dance « Feminist Music Geek

Posts Tagged ‘dance

Jul

A spring in her step, a twinkle in her eye

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Turn on Their TVs
Tags: ability, athleticism, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, dance, embodiment

Let her have the damn chair; image courtesy of hitfix.com

I’ll always feel for Britney Spears. I am thrilled that Beyoncé raced past the quartet of blonde girls to be the enduring pop star of her generation–outsinging Christina Aguilera even at triple pianissimo, channelling Tina Turner’s stage presence, putting forth something of a (racially problematic, materialistic) feminist rhetoric, and, taking a cue from Janet Jackson, insisting on having a personal life. Beyoncé clearly has a support system who quake when a shy Houston girl transforms into a diva while rehearsing backstage. Does Britney? At least she had her assistant Felicia.

Remember 2007, aka Britneywatch, no doubt the worst year of her life? She was soon to turn 27. I’m not a superstitious person, but I knew many past pop icons bit the big one at that age. I worried we’d lose her, either to an overdose or a car accident or by her own hand. I was hardly alone. South Park 86ed the laffs in “Britney’s New Look” to comment on the horror show her life had become and our collective involvement in its creation (one of my contributions: I felt really good about myself when she admitted to not ”getting” Sundance selections because, you see, I watched Spirited Away). David Samuels wrote on Spears and tabloid journalism for The Atlantic. Tom Ewing compared her to Laura Palmer. Tobi Vail wanted to send her some Bikini Kill records after she shaved her head, a moment Beth Ditto noted as a potentially radical stance against a public she didn’t want touching her anymore.

I don’t know the exact nature of her mental anguish. Maybe it was being raised to be a pop star and treated like a commodity for so long without developing a better sense of self. Diet pills and an intense gym regimen certainly didn’t help. I don’t believe Courtney Love’s accusation that Spears was sexually abused by her father, but I would believe Spears if she made that charge, for the same reason I’d believe you or Mackenzie Phillips. But I’m glad she’s still with us. Like Jody Rosen, I enjoyed Femme Fatale. And I hope Britney is happy and has people looking out for her. I don’t know what Britney Spears did to “get better.” Frankly, I’m not convinced she did. Her comeback registered as hasty defense to me, but I’m willing to assume the best. So it makes me sad when I see comparisons between her early and current concert performances. A friend directed me to a clip and noted that the light from her eyes was gone. My concern is the restricted movement. One thing that gets overlooked in the outlining of Britney’s downward spiral is the knee injury she sustained from the video shoot to “Outrageous.” As a dancer and maybe as a person, she never recovered.

Blowing out her knee may have been even more depressing than the swarms of paparazzi she fought off or her marriage to Kevin Federline. Like Jackson, people dismissed Spears as “just” a dancer. These folks tend to overlook that while both artists have limited vocal ranges, they brought personality to their voices (see also: Rihanna, Madonna, Diana Ross). Jackson beguiled audiences as much with her whispered soprano as with her authority over any complicated dance routine. Likewise, Spears “sang” like a southern robot working through a head cold. It worked with her frayed-wire cyborg stage persona and anticipated that she’d be cast as a femmebot. Also, have you tried to do either of these women’s dance routines? One of my favorite high school moments was watching two cheerleaders in the middle of a Britney-off at a Sadie Hawkins dance. For one, it was hilarious because those girls were so serious about it. For another, it was impressive. High kicks, shimmies, lunges, punches, intricate foot work. Doing the routine to “Oops! . . . I Did It Again” is work. I don’t remember which girl won the battle, but both were probably sore in the morning.

The considerable amount of technological intervention that goes into pop vocals may isolate the star from the voice and the voice from the listener, which may explain why many producers seem to be channeling video game music these days. The chorus to the Dr. Luke/Max Martin/Billboard-produced ”Till the World Ends” charges like DDR set on expert. This is no doubt why producers Stargate and Sandy Vee made the verses to “Only Girl (In the World)” sound like the music to Mortal Combat. Instant embodiment. Power up!

But to understand Spears is to engage with her changing body and how it can and cannot execute certain activities anymore. Thus it’s weird that there’s relatively little discussion about athleticism and issues around ability when talking about Spears, as these are essential components to understanding her as a performer. Then again, female dancers’ athleticism is often minimized, if not outright ignored, especially when they’re playing hurt or risking a sustained injury. Spears always lip synced, so her understanding of a song may have resided in using her body to act out its emotional register. I hope she’s not just going through the motions now. She’s not just an avatar. She’s Britney.

