The Anniversary song is playing in the background. (La, la, la, la). We’re so happy for what next week will bring. And since we’re evolving, we gathered in the living room, put our rockers in the center, grabbed a box of Kleenex, and got out the photo albums. Here are some of our faves that made us laugh, cry and hurl. (Oh wait, that’s Wayne’s World.) You get our drift... We’re in Hollywood movie mode this week. Sorry.
Coolest Story of all gendance issues: One day in our first year, I thought. What if we created special issues for holidays! I began researching and I found an article (this is during the Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza season, mind you.) I got inspired by an interview between Carson Daily and Ryan Seacrest about New Years. THAT very day, I banged out this issue that you see behind the link. I was psyched! From then on, we have done many special holiday issues that have been influential to gendance. But the kicker is this: That very night, I went out to a favorite hotspot with a colleague to celebrate my “special holiday issue idea” based on what I read with Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daily. While we sat at the restaurant drinking martinis, (non alcoholic, of course for those of you under 21) I could have sworn a guy that walked by that WAS Carson Daily. Minutes later, he walked by again and I realized it wasn’t him. It was just a regular guy. I said, “Gee, that would have been nuts, right. Imagine I saw him after coming up with the idea!” Not a moment soon after, GUESS WHO WALKS IN! (Out of millions of hot spots in NYC) Ryan Seacrest AND Carson Daily! NO JOKE. Crazy how the universe works my friend. AND THAT... is why we keep dreaming and daring to go beyond.
The Disney issue: Ok, so we wrote this issue before we left for Disney. The content was written and we left a place holder in for a video that we would place there after we captured “something cool and dance-wise” at the park. We left for the airport, the content was uploaded to be put together. While we were at the park, on the 2nd day at Epcot, we ended up randomly sitting right on the water for dinner. (We needed to feed the tired kids.) The fireworks were a perk and we grabbed our flip vid and began shooting. If you watch closely, while we’re shooting, we end up saying, “This is for the gendancers across the world.” At that moment, there was a world that lit up on the water! CRAZY, right. It gets better. After the issue was sent to me for testing, I saw the screen shot and realized our graphics team took the shot of the world lit up and then later realized it matched what I said in the video. Even more, the paragraph above that was written before we left for Disney and it talks about the video being “A Part of Our World.”. And there you have it, the MAGIC of gendance Thursday.
The Happy Birthday issue: Alike to what you saw today in gendance with our video, we are so happy with our FIRST milestone issue. We really love this Happy Birthday issue and video because our readers wrote in and honed in on their fave articles and we realized, “They like us, they REALLY REALLY like us!”
The 2nd Birthday issue: Yes, we threw two fave issues for our birthday last year. (We like to party... we’re next geners!) This spooky issue with an epitaph, Cake Boss’s Buddy, The Jabbawockeez, Amber Moelter’s scary CD and of course, Thriller. This was a fun one for us too. We sent it out with a photo of GEO at the top in a costume from his childhood, which was cool.
The Christmas issue: How could you not love the red bouncing ball with the holly gendance Christmas lyrics that we creatively re-wrote? Much love to the students at Elysian Charter School in Hoboken and ICON Dance Complex students who sang along and bobbed their heads to our gendance holiday tune and to Eric Anderson for bringing my version of the red bouncing ball song to life.
The Art 4 Life issue: Major shout out here to Gregg Russell, who invited us to work with him and Gina Starbuck on this amazing event. We’re always willing to lend a hand for charity. We showed up at the party with our entourage (Michelline Coonrod) and fist pumped for Gregg Russell as he nailed it on stage tapping away, along with so many talented dancers. What a great partay! Gina Starbuck and Gregg Russell, you guys mean the world to us.
The Ailey New Year’s issue: Nuff Said, it’s Ailey. We cry throughout the entire performance during Revelations because we love the art so much. YOU rocka-our souls.
The Dario issue: The story behind this is that we have worked with Lois Greenfield since day one. Her photography has been blessed in EVERY SINGLE of our 100 issues of gendance with a next gen twist. We ALMOST flew to Argentina to see Dario and Lois work on this, but we were too busy writing gendance issues for you! Bummer. Also, you see that holiday offer? One of our featured stars as well as a good friend of ours Edwin Fion of NY Dance Residency, took advantage of it and built these photos. Good for you, love!
The Flip Video issue: We ran around in NYC for the past two years, flipping off with some of today’s hottest dancers and personalities. We especially liked going backstage with Michael Balderrama when he was Usnavi on his first night ever as the lead in In the Heights. The Tap Cruise around Manhattan was another great one. Boy, me, Vic and Dommy laughed so hard on that boat. We even made our OWN version of “I’m on a Boat”. I have the .mov file, but you’ll never see it. Thank goodness.
The Very First issue: This is just a cute way to show how far we’ve come. Oh boy, you see those ads in between the articles. Do you know how many of those we wrote and designed... we were pumpin’ away at it all. I loved that pic of Luis in the Behind the Scenes and did you see the Slow Dancing article. WOW!
The gendance carried a watermelon issue: God Bless Patrick Swayze.
The Michael Jackson Dedication. God Bless Michael Jackson.
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