Do you wanna dance?
Last week, with Mom and Julie, I went to see the new Antonio Banderas movie, "Save the Last Dance." Or "Shall We Dance?" Or it might have been called, "Wanna Dance?" or, "We Should Dance!" or "I don't speak much English but I sure can dance!" Whatever. Anyway, it was pretty good. Antonio Banderas plays this ballroom dance instructor who inspires a bunch of misfit inner city kids by teaching them how to waltz and tango and stuff. In return they teach him the fine art of carjacking. It's a feel-good film! On the way home Julie and I said to one another, don't you wish you could dance like that and then we said yeah, kinda wistful-like and then we ate some cake and forgot about it, because it's a MOVIE. We can't dance like that, we've never been able to dance like that even when we were in high school and Antonio Banderas is married to Melanie Griffith anyway, so he can go scratch. Melanie, get off the Botox Bus! Switch to Oil of Olay and just shine it on.
So in what I consider to be a supreme coincidence, I got this callback in DC for a new musical based on the Witches of Eastwick. I've never read the book but I LOVE the movie. Jack Nicholson as Satan? Genius! Paul had an audition in DC the same day so we braved the legendary I-95 traffic and trucked up there. The traffic on 95 really has gotten epic. Mel Gibson should direct an epic about people trapped in traffic on 95. Maybe he would do it if it was like Jesus in an SUV or something, trying to get off the interstate to perform a baptism and he can't get to any bodies of water so he has to use the drinking fountain at the Molly Pitcher rest area.
Where was I going with this?
Right, so we go to D.C. and there I am at the audition. I've prepared a song but they're running behind and so there's no time for us to sing individually, so we go through this big number as a group a few times and then with 2 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors, etc. No problem. The song isn't difficult, everyone else there is really nice, we're playing, we're having fun, happiness pie. But unbeknownst to me, this is to be only 20% of the audition experience. The other 80%? Not acting, my friends, the thing I can actually DO - no, no: DANCING. Now, they had told me to dress comfortably, but I mean the level of dancing that was expected...it's not like they told me to wear a unitard, man! I was, let me think how to phrase it - Humiliated! Yes, I believe that has the proper ring to it. I mean, there was a CHOREOGRAPHER. There were actors who had special shoes and those tights with no feet in them. I was in a sundress and strappy heels and I wasn't even wearing a BRA. It was not good. I stopped short of actually falling right on my ass, but barely. I was sweating like a whore in church and the only person doing worse than me was this bald man in his sixties who I swear I saw using an oxygen tank in the lobby beforehand. It's not like I'm physically incapable of doing that kind of dancing but I just can't learn it in five minutes. I'm combination-disabled. I can figure it out but it takes me twice as long as everyone else. (Also, I pretty much have to be wearing a bra. It just gives me more confidence when I'm leaping around like an asshole in front of people who are interested in employing me.)
Clearly, not in this case. Let's just say I won't be waiting by the phone on this one. And any other week I would probably have just pretended I had to use the ladies room and fled the theatre, but I think somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, "If those misfit teen criminals can find the dance within themselves, so can I. I just have to believe! I just have to want it bad enough!"
Damn that Antonio Banderas. I knew we should have seen the September 11th movie. Yeah, I would have been disturbed psychologically but that would have passed pretty quickly. The mental blisters from this dance are gonna take a lot longer to heal.