So Sylvie

It was hot here yesterday. 75 degrees in the middle of February, whew. We decided a couple of years ago to step back from a business of ours, French Paintbox, where we hosted groups of people from all over the world for painting holidays in the French countryside. It was a lot of jetting around by a lot of people and we just didn't feel good about the contribution to global pollution. We decided to live with a smaller "footprint". So now we recycle furniture locally and are on the verge of opening a little shop, fingers and toes crossed.

But here's what I really wanted to get to – last night on America's Ballroom Challenge a couple from Elizabeth New Jersey, Igor Litvinov and Yulia Ivleva, left a rather large "footprint" on the dance floor. They made the bold move of doing their show-dance number to Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit! It was explosive! They tore the roof off of Ballroom Dancing. We were laughing and screaming at the same time. Video HERE. And in the Show Dance category they danced to a James Brown medley. So much fun! Video HERE.

I always enjoy the performances by young kids that they feature between the competetive dancers. 13 year-olds Cole Mills and Anna Viagast from New Jersey (what do they put in the water there?) were great, dancing to the sophisticated selection of Summertime by Billy Stewart. Cole is an especially powerful dancer.

You might want to watch on February 21st when they have The International Latin Championship.

I want to close by sharing a link to a fun site called Found. There's also a magazine, but I like the site better. Here's an excerpt about the origin (pardon the language):

"One snowy winter night in Chicago a few years back, Davy went out to his car and found a note on his windshield — a note meant for someone else, a guy named Mario:

We loved this note — its amazing mixture of anger and hopefulness — and so we shared it with as many folks as we could. Each friend we showed the Mario and Amber note to seemed to have a few finds to show us in return; clearly we weren't alone in our fascination with FOUND stuff! As a way for everyone to join forces and share their finds with everyone else, we decided to start a magazine called FOUND, a showcase for all the strange, hilarious and heartbreaking things people've picked up."

 

Do you have any interesting found items? Does anybody know of a Flickr group dedicated to this? I could only find one and it was rather meager.

P.S. Here are two great films that might help initiate you into the world of Ballroom Dancing:

Strictly Ballroom and Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (starring my favorite actor Robert Carlyle).