So You Think You Can Dance
Hi Wingers!
Sorry I haven’t posted for a while, but I have been keeping busy with So You Think You Can Dance, and since I wasn’t able to blog about that, I really didn’t have much to say!
Anyhow for anyone who missed it and wanted to see it, I’ve found some clips of it on youtube and I thought I would post it.
And for those that are new to the Winger, welcome! I blog here about dance and if you would like to keep updated on my season at Miami City Ballet, come check out the Winger!
Miami Audition:
Vegas Week:
Elimination:
Finally, I also wanted to thank everyone for being so supportive of me - Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
High Fashion discounts - gilt.com!
Hey fellow Wingers!
Just thought I’d let everyone in on this really awesome website that I’ve been using for about half a year now. If you’re into fashion or anything, this exclusive members only website (you can only be invited from pre-existing members) that offers a new sale every day with prices that are ridiculously cheap! They are around 70% off the retail price, which makes them really affordable! It’s like paying for Gap and getting Oscar de la Renta. Now we’re talking designers like for women like:
Oscar de la Renta
Marc Jacobs
Carolina Herrera
Swarovski
Helmut Lang
Alexander McQueen
Just Cavalli
Vera Wang
Valentino
Michael Kors
Dolce & Gabbana
Kate Spade
just to name a few! And lucky for us guys, there is equally just as much great stuff with designers like:
Ralph Lauren - Black Label, Purple Label, etc
Marc Jacobs Men
Alexander McQueen Men
7 For All Mankind Men
John Varvatos
Diesel
Michael Kors Men
Y-3 Yohji Yamamoto
Dolce & Gabbana
Just a word of advice though, these sales are CRAZY - every day a few new sales start at 12PM eastern time, and if you plan to possibly get something, you better BE THERE at 12PM! Things start selling out within the first few minutes, and of course there is stuff left over, but who doesn’t want the best pick?
Be careful also, once you add the item to your basket, you only have 10 minutes to totally complete your check out. Once that 10 minutes is up, it’s likely that some other customer will buy it right out of your shopping cart! It’s happened to me, so be that crazy shopper and don’t let the other ones get the merchandise you want! Haha!
As a heads up, this upcoming week’s sales for women are:
Bally, Valentino Red, Valentino, Tony Burch, Tony Burch Shoes, Vera Wang, Abaete, Acne Jeans…
For the Men, it’s:
Spurr, John Varvatos, Philip Stein, Michael Kor’s, Ralph Lauren Purple Label…
Just as a reminder, men, if you purchase something that I wanted, I am going to hunt you down. Um.. men’s sale start at 12:30 (haha, just kidding). Women, you’re free to go 
Anyway, here is the invite if anyone would like to join, just click on the link.
http://www.gilt.com/invite/alexdwong
Enjoy!!!
Everything with Miami City Ballet and more!
Hello All!
Hope everyone has been well, we have all been keeping very busy here at MCB with the tour to New York City and a collaboration with the wonderful Cleveland Orchestra where we danced Symphony in Three Movements as well as Symphony in C. We’ve just wrapped up Don Quixote and are now moving onto Program IV. Now that I’ve had some time to settle down and take it all in I figure it would be a good chance to write an update!
Let me say first of all that the New York City tour was an absolute blast for me. Since the company had never actually toured to New York City it was quite a big deal for us to come back to Edward Villella’s home. When we arrived in the theatre, Edward was in such high spirits that he started telling us stories of how he used to dance in the theatre - where he had rested - on the heaters near the back of the stage - how Balanchine had spoken to him in certain moments… it was really such a treat for us to be back in the theatre “where it all happened.”
(Picture of all the dancers sporting our new gear on the last day of the New York City Center tour!)
We had a very ambitious programs for New York:
Program A:
Symphony in Three Movements (Balanchine)
La Valse (Balanchine)
In the Upper Room (Twyla Tharp)
Program B:
Square Dance (Balanchine)
Rubies (Balanchine)
Symphony in C (Balanchine)
I danced the lead jump couple in “Symphony in Three Movements” (which happens to be one of my favourite roles!), one of the stomper boys in “In The Upper Room,” and 3rd movement lead in Symphony in C. To be honest, Symphony in C was very nerve-racking for me. I had never performed the 3rd movement lead, and it is very difficult, pretty much all jumping! I didn’t have much time to prepare for it as most the other leads had been veterans in their spots. When we first started rehearsing it, I could hardly finish it, but eventually it became easier (just a little, haha) and I could start to feel more comfortable in the role.
