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Chris
Rock's
(...click on the photos below to visit the new "Head Of State" photo gallery...)
The DVD and video are now out...(You can order it online at www.DreamWorks.com/headofstate/). I'm one of the WASP'y and "more sophisticated" (what they meant to say was "OLDER"...but they tried to be kind with "More Sophisticated") black-tie fund-raiser types who goes Hip Hop when Chris Rock bribes the DJ and puts on Nelly's "Hot In Here". I often teach some of those "hot, Hot HOT!!"Hip Hop moves by request at all of my upcoming Dance-&-Learn Parties (in fact the moves are so HOT!!, you may want to take your clothes off!!). In case you missed seeing us doing those HOT!! hip hop moves on the movie trailer, which hit every TV channel in the country through February, March and early April of 2003, you can see some of what you'll be learning by visiting the "Head Of State" trailer site at www.DreamWorks.com/headofstate/. Plus there are more and they're all on the DVD.
(...click here to visit the new "Head Of State" photo gallery...) The following was taken from my February 6th, 2003 “DC DanceSport News” IT’S OFFICIAL…I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO BE “IN THE MOVIES”!!!… At about 3:00am last Thursday morning I sat working on a few marketing projects at the computer while the TV was on behind me (something that I often do throughout the night when I'm too wired to sleep after teaching late) when I couldn’t help hearing “Entertainment Tonight” announce the upcoming new Chris Rock movie, “Head Of State”. They said it was one in which "Chris Rock not only starred, but the first one which he also wrote and directed”. Naturally I stopped what I was doing and began watching since I, along with a dozen others of us from Chevy Chase Ballroom, had been taped in a segment of this movie as “Specialty Dancers” (That’s how Screen Actors Guild described us in our contracts) about a half year earlier in Baltimore. We only intended to volunteer as unpaid “Extras”, but we were ultimately "hired" as WASP’y and more sophisticated (“older” is the more appropriate description of what they were looking for, but the words that they actually used out of kindness were “more sophisticated”) black-tie fund-raiser types who could go into our Hip Hop routines when Chris Rock decided to liven up the not-so-exciting party with a little "Hot In Here" by Nelly. At the time that we taped the movie in October of 2002, each one of us naturally had remote aspirations of actually being seen in the final cut of the film when it eventually came out. Aspirations which we knew all too well seldom come to pass after the editing process is over. As the story of “Head of State” on “Entertainment Tonight” unfolded, telling about Chris Rock portraying himself as the first black U.S. President, I was nearly blown away when there on the TV screen was one of our Chevy Chase Ballroom dancers, Victoria Chapman!! She was with the 2 other “more sophisticated” women (Victoria was blonde, one was red-headed and the third one, Debbie, had very brilliant white hair that could be seen from across the room…which is undoubtedly why Chris Rock pulled her out of the crowd to do this final “right-in-front-of-the-camera” cameo ending to the segment.) As I watched, Victoria and the 2 other ladies were suggestively gyrating and singing “I am getting sooo hot…I’m gonna’ take my clothes off...” to Nelly’s very popular and Grammy-nominated R&B hit “Hot in Here”. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…not only were they obviously going to be in the movie, but here was Victoria and the other two ladies right in my own living room and right on my own TV in the movie trailer! Victoria and her dance partner, Jim, had come to a casting party with Central Casting that I and another dance teacher, David Flynn, had put together at the Barking Dog Restaurant and Lounge in Bethesda, Maryland. She came to audition for the movie after reading about it in this very “DC DanceSPORT News” (which just goes to show you. You must always read your “DC DanceSPORT News”…you never know what you’re going to miss!!). As I watched, I was excited beyond description to see that not only had Victoria been chosen to be in the film from that event, but that she also received a speaking role singing "Hot In Here" during the taping of the movie at the last minute…and now here she is in the PROMO of the movie!!…a promo that would probably be seen on every movie and TV screen across the country at one time or another for the next year...each time this movie was advertised or discussed by the endless list of movie reviewers around the world. By now I was really bouncing off the walls from excitement when suddenly the trailer clip switched…..and once again I couldn't believe what I was seeing! There was none other than myself and one of my fellow dancers from the movie set, Sharon Savoy, dancing the Crypt Walks, also to Nelly’s “Hot In Here”!! Already three of us from that little casting party were not only pretty much guaranteed to be in the final cut of the movie, but here we are making it into the movie’s promotional trailer. What a rush! Of course my first response was to call friends and especially the other dancers who surely had no idea, as of yet, what had transpired. But then who do you call at 3:00am on Thursday morning? Needless to say for the rest of the night I continued bouncing off the walls in total disbelief, overwhelmed by the idea of actually making it into a major motion picture! It soon became pretty obvious that sleep was definitely going to be a remote possibility for the rest of that night. In the trailer clip, Sharon and I were in the middle of the beautiful black and white marble floor of the Pikesville, Maryland mansion of the movie set. We were both unbelievably in-sync doing the 100-mile-an-hour and pretty complicated “Crypt Walks”, Hip Hop moves that the choreographer, Fatima Robinson from L. A., taught us before the taping and “God, it looked good”!! Sharon was in her sexy ball gown and I was in my tuxedo and there we were, with literally close to a hundred people, also in tuxedos and ball gowns, surrounding us while watching and smiling and gyrating right along with us. Since Sharon and I had never practiced or danced this figure together before the actual taping, I was genuinely amazed as I watched at how perfectly synchronized we were in our movements. I could instatntly see why they chose to use it in the trailer. Our