#i am a huge nerd please adjust your assumptions i am not cool in the slightest

[sanstropfremir]

oh my god i am SO in love with lord of the dance. however i never think about michael flatley first when i think about it because in my mind gillian norris is the most important and iconic person in that show.

i used to have it on a dvd when i was little, i must have watched it like two times a week and never got bored of it. it was the original 1996 dublin stage, the only version i enjoy to its maximum capacity. fun fact, they came to bucharest in 2014, and i wanted to go, but ultimately didn't. and thank god for that. i found clips on youtube after that and everything was worse: the music, the outfits, the acting.

fortunately there are clips on youtube of the 1996 dublin stage too, as well as the whole show. i still sometimes watch them. and after much consideration, i have come to the conclusion that fiery nights, warriors and gypsy (however unfortunate the name) are my favorite numbers, in that respective order.

fiery nights wouldn't be what it is without the soundtrack, that fucking saxophone. i saw somebody say that that is what sex sounds like. i have heard the same thing said about ateez's desire outro. these things are so unrelated right now but i honestly can hear it and feel it for both and it makes so much sense to describe them that way. gillian norris is so mesmerizing, so captivating, like i am fucking seduced through the screen. and when she starts dancing with the guy who plays don dorcha and gives him that smile you can only see a brief second in shitty 360p quality? i am positively passed out. after they leave the stage the rest of the performance is kinda meh because the other girls don't give me any passion, much less the guys. they're lucky the choreography is so tight tho.

warriors is a fucking experience from start to finish. the "oh shit it's going down" vibe right from the beginning, the intensity of the dance, the speed, the accuracy, the synchronization, the piercing looks of don dorcha - i am both horny and intimidated. today's warriors number doesn't even come close to sparking up the same kind of heavy feeling the original did. it's so... cartoonish.

and finally, gypsy, which was my og favorite. i really wonder how i did not turn out bisexual, because gillian norris definitely made me question some things. i was always impressed with her elegance and power of seduction, my dream was to be sexy like her but also to jump as high as her for my birdies. sadly i never did learn irish dance. also i really wanted her hair.

special shoutout goes to breakout tho. i don't even know if i love the first half of it or the second more. bernadette flynn as the leader all the other girls follow, girlboss moment. her unspoken duel with gillian, exchanging those fucking murderous looks, i was SO there for it!!! again, watching today's version, it's like watching a bad disney channel series. there's no seriousness to it, no commitment, it's like putting on a puppet show for kids, which this musical is so not.

ugh, i'm probably gonna go and watch some scenes again. thank you for letting me rant in your inbox!! i've only really shared my interest and love for this show with my parents, who only like it a moderate amount (not because they think it's bad but because it's just not something they're passionate about) and my ex, who couldn't care less about dance and acting and who wasn't really interested in it.

if it's okay, let me ask, how did you get interested in stage performances, dance, theatre, all that jazz? for me, it was because i did cheerleading and dance for 5 years when i was little (then i quit because i thought i had it hard in school in 5th grade). i regret not continuing with it so much. and i daresay i was pretty good at it too. oh well, at least the passion for dance remained. it's the main part i got into kpop!!

it's no problem at all!! like i said, this is my virtual pub please come talk about about random things while i serve you a pint!! i love reading about other people's passions, this was lovely!

i only think of michael flatley because he's top billed and also one of the producers so his name is always on it, and also i haven't actually seen the whole show since probably 2005 because it didn't much strike a nerve with me as a kid. i think it was probably because i watched waaaaaayyyy too much cirque. i won't say very much on it but i will say that adolphe saxe knew what he was doing when he unleashed the saxophone on the world and we are still dealing with the repercussions (i say this lovingly as a saxophone player). i'm also a horrible person and i cannot watch any fiddle + flute based musical and not think of the the lord of the rings musical, because i love the lord of the rings musical.

well i got into theatre kind of unintentionally because i thought it might be fun to try doing stage crew for the musical when i started high school and then a year later i was the stage manager. my tragic flaw is that i need to be in a position of knowledge and authority at all times, but i’m slowly getting over it. i liked it so much that i decided at like 14 that it was going to be my career and here i am over a decade later. but i also watched a lot of perfomance and art programming as a child because my parents were weird hippies, so lots of cirque du soleil, a lot of classical ballet, and also shows like toy castle (do not click on this is you are in any way afraid of clowns or frogs) which is mildly horrifying in the way all children's content is mildly horrifying in hindsight but as a child in 2000 i ate that shit with a spoon. i also dated a contemp/ballet dancer in high school and then had a very weird and ethically dubious affair with another ballet dancer in undergrad. it's a long story. it helps that i'm truly obsessed with performance and art in pretty much all its forms and i'm one of those awful people that draws in art galleries and watches shows that i know are going to be bad so i can analyze them and avoid making the same mistakes in the future. kpop was a thing that just happened as a byproduct of being friends with lot of first gen asian immigrants as a kid. i've been around and aware since 2008 but i didn't get that deep into actually following releases until first lockdown because i just didn't have the time. but i'm glad i did, because it's been a really nice hobby!