There was something about City Center that felt so special, I am a bit sad that they will be undergoing renovations. Just being in the theatre, being back stage, and dancing on stage - I really felt the history behind the whole theatre. It didn’t just feel like any theatre. It felt like great things had happened there, and I was honoured to be able to dance on that stage. Back stage on the walls, there were signatures and logo’s of many of the companies that had the opportunity to dance at City Center - I hope that when they do the renovations, they leave these there.
(Our MCB wall at City Centerwith our photos and signatures)
The performances I believe went very well for us and the audience was very appreciative. One of the great things I felt when dancing at City Center was the audience was so close to you, you could really feel their energy. It felt very intimate and I liked it.
One final highlight for me was after we finished “In The Upper Room,” Twyla Tharp surprised us by coming on stage to bow with us, she told us how happy she was with our dancing and that really made all the difference! I really felt she was proud of us, and it really touched me.
(Twyla Tharp taking a bow with us after)
The New York City Center tour was definitely the highlight for me this season!
Returning from City Center I had a little while to calm down. Our next program was Don Quixote and I was cast to do Sancho Panza in almost every show. Now for those of you who don’t know, Sancho Panza is a character role in Don Quixote. Although I didn’t really get to dance for a solid month, and to top it off was in a huge fat suit everyday, there were other aspects of the role that were satisfying my creative needs. Sancho Panza plays a comedic role in the production and it was fun to have some freedom to play around with the role. When you play a character role, it’s not as much like doing a dancing role where you don’t really have as much leeway for interpretation. Every night before the show, I would sit a think and go through all my sections to see how I could improve it. Seeing that I had been given almost every show, I had time to experiment with what worked and what didn’t. It was fun to focus purely on acting and musical interpretation on stage rather than having to focus on technique. In the end, it very rewarding as I felt I had grown as an artist.
With that said, the early make-up calls gave us a lot of free time, and this is what we ended up doing.
We are currently getting ready for our last program of the season:
Concerto Barocco (Balanchine)
In The Night (Jerome Robbins)
Symphony In C (Balanchine)
Anyway hope everyone enjoyed this post! Sorry it’s been so long, and I will write again soon!
Nutcracker and the New Year!
Hi Wingers! I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had much time to post, but we’ve been so busy with Nutcracker performances and getting ready for NY City Center. Miami City Ballet will make its first Manhattan debut at the NY City Center from January 21-25th.
The programs are as follows:
Program A:
Symphony In Three Movements
La Valse
In the Upper Room
Program B:
Square Dance
Rubies
Symphony in C
Hope to see you all there! I’ll write more soon!
The end is almost here!
Hello all! Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, but I’ve been so busy the past few months, and now I finally have a bit of time to sit down and write. The past few months have been a whirlwind!
Our last program of this season consisted of Square Dance, Sonatine, Tarantella and of course, our world premiere choreographed by Twyla Tharp, costumes by Issac Mizrahi and with new music by Elvis Costello - “Nightspot”. The piece featured a live band on stage with the dancers as well as a full orchestra in the pit.
(Photo courtesy of Joe Gato)
Working with Twyla Tharp was really quite something. At first when we started choreographing, we didn’t have the score from Elvis Costello yet, so she worked with the dancers and believe it or not, we did a lot of our choreography to the Gypsy King’s “Bamboleo!” It wasn’t until later in the year when she came back the 2nd time that she brought a tentative score with her and then we started setting the piece to Costello’s music. It was a bit difficult to imagine what the music was like because the score was put into a program, and a synthesized version was produced (which is what we heard and danced to until the week of the performance).
After our run of program 4, we continued on to wrap up our season with a few shows in Long Island, NY and Princeton NJ. The tour was wonderful, and the audience was very appreciative and responsive. We performed Raymonda Variations, Sonatine, Tarantella and In the Upper Room. I thought I was going to drop dead when I saw the performance casting go up as I was casted to dance Tarantella and then right into Upper Room!
