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Chris
Rock's
Visit the "Head Of State"
was Terry's 1st major motion picture gig as a WASP'y and "more sophisticated"
(they said "more sophisticated" but they really meant "older")
black-tie fund raiser type Hip Hop dancer, performing under the direction
of reknowned "DreamGirls" choreographer, Fatima Robinson to
Nelly's "Hot In Here" and starring Chris Rock & Bernie Mack...
You can see the Chevy Chase
Ballroom's WASP'y and "More Sophisticated" (they really meant
"Older", but Central Casting used the words "More Sophisticated"
to describe the band of baby-boomers that they were looking for. A description
much more "Politically Correct" than seeking "Older"
Ballroom dancers) Black-tie fund-raiser type Hip Hop dancers in the movie
trailer for "Head Of State" by visiting
(...click on the photos below to visit the "Head Of State" photo gallery...)
The DVD and video are out and available anywhere...(You can also order it online at www.DreamWorks.com/HeadOfState/ and www.Amazon.com. We're the WASP'y and "more sophisticated" black-tie fund-raiser types who go Hip Hop as the first black Presidential candidate Chris Rock bribed the DJ to leave and then played Nelly's "Hot In Here" for everyone to dance to. In case you missed seeing those HOT!! Hip Hop moves on the movie trailer, which hit every movie screen and TV channel in the country through February, March and early April of 2003, you can find some of what you'll be learning by clicking on the "Head Of State" trailer site at www.Movies.Yahoo.com, www.Mooviees,com, and my own personal "Head Of State" profile at www.IMBD.com, where any movie trailer ever made is accessible and available "ad infinitum".
View the movie trailer
(including most of our Chevy Chase Ballroom WASP'y and (plus all of our Hip
Hop dancers are still getting residuals!!....
I wrote the following description
of my seeing the trailer 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 dance class 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 Pat O'Brian of “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 also the first one which he both 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 final 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”. The first time I remember ever getting such an incredible opportunity to do something because I wasn't too young) 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. Presidential candidate, I was nearly blown away when there on the TV screen was one of our Chevy Chase Ballroom dancers, Victoria Chapman!! She had been a student of mine for some time in Viennese Waltz and after getting my email announcing the Casting call at our event she not only made it as one of the chosen few for the segment (for which they took nearly 4,000 applicants) but now she was actually going to be in the movie! 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 WASP'y and "more sophisticated" 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 where we were hosting a weekly Salsa and Hustle party. 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 (a part of the segment that Chri Rock hadn't even planned for the movie until he noticed the 3 contrasting and WASP'y looking ladies on set and pulled it together within minutes right in front of us. In spite of that, it truely turned out to be the most fun and memorable segment of the whole film!)…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 omeone and especially the other dancers who surely had no idea, as of yet, what had transpired. But then who can 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 the trailer of 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 very accomplished and respected Hip Hop 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. Our little feet went up and down like pistons and they were synchronized in perfect time. I was immediately impresed at a glance and could instatntly see why they chose to use it in the trailer. Not only were our feet moving up and down together so perfectly, but 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 were we good!! Who would have guessed when we were taping the film 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 that 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 solo “How Deep Is Your Love?” Hustle routine, which was performed to the song of the Bee Gee's. I've always wondered when watching that movie what it must be like doing your duo routine right out there in front of everyone and the thought of it both during that movie and now here on this set to me was one of being a little frightening. 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 due to some unfortunate costume clashes for the original dancers. 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 before we actually taped the movie and after our group rehearsal 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 variations 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 decided 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 Robinson who couldn't get any satisfaction from the directors watching the monitor in the adjacent room, 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 the 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 during the two days of rehearsal that she and I did together. Fatima immediately came over to me once she could see 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. Their pictures as well as those of all of us are in the Head Of State photo gallery). This particular dance segment of the movie is one that Chris Rock has claimed repeatedly during interviews, including on Oprah, to be 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 solo part with me, was also featured in most of the promotional advertisements on the TV promos doing our “houlder Shrug” routine. Since I picked that part up instantly during the early rehearsal, the choreographer wanted me to perform the Harlem 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 worked on coordinating our moves together in different combinations during the few days that we had before the actual taping We actually jumped up to open the taping of the dance segment in the original filming together with that routine since we were so confident with what we had put together. As the first couple to perform during the taping we heard from by-standers in the adjacent room 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. 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. Everyone claims that it's not only the most fun part of the whole film, but it got us all into the movie trailer which was shown over and over and over again on every movie and TV screen in America for over a month and a half, it got us royalties (which we STILL get occasionally, belive it or not...though not quite enough to retire on), it got us into the credits for the movie, and the most fun part is that even today people come up to me who have seen it on DVD or HBO and are blown away that we had such a fun-filled front-and-center cameo performance in an actual major motion picture. Our little trailer can be seen on the Steven
Spielberg web site, www.DreamWorks.com
, at www.Movies.Yahoo.com
or www.IMBD.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 unpaid 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...well
two things:
|
I
hope you were able to see our first Movie
Debut 
"It's Getting Hot in Here...