May

Music Videos: Interpretive Dance

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Ask "Is It Art?" and Feminist Music Geeks Turn on Their TVs
Tags: dance, Dear Black Woman, Ellen Willis, EMA, Erykah Badu, Janis Joplin, Louise Lecavalier, Merrill Garbus

You know what I love to watch? Women dancing. No, icky trolls, I don’t mean strippers, though like Missy says, “ain’t no shame, ladies do your thang . . . just make sure you’re ahead of the game.” I’m referring to females claiming ownership of their bodies through dance, which of course includes strippers as much as it presumes Kate Bush. I bet Louise Lecavalier knows what I’m talking about and would probably add that there’s joy to be felt in stretching your body’s physical limits. No doubt Merrill Garbus would chime with a reminder not to forget the importance of forging a communal spirit. Movement creates an index of symbols and guiding a beat with your body can feel very powerful indeed. The other night, at a friend’s wedding reception, I had the pleasure of remembering that with friends. I hope you do too.

This first one is EMA’s “California,” a single off her debut solo record, Past Life Martyred Saints. Erika Anderson’s movements here aren’t strict dance, but they are clearly choreographed for this song, as she’s performed this routine at shows.

The second clip is for movement one of Erykah Badu’s “Out My Mind (Just In Time),” which Badu directed. Hopefully it is well-known that I think Badu’s a genius, like how Ellen Willis thought Janis Joplin was a genius. Badu is a master of embodying intangible feelings with her voice and body, as she does here. If her music and image is “difficult” to some (and “crazy” to ableists), it’s only because she’s telling the truth. Kristen at Dear Black Woman, posted this on her Facebook profile and it’s so great I had to jot off an entire post around it. Thank you for making my day, ma’am.

May

American Sabor is a must-see exhibit

By Alyx Vesey 1 Comment

Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Recognize This Moment in History
Tags: Alice Armandariz, American Sabor, Angel Baby, Arizona, Bob Bullock Museum, Celia Cruz, Chicano Rights Movement, Cinco de Mayo, Console-ing Passions, Cuba, dance, Doug Sahm, Eva Ybarra, Freddy Fender, Girl in a Coma, Gloria Estefan, immigration, interactive, Isidro Lopez, Jennifer Fuller, La Lupe, La Murga de Panamá, Laura Canales, Linda Ronstadt, Los Illegals, Low Rider, Martha Gonzalez, Miami Sound Machine, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Mother's Day, New York, One Kiss Can Lead to Another, pachucos, punk, Quetzal, Radio Jalapeno, Rosie and the Originals, Rosie Hamlin, San Antonio, San Francisco, SB 1070, Selena, Sister Karen Boccalero, Song for Cesar, tarima, Tejano, Teresa Covarrubias, Texas, The Arvisu Sisters, The Bags, The Blendells, The Brat, The University of Washington, Tijuana No!, Walter Nelez, War

American Sabor; image courtesy of thestoryoftexas.com

I just got back from the American Sabor exhibit at the Bob Bullock Museum, which I took my partner, mother, stepfather, and stepbrother to see. I specifically wanted to take my mom, a choir director, in honor of Mother’s Day. This wonderful collection focuses on Latino and Latinas contributions to popular music. Having heard guest curator/University of Washington professor Michelle Habell-Pallán’s plenary presentation on the collection at Console-ing Passions, I was itching to go. As a music history educator for Girls Rock Camp Austin, I couldn’t wait to start incorporating these artists into our curriculum.

Exhibit guest curators (from left to right): Michelle Habell-Pallán, Shannon Dudley and Marisol Berríos-Miranda; image courtesy of uwnews.org

Three days after Cinco de Mayo, it’s particularly relevant given the racism and xenophobia informing policies like Arizona’s SB 1o70, which my former professor Jennifer Fuller rightly dubbed as wrong-headed at a recent protest in town. If you live in the Austin area, make it a priority to see the exhibit this weekend, as tomorrow is its last day at Bob Bullock.