(Tarantella, photo courtesy of Zou Yang)
(Jeanette Delgado and I, photo courtesy of Zou Yang).
We just arrived back in Miami today and we have a few days off before we start some early rehearsals for next season. The dancers are all excited to start working on “Our Show,” which is a show made, produced, and put on by the dancers. It gives us a chance to experiment with choreography (and choreographers) and to also perform different styles of dance if we wish to.
That’s all for now, however I do have last thing to add in - Miami City Ballet will be attending City Center for a week of performances at the end of January 2009!
Ask The Contributors!
Hey Wingers! Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, we’ve been so busy with performances and rehearsals that I haven’t really had too much time to organize together a post. Something is coming soon though!
I was however scrolling through the site today and I realized that I hadn’t visited “The Winger Boards” for quite some time!
I think most of us have forgotten the boards are here, but I think they’re a very useful and interesting tool for the readers.
http://thewinger.com/mboard/index.php
Now at these boards, there is a section called “Ask The Contributors” and I just wanted to make myself available for anyone who has any questions about anything! I think most of the contributors don’t get too much time to browse around the boards, but if you’d like to ask some questions or discuss anything, your more than welcome to discuss it under the comments of this post, or just send me a friendly reminder by leaving a comment here to go check out the board and answer some questions! 
Hope you are all well!
Halloween!
Sorry for not writing for so long, we’ve been so busy over here in Miami performing Jewels and what not, and now we’re on tour. We just went to Berkeley, California where we performed Nine Sinatra Songs, Agon, In the Upper Room and now we’re in Detroit, doing a similar program, except replacing Nine Sinatra Songs with Raymonda Variations.
We’ll soon be back in Miami, but in the meantime I just thought I’d stop by and post a nice little Haloween picture I took. I know it’s a few days late, but that’ll just have to do! I’ll write more soon!
(Me, Daniel Baker, Maira Barriga and Michael Breeden)
The wonderful Wizard of Oz!
Someone to watch over me
Even though I’m not very religious, I prefer to think that there is someone, somewhere that is watching over me and taking care of me .
Today I was doing laundry (there is only one machine in my complex), and I loaded my clothes, put in the detergent, and then put in my money and the machine didn’t start! I called the company that owns the laundry machines, but they didn’t pick up, so the only thing I could do was to take out my clothes and bring them to a friends building to wash.
Anyhow, while I was unloading the clothes, half cursing at my bad luck, I pull out a pair of new bluetooth headphones that I had recently purchased ($130) stuck within my clothes that I had accidentally loaded into the washer with my clothes!
(These are the headphones. They connect wirelessly to any device that supports A2DP and I can listen to music without any wires! I use it with my phone, or if you buy a separate attachment, you can use it with your iPod as well. This way, I can warm up and jump around listening to music without any wires! And the distance is the span of a large dance studio without losing any quality. I highly recommend them to anyone that warms-up using their iPods, or choreographs and doesn’t like to be strapped down by wires. This headphone is the Motorola S9.)
In the end, I was so happy that the laundry machine ate my money and didn’t work, otherwise would have said bye bye to these headphones! Coincidence? Who knows, but these are the times when I think that there is no way that someone is not watching over me. Thank you to whoever that is
Ballet Dancers Gone Wild - Power Dancing
Ok, so this video was actually filmed during last season, in fact, it was in the middle of a performance during intermission after I had performed Balachine’s “Raymonda Variations” (I’m still in costume) and going into Anthony Tudor’s “Lilac Garden”. My fellow dancer Daniel Baker and I made up this um… “piece”… Enjoy.
Beach Apollo
So this photo was taken a while back, but I forgot to post it. Just having some fun on the beach and doing a knock-off “Apollo” pose with an extra leg!
The dancers are Michael Breeden, Holly Fusco, Maira Barriga, Me and Carolyn Ramsay.
Also wanted to say that I am finally out of my crutches and back to dancing pretty much full out now. Man is it great to be back! We’ve got a jam packed season ahead of us, full length Jewels, Tarantella, Liturgy, Bourree Fantasque, La Valse, Square Dance just to name a few, as well as a newly commissioned piece that we are currently working on by Twyla Tharp with a completely new score written by Elvis Costello!
I’ll keep you all updated!