feet were moving up and down together perfectly and the dance had this little bounce every so often that we both nailed together with absolute precision. The segment was only a flash of the trailer and didn’t last for more than a fraction of a minute, but Man!! Who would have guessed that we might get such a prime spot and that it would even make it into the trailer?!! As I watched the clip, it brought back flashes in my mind of when John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney were on the set of the ‘70’s movie, “Saturday Night Fever”!! I have to admit that when we originally taped that scene, I couldn’t help thinking at the time while everything was happening on the movie set that this must have been exactly how John Travolta felt with everyone standing around watching during his taping of that movie segment. It was almost eerie to feel the same way again as I watched the promo on TV. It reminded me of the scene of him and Karen Lynn Gorney in the middle of the dance floor doing their “How Deep Is Your Love?” Hustle routine, sung by the Bee Gee's. The choreographer from LA who worked with us before and during the movie taping had actually thrown this particular dance part at me at the last minute. It happened after she saw me off to one side of the movie set by myself practicing my Crypt Walks. The “Crypt Walks” weren’t originally my assigned part, but I decided to learn them, along with everyone else’s dance roles, in case they asked us to “just dance” for 5 minutes. I didn’t want to be doing the same thing over and over again and felt we’d have a better chance getting in the final cut if we were really prepared for whatever might happen, including some variation in our dancing. Consequently when Helaine (another Chevy Chase Ballroom dancer who partnered with me during this complete project) and I rehearsed during the two days before the taping of the movie, we tried to recall and practice all six couples' different dance parts. Little did we know how fortunate that decision would become. When Chris Rock and his co-director indicated problems with the ladies' miss-matched costumes for the Crypt Walks, Fatima saw me off to one side in my own little world practicing that very part. I had completely tuned out what they were doing on set, since this segment didn't involve me, and there I was behind the camera practicing and trying to remember how to do the the Crypt Walk patterns that Helaine and I had worked on the during the two days before. Fatima immediately came over to me once she saw what I was doing and said in a slightly demanding tone as she stood looking over me with her hands on her hips “You can do this, can’t you?”, almost with a tone of amazement. My instant reaction was that I felt like the kid in grade school who got caught red-handed by a teacher doing something that he wasn’t supposed to be doing. I replied to her under my breath in a somewhat
insecure manner, not knowing what I might be getting myself into, “Well
I’m not sure" I said. "I could do
it yesterday…”. So it is, they say, that everyone gets their 15-minute Claim-To-Fame at some time in their life. Well I guess this must've been mine. And what luck to have my 15 minutes of fame to be caught on tape and included in the trailer and all of the promotional ads played over and over again in every movie theatre and TV screen accross the country, as well as in the contents of a major motion picture! (Who knows? Maybe someday they’ll actually call me to put my prints on the "Hollywood Walk of Fame"! Actually I’d settle for just my thumb prints…) The DVD of “Head Of State”, which finally became the #1 comedy motion picture in the theatres in April of 2003, came out in November of 2003. All 12 of us who were either from the Casting Party at The Barking Dog or who were friends of mine from The Chevy Chase Ballroom that Central Casting asked me to find later, were able to get into the final cut of the movie (in addition to several other Chevy Chase Ballroom dancers, Russ & Rosalie, who were extras in the movie and made it into several different sections of the film). This particular dance segment of the movie is one that Chris Rock has claimed repeatedly during interviews as his favorite part of the whole film (of course I agree!). My original dance partner, Helaine, whom I had practiced with ahead of time and who decided to learn my originally assigned part with me, was also featured in most of the promotional advertisements on the TV promos doing our “Shoulder Shrug” routine. Since I picked that part up instantly during the early rehearsal, the choreographer wanted me to perform the Shoulder Shrugs solo in the film. I was convinced, however, that it would go over so much better if we did it together and Helaine agreed wholeheartedly. We actually opened the dance segment in the original filming together with that routine and as the first couple to perform during the taping we heard from by-standers that Chris Rock and his co-director went “Ballistic” as they watched these WASP'y, more sophisticated, black-tie and ball gown fund-raiser types on their TV monitors in the adjacent room. After which Chris Rock ran out onto the set yelling in his excited, high-pitched Chris Rock tone of voice “OK everybody, Heads up, Heads up! …this is it! We need to get this right because this is what is going to make or break this complete segment of the movie”! And "make" that segment it certainly did, according to most. Our little trailer can be seen on the Steven
Spielberg web site, www.DreamWorks.com/headofstate/
or on www.movies.com,
where the trailers of every movie ever made are available from now to
eternity. (I pulled my name up on Google last week out of curiosity and
one of the web sites it brought up with was "www.Movies.com".
Amazing...all because of a brainstorm idea that it would be fun to be
an extra as a WASP'y, black-tie fund-raiser-type Hip Hop dancer in a Chris
Rock movie...) In conclusion, I've decided one thing...and
that is that I'm more than ever in complete agreement with the incomparable
Ethel Merman as she belted out the words of the 1954 Irving Berlin movie
of the same name, "There’s NO business like SHOW business,
there’s NO business I KNOW…!” What a fun-filled 15-minute
“Claim-To-Fame” that was...and not
to be selfish, but since I did such a good job at it
shouldn't I deserve another one, someday?!!...(and hopefully SOON!!!) |
I hope you were able to see my first Movie
Debut in
the #1 box office
comedy for April, 2003; 