The bilingual exhibit doesn’t divide the work of these musicians so much by genre, as it’s clearly making the case that Latino and Latina contributions have been varied, ingratiating itself in rock, hip hop, country, dance, soul, jazz, and a myriad of other musical styles. Instead, the exhibit is organized by geographical locations. The emphasized cities are San Antonio, East Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and New York City, though contributions from folks in Tuscon, Houston, Chicago, and Detroit are also acknowledged. I particularly appreciated the care given toward providing a sociohistoric context toward migration patterns, cultural history, and the evolution of cityspaces in relation to the musical offerings and innovation of its populations.

There were many significant artifacts on display. I was particularly struck by outfits worn by Selena, Celia Cruz, Freddy Fender, and SB 1070 protestor Linda Ronstadt. I also enjoyed seeing Doug Sahm’s guitar, Eva Ybarra’s accordion, and Isidro Lopez’s speaker. I loved the wall of album covers and the displays of vintage posters, some of which were created by Los Angeles-based graphic designers Sister Karen Boccalero and Walter Nelez. I found the collected interview footage, oral history kiosks, and historical timelines for topics like lowrider cars, pachucos, Radio Jalepeno, the United Farm Workers strike, and the Chicano Rights Movement (which informed me of 1954′s sickeningly prescient Operation Wetback) most useful. I loved all the walk-in jukeboxes that represented each area and some of the more noteworthy songs or musical movements that emanated therein. I was energized by how many of these artists were politically active, including Los Illegals and Tijuana No!

I was also pleasantly surprised by how interactive the exhibit is. A dance floor is included for guests who want to learn salsa, mambo, cha cha, and a variety of disciplines these artists and their fans popularized. A mixing board is also available for folks who want to put together their own versions of “Song for Cesar” and “La Murga de Panamá.” I got a kick out of the Play That Hook station, which includes a piano with light-up keys to teach people how to play the hooks to songs like War’s “Low Rider.”

I especially loved how Latina musicians were incorporated throughout the exhibit rather than relegated to one section of it. I was delighted to see East L.A. punks Alice Armandariz of The Bags and Teresa Covarrubias of The Brat alongside San Diego’s Rosie Hamlin of Rosie and the Originals, whose teen pop classic “Angel Baby” (which Hamlin wrote) should be included with the One Kiss Can Lead To Another box set, along with singles from The Arvisu Sisters. I also delighted in discovering Martha Gonzalez of East L.A.-based Quetzal, who plays a tarima, which is a platform onto which the performer stomps rhythms.

I also enjoyed seeing and hearing the influence of Cuban musicians like La Lupe and Celia Cruz and the impact they had on future generations of Cuban American artists, most notably Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine.

As a Texan, I was so proud of Texas Latinas’ contributions to Tejano. Eva Ybarra, Lydia Mendoza, and Laura Canales broke barriers as some of the first women in Tejano’s myriad of subgenres, forging a path Selena would later bring closer to the mainstream. Bands like Girl in a Coma make clear that a variety of influences from multiple cultural origins can be brought together and positively rock in the process.

Thus, American Sabor proves that Latino and Latina contributions to popular music have been intrinsic and influential. By emphasizing the diversity of participants within this large aggregate, it makes the point even clearer that they themselves are ubiquitous in music culture.

Oct

“Everybody loves three”: Britney’s new single

By Alyx Vesey 1 Comment

Cover to 3 single (Jive, 2009); image courtesy of thehollywoodgossip.com

Maybe Britney Spears doesn’t seem like someone I’d cover here. In truth, if we have to do the bullshit either/or, good/bad preference thing, I’m totally Christina Aguilera over Britney Spears. Except for that time when “Dirrty” first came out and I was bummed out that Xtina decided to celebrate sluttiness. Then I recanted and celebrated the sluttiness too, though with weird feelings about how Aguilera selectively channeled her Ecuadorian roots by playing up the spicy Latina, only to later highlight her whiteness in subsequent reinventions.

But the music video for Britney’s new single “3″ from her second greatest hits compilation recently debuted on the Internet. Also, I have to say that I actually like Spears’s music. “Toxic” was a neat little jam. Blackout was a pretty fun, dark pop record despite and because of its context (you might remember that Britney was in the tabloids a bit in 2007). And I haven’t really listened to Circus, but the hits have been fun. The older she gets, the edgier and less kid-friendly she becomes. Sure, the producers have a hand in all of this, and perhaps there’s some unfortunate credence to Tom Ewing’s analogy between Spears and Twin Peaks hardened, debased, tragic beauty Laura Palmer. But I still like Britney. And maybe like Rihanna, another beauty with a cyborg’s voice who seems to look and sound even more edgier after her own travails, I root for her.

