start with the changes to the stage. Honestly, I thought the changes in stage set-up were absolutely fine. The Fireplace they had in the center the last two years, looked nice visually, but was way too big, and blocked many people's view of the entire stage very often, I wasn't sad to see that go. Other than that, there were only a couple changes, which included no stairs on the side with the door, a couple new props in front of the band boxes, and those blue snowflake things hanging from the ceiling.

Next, costumes. There was nothing I really liked about the costume changes in the show. I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the new blue dresses for the girls, but that's about it. The guy dancer's costumes were atrociously tacky and ugly in the beginning of the show. I had already seen the top of the singer's costumes. The men seemed to be wearing generic sweaters, and the girls were wearing some type of concoction that reminded me of something a lady in the 1950's would wear. Both of them did not look at all Christmassy. With already seeing the top side of the girl singer's costumes, I automatically assumed their skirts would be long, or semi-long, but nope, they hacked those things off just above the knees, and gave them very weirdly designed tights. Also what's the deal with the park making Military costumes out of Satin? And the other question is why is the singer still in that costume 5-10 minutes after that part of the show is over? I will say the Reindeer costumes the girl dancers wear at one point in the show are very raunchy from my view-point. Other than that, the costumes were primarily the same towards the end of the show, and I had no problem with them.

Now, the actual show part. The choreography seems to be of main concern, and I will say it suffered most in the beginning of the show, however from my viewpoint, it progressively got better as the show went on, Eventually matching up to previous years towards the middle/end. A lot of the show seemed primarily the same to me. The Vocals in the show were very good, they did a very good job with four singers, having two less than in previous years. I will say I do like the changes in the White Christmas Section of the show. The Reindeer in the Rudolph section were just plain unnecessary. More moving of the feet to pre-recorded audio of tap-dancing, not actual dancing. There was one point in the show where the Sexual Innuendo was really too strong. I probably saw more Sexual Innuendo in this show than I have ever seen in Night Beats. I Thoroughly enjoyed the new ending of the show, I felt the choreography was on par, if not better than previous years. The only thing that bothered me is that The Tree didn't come down during one song, it took two to get it all the way down to the stage which just seemed very odd to me. Other than that there were little things in the show that I did like, and other things I didn't.

Overall, I still enjoy the show as much as I did last year or in 2012, still not as much as when it was on the rising stage.
 
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I enjoyed the show. Changes were made to update and freshen it. Some songs removed, other re-arranged. It's what I would expect for a traditional Christmas variety show. It fits well into a restaurant environment. No plot needed. The singers are all very good. The dancing could use some improvement. Overall I like it and will continue to watch it.
 
Zachary said:
Big question, is that a net positive or negative?
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I will defer to Nic on this one as I can not speak to ability, but I will say that a dancers performance is hugely limited to the the material they are given to work with.

If the choreography is, step, touch, kick, ball, change, Jazz Hands, again, then it will look like crap.
 
Honestly, from my viewpoint, Deck The Halls hasn't had decent coreography since it was performed on the rising stage.(as with other shows that made the transition to the new stage) It just managed to get worse in some parts this year, and they kind of ruined just about everything else the show had going for it.
 
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