thisnewday

Many years ago, when my two oldest daughters were in elementary school, they had an opportunity to enroll in a dance program being introduced in their school by a local performing arts studio. They joined up, loved it, and soon opted to extend their training into weekend classes at the downtown studio.

They did well, showed some promise, and were invited to join the studio's performance ensemble, the M&Ms. Over the next several years, they performed in literally all the area shopping malls, staged an elaborate Christmas show at the locally-famous Landmark Theater, and successfully competed in the first two New York State Dance Olympics in Rochester, NY. And those were just the highlights.

By the time it was over, I'd been hired as the studio's full-time Technical Director and our staging, backdrops, scenery and props filled two of the largest straight-body U-Hauls available at the time. The downtown studio--and the dance arts--had literally become our family and our life.

There's much more to the story, of course, but these days our involvement with dance and the performing arts consists mainly of sharing the many wonderful YouTube videos being produced by the present generation.

A while back, I posted a clip filmed at the Millennium Dance Complex in Orange County, CA, which featured Brian Friedman's choreography of Portugal. The Man's "Feel It Still." Among my favorite performers in that clip were Sean Lew and Kaycee Rice and the following is a clip which includes their more recent work with choreographer Jake Kodish dancing to Shawn Mendes' "Lost in Japan."

The clip opens with Kodish who is then followed by the duos of Jade Chynoweth/Josh Killacky and Alexander Chung/Gaynor Hicks, a solo performance by Fik-shun Stegall, and finally Sean and Kaycee. They're all wonderful to watch, in my opinion, their talents vividly showcased by the amazing videography of Tim Milgram (TMILLY TV).