Rihanna and the Met Ball (May, 2009); image courtesy of gofugyourself.com

Like the South Park dudes, I have sympathy for Britney Jean. 1) She was raised to be a pop star, 2) she became a pop star when she was really young and probably didn’t get to grow up in a normal environment, 3) suddenly people started making fun of her for not seeming very cultured or politically aware because she spent all of her life becoming a pop star, 4) she had a headline-making break-up with some boy who later told everyone that he took her virginity, 5) she is perceived as damaged goods while his star continues to rise, 6) she makes a lot of bad personal decisions, 7) she gives birth to two boys in quick succession, 8) she suffered through post-partum depression and perhaps bipolar disorder in public, 9) people made fun of her supposedly chubby post-pregnancy body, 10) then her handlers make her over for real and magically all is well again.

I really hope that’s true. She’s 27, a cursed age for rock and pop idols. I hope she makes it to 28. And, like Carrie Brownstein, I hope she gets to make friends with fellow Southern girl Beth Ditto, who has packaged herself as a proudly fat and queer sex symbol and vocal powerhouse. It also makes me glad that I know almost fuck-all about Lady Gaga’s personal life. I’ve pro’ed and con’ed her, but I like that I know very little about her off-stage persona. I’m assuming she took a note from Britney. I’m also hoping Britney took a note from Beyoncé.

But let’s get to “3″ and its video. It’s dirty. It’s all about threesomes. And, unlike earlier Britney singles, this one doesn’t hide behind a lot of innuendo. Stuff I like about it.

1. Um, is this song already a hit at gay bars across the world? It’s about to be.

2. I kinda love how unclear (and thus potentially queerable?) the groupings are in this song. The reference to “Peter, Paul, and Mary” seems to suggest some boy-boy-girl action. In addition to loving that the stiff, pious folk trio are name-checked here, I hope that the two boys in the trio tend to each other’s needs as well as Britney’s. Based on the video, the trio could also be three ladies. While the video is totally vulnerable to the heterosexual male gaze, there is no tired two girls for every boy situation explicitly being offered up here.

2A. I hope Britney’s queer fanbase comes up with all manner of pairings and positions when they bring this song to life.

3. While I hate the slowed-down, ballad-y bridge where Britney suggests (once again) that “what we do is innocent,” nothing is meant by it, and this could just be a twosome, I like that she slyly sneaks in that it might also be fun to turn the duet into a trio or even a quartet. Britney’s grin really sells it.

4. I’ve always liked Britney’s Southern accent and her military dance moves.

Stuff that’s icky.

1. Britney’s white leotard when she’s next to the chorus line of female dancers. Her white blondeness is exacerbated by the women’s black outfits, which racialize and subordinate them alongside the pop star. I hated Ciara and Justin Timberlake’s similar music video for “Love Sex Magic,” but at least I felt like Ciara was dancing with the chorus line rather than having them orbit her.

2. Product placement. Duh, she’s a brand. But does she really have to apply her Fantasy perfume at the beginning of the video? Or, for that matter, does she have to spritz on some Curious at the beginning of the “Circus” music video? Oh, she does? It’s probably in her contract? Gross.

3. While I like that her trimmer figure hasn’t sacrificed her curves, I never really thought she had any weight to lose.

4. The “livin’ like this is the new thing” lyric is problematic because it kinda sounds like a sales pitch. Ugh. I guess a queer poly love jingle isn’t the worst thing, but still. Queer love, polyamory, and threesomes are totally not the new thing. They’ve been identities and expressions of desire probably since the beginning of time.

5. Since configuration of the threesome is deliberately ambiguous in the Diane Martel-directed clip, I wish the star played with male drag. Didn’t she seem to have butch potential when she shaved her head? Doesn’t it seem like part of her career makeover is to make her normatively feminine and sexy again? But that’s so boring. I’ve long thought that Britney’s thick neck and broad shoulders could make her a potentially good looking drag king, perhaps convincing as Mariah or her ex-boyfriend. She could at least oscillate within the butch-femme binary like Ciara did in “Like a Boy.”

Thoughts?

