Monthly Archives: August 2015

The Last Five Years – Relationships are Hard

Posted in Film, Music, Songs by

Jamie sings, “Share your life with me for the next ten minutes.”  That is all relationships are, a series of ten minutes that can be full of joy, sadness, fear, and anger.  The film The Last Five Years takes you on a journey through a relationship that sees ups, downs, and sideway turns.  It brings you into the heads of the characters Cathy (Anna Kendricks) and Jamie (Jeremy Jordan) as they explore, savior, and experience love.  Cathy and Jamie’s relationship always seemed unbalance from the beginning.  Cathy, a struggling actress trying to hold on to the man that she fell in love with, and Jamie, a successful author at twenty-three always wanting more than what he had.  He watches his career soar as Cathy just follows behind.  Cathy sings, “…and then he smiles and nothing else makes sense…”  The song ends as you see her walking behind him, following his lead.  It was never a partnership.  In it together, side by side.  She always followed in his success instead of focusing on her career, her dream.

I question, can you have it all?  They were twenty-three.  Babies starting out on their career paths.  Trying to have it all – the successful relationship, the marriage, and the career.  The ability that a person has to turn your whole world upside down with one word, one letter, one song is a heartbreak everyone has been through.  You can start to question yourself worth when you are with someone who is more successful than you.  You can have feeling of neglect no matter how many times the successful person is supportive of your dreams and your aspirations.  You can live in your failures instead of taking your time to find the right path needed to get you to your goals.  Jamie gives Cathy a watch and at the end of the song he says “take your time.”  Can you take your time when everything else around you is moving fast?  When your husband is on a different page, a different chapter, or a different book?  Can you be supportive of his dreams when he stopped being supportive of yours?

The hour and thirty minute film bounced back and fourth between different parts of the last five years of their relationship.  Between the excitement and lust you have when you first connect with someone.  To the anger and bitterness you can have towards someone when they say something like “I will not lose because you can’t win.”  Those words are hurtful and were said out of anger, but then did Jamie ever really believe in Cathy?  Had he become so frustrated that he needed to cheat on her?  He said:

“Little more glue every time that it breaks
Perfectly balanced, and then I start making
Conscious, deliberate mistakes”

Mistakes.  Are they mistakes if you are doing them consciously or deliberately?  If they are mistakes wouldn’t you confess and try to work it out.  The blame for a relationship not working is not one person’s fault or the other.  It takes two people to have a relationship and you either want it or you don’t.  The Last Five Years shows how if it is always one sided it is never going to work.  It will fall apart like a flower losing its pedals.  In the words of Jason Robert Brown, if a successful relationship is to happen the thought process has to be:

“I will never be complete
I will never be alive
I will never change the world
Until I do”

What to Expect when you Bring a Dancer Out in Public

Posted in Dance by

Have you ever seen the music video of Sara Bareilles singing Gonna Get Over You?  It is one of the happiest break up songs I have ever heard.  Not only is she in the middle of the grocery store dancing and singing, but she somehow gets everyone else to join in too.  Granted, at the end of the video she comes to the realization that it was all in her head and bows her head in embarrassment and shame, but it basically sets the stage for what you need to know about a dancer in public.  Needless to say, when out in public with a dancer they can be extremely embarrassing to a non-dancer.  They can decide to jété down a grocery isle, or if music is playing in your general vicinity expect there to be random dancing to that bass pumping beat.  I can admit I’m embarrassing when I go out in public.  Just ask my brother who had to deal with my random dancing when we were last in Los Angeles together.  He had to deal with my bust a move mentality up and down third street in Santa Monica while street artists were getting their jam on.

So why do dancer do this?  They just can’t help themselves.  Imagine your whole life having various three minute sections of your life choreographed to music.  Now imagine repeating these sections so many times that your brain is going to fall out.  Between recitals, competition, professional performance gigs, choreographing, and charity events you have a tendency to lose your mind a little that anytime you hear music you just need to move.  In some situation random dancing is appropriate like on iCarly, a concert, or a music festival because not only are their other weirdos like you, but your friends or siblings that look at you as a crazy person are now joining in on the music that actually exists.  In my brother’s case, he gets the head bob going with his hands in the air like he just don’t care; there is a lot of jumping around and dancing like an idiot.

Lastly, a dancer can randomly start dancing when there is no music playing, but just so you know there is a constant soundtrack in their head.  Let me tell you it never turns off.  You know how I was saying that a dancer has the constant pleasure of repeating pieces or dances over and over again?  Well, that carries over into other parts of their lives.  For example, I become obsessed with certain songs and learn every word.  Then I am singing it for a week and every time I’m singing it to myself I get in my own head, think I’m alone, start choreographing to it, and all of a sudden I can have five people looking at me in the park because they think I’m a spaz.  I leave you with this. The next time you see someone dance randomly in public, I can 95% guarantee they are not crazy they just love life and want you to too.  Join in on the fun and make a flash mob out of their moves or make your own and connect with someone on an artistic level by dancing it out.