The Professionals II, originally uploaded by michaelbrown.
Check out some amazing skating and choreography Sunday evening at 8:00 at the Playland Skate Center. Read more about it in this Austin Chronicle article.
(thanks to Mary Arnett for yet another tip)
2 comments:
Wow! This was so much fun. It was sold out. They had about 100 chairs on the rink itself and the performers (about 29 in all) entered and exited in between the rows.
Jerry, the 71 year old, lived in the Chicago area for a long time.. He was the star of the show. Not a flamboyant skater, but very graceful and joyful to be out there skating and dancing. There were several pieces that were accompanied by old recordings of a pipe organ in a skating rink in Chicago in the 50's. That was really cool...there used to be a lot of places that had real pipe organs and real musicians that played. The organ soloist had a very jazzy style of playing. Jerry demonstrated several skate park traditions from those days such as the grand march.
There were also some younger kids who did some break dancing w/ skates on. Really cool.
There was a speed skating piece which was performed to "Another One Bites the Dust". A group of roller derby girls did a number to a classical rendition of "Skaters Waltz" that was hilarious.
And of course, several disco favorites like Dancing Queen. There was couples dancing, and the performers were of all ages, all sizes.... big, small, short, tall, some trained dancers, most not. Some teach skating. Men w/ long flowing hair that blew in the breeze as they skated. A wonderful DJ and a sound track that featured segments of interviews w/ the performers...
The performers were people that Allison Orr, choreographer,
had rounded up in her visits to Playland Skate Park. I can see why she was drawn to this venue for her performance...it has all the built in theatrical technology you need...fog machine, twirling mirror balls, colorful light system, great sound system, an expansive "dance floor".
Made me want to have a neighborhood skate party there. The owner of the skate park is an APD Lieutenant, Pete Morin. I wonder if he would give us a deal on a party at the skate park, since our neighborhood "hosts" the parking lot for the roller derby everytime they hold it out there.
Anybody interested?
Mary Arnett
803-1540
A neighborhood skate party is *such* a fun idea. I wonder if we could get enough people interested.
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