Aug

Music Videos: Shakira’s hips don’t lie

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment

Still from Shakira's She Wolf video; image courtesy of accesshollywood.com

So, I just finished Adrienne McLean’s wonderful book Being Rita Hayworth. In it, McLean does a considerable job recouperating Hayworth’s power and subjectivity as a star, in essence correcting, through post-structuralist and discursive readings of her image, her films, the industrial practices of the Hollywood system and gossip columns that helped cultivate her image and evaluated her work, the woman behind that image, and the multiple identities that woman occupied, that she was hardly as passive and unsubstantial as represented by many biographers and film scholars, feminist or otherwise. A great effort! Now I’ll have to watch Gilda and Affair in Trinidad.

One aspect of Hayworth’s persona that McLean claims provides both the actress and her characters considerable power is dance, which I have championed as both culturally important and personally pleasurable. Stressing the training, work, physicality, and grace that goes into dance, McLean offers it as a site of subjectivity and authorship.

Thinking about this, I can’t help but reflect on Shakira, whose known for her dancing expertise.

With that, I thought I’d highlight a couple of her music videos (admittedly, they’re for her English-language hits; I have a cursory knowledge of her that doesn’t stretch past the American pop charts, so feel free to add some videos I didn’t include). I don’t intend for her dancing to eclipse her singing or guitar-playing. I also don’t intend to suggest that dancing is inherently natural to women of Spanish or Latin descent (Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, had a Spanish father; Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll is Colombian and Lebanese). But I think that thinking about dance is important, especially in terms of female subjectivity and prowess. In the clips that follow, click on the song titles and pay particular attention to Shakira’s athleticism, control, and muscle definition.

“Whenever, Wherever“
Laundry Service

“Beautiful Liar” featuring Beyoncé
(released on Beyoncé’s B’Day)

“Hips Don’t Lie” featuring Wyclef Jean
Oral Fixation Vol. 2

“She Wolf“
She Wolf

Admittedly, this last music video can’t be mentioned without acknowledging that it treads on some rather unsettling raced and gendered stereotypes about the rabid, lusty Latina, the configuration made all the more unsettling when we take into account that she is caged. But I feel it’s important to bring into the discussion as a way to contextualize how dance factors into Shakira’s on-screen persona. Thoughts?

Jul

Can the dancing body ‘fight the power’?: Spike Lee and dance

By Alyx Vesey 5 Comments

As many people noted late last month, Spike Lee’s seminal Do The Right Thing celebrated its 20th anniversary. The Root did an exceptional job weaving together the various discourses surrounding the movie, its release, its historical relevance, its cultural significance, its politics, its views and influence on race-relations in contemporary America, the identificatory practices of aligning the Obamas with this movie (during election season, much was made of the now First Couple seeing it on their first date) as well as the assimilationist practices at work in distancing President and First Lady Obama from it once he was elected President, and its limitations in terms of representational politics (particularly gender). I do wish there was more discussion of its controversial Oscar nomination shut-out for Best Picture, but perhaps this is something my Hollywood industrial analysis smartie friends can re-coup.

One thing that was particularly heartening for me in The Root’s coverage of the movie’s 20th anniversary was Mark Anthony Neal’s piece on how important music is to Lee’s movies and the cultivation of racial discourse, particularly in his early work. He even went into an analysis of the cultural significance of Rosie Perez’s dance in the opening credits of the movie and how she is ”alternately adorned in boxing garb and Lycra bodysuits, performing a visual archive of black dance. Moving against the backdrop of Brooklyn brownstones, Perez’s performance—jagged, angular, forceful, masculine and sexy—mapped contradictions of a new generation.”

I’ll tip my hand. As a scholar, I’ve been thinking about Lee’s use of music and dance for some time. I put together a similar analysis to Neal’s in graduate school and am still working through with what to do with it. For me, in his first three movies especially (She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do The Right Thing) dance serves as a site of multiple discourses. It is at once as a marker of authorship, a means of challenging traditional storytelling, an iteration of African American identity, a challenge to the notion of a singular racial identity for African Americans (and other racial and ethnic minorities, most notably Puerto Rican Americans), a critique against the supposed “naturalness” of dance for the African American body, and an indictment of race relations in contemporary society and film history.

These discursive practices are further enforced through Lee’s conscious lack of adherence to one particular dance genre, opting instead for heterogeneity, in effect breaking up the ways in which a black director can use dance and the ways in which primarily black dancers can use their bodies, as well as circulating the idea that black culture aligns with various kinds of music (many of which were self-created, thus becoming a process of reclamation). Thus, through dance, Lee creates a definitively black presence in contemporary film, but at the same time avers that there’s no such thing as a definitively black presence.

Tricky stuff. Problematic for sure (perhaps especially being theorized by a white lady like me), and I don’t think I’ve pieced it altogether, but I feel that the use of dance in Lee’s movies is not to be overlooked. If we are to celebrate Lee’s Do The Right Thing, we should do so with an acknowledgement of its larger context. I feel like dance is key to mapping that context.

And, with that, some clips. Now, seeing the movies they exist in is crucial. For brevity, I’ll simply list the movie, the dance genre, and the dance’s narrative function.

She’s Gotta Have It
Dance genre: Concert jazz
Narrative function: Fantasy and narrative rupture. This is the only scene shot in color in this movie and cuts jarringly from a scene where protagonist Nola Darling is given a present by Jamie Overstreet, one of her three boyfriends.

School Daze (Note: The clip has since been taken off YouTube)
Dance genre: Musical dance
Narrative function: Integrated musical. Uses traditional modes of musical spectacle — a film genre plagued with white exnomination and racism during – to critique race relations between light- and dark-skinned African Americans.

Note: Last year, the music video came out for Alicia Keys’s “Teenage Love Affair” which recreates much of the narrative of School Daze. However, in the process, the music video amalgates many of the female characters into one being, and recasts the movie’s then-timely preoccupation with Apartheid with a small bit encouraing AIDS outreach and prevention in Africa — one of Keys’s primary humanitarian efforts. Conveniently, and significantly, it removes the movie’s troubling gender relations, particularly a key scene in which the female lead is raped by a college fraternity pledge, played by Lee in the movie.

Do The Right Thing
Dance genre: Hip hop dance
Narrative function: Non-narrative introduction of the film. The dance serves at once as an advocation of female presence in hip hop and public life, reclaims the role women and girls had in the formation of hip hop dance, aligns Perez’s physical participation with Public Enemy’s sonic participation via their song “Fight the Power” – which I think challenge the notion of Lee’s monolithic authorial presence, and acknowledges the allied relationship African Americans and Puerto Rican Americans have developed.

May

Parker Posey’s Mary: Party girl and librarian music geek

By Alyx Vesey 2 Comments

Party Girl poster; image taken from charm.net

For today’s post, I’m gonna try to bring together both the music and the geek, via the librarian.

So, I love information sciences and sometimes think I should go back and get an info sciences degree. Perhaps like many academics, I’ve long wanted to run a library, particularly a music library. Either that, or I’d love to work as a music archivist. I’d kill to work on something like the Hiphop Archive.

While I gravitate toward archival work (it is my job), librarians rule the world as far as I’m concerned. If you wanna find out about anything, you’ve gotta go through them. And they usually know more than anybody. They’re also benevolent creatures, as they create order.

Of course, librarians have been cultivating cool cred for some time. Like New York Times writer Kara Jesella, this reminded me of Party Girl, the 1995 movie starring Parker Posey as, Mary, an NYC party girl turned librarian. While I maintain that the movie ends terribly, I like everything else about it.

I especially like the scene where Mary devises an ingenious record filing system organized by specific and overlapping dance sub-genres for Leo, her deejay friend. See? Librarians are cool. They can organize your record collection. I appreciate this scene, as I’m in the process of creating a database for my books, records, CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. It’s a task. The scene is both funny and awesome, and since I can’t find it on the Interwebz, I’d encourage seeing the movie for just this scene, if interested.

Oh, and I also like this scene (start it around 1:12 if you haven’t already seen the movie). Who doesn’t love a montage?

Things I like about this clip.
1. Mary talks to herself when she’s figuring out where things are. I do this too, especially when I refile stuff at work. Sometimes I also do this while putting on an accent.
2. Mary dances at work, reconfiguring a totally mundane environment into something more fanastical and fun. I dance at work too (also, we seem to have learned our moves from the same person — Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite; between Lady Miss Kier, Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, and TLC, you have the complete inventory of my dance repertoire).
3. I seriously heart the song “If You Believe” by Chantay Savage.
4. Mary learns the hell out of the Dewey Decimel System. You should take heed.

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