LINES Blog

LINES Ballet at The Joyce Theater in New York City.

Hello LINES Ballet fans!

We just landed in New York City on Sunday. Before I dive into the details of NYC, I want to recap on the performance we just had in Livermore, California. It is a cute and lovely little town. We drove down early that Saturday morning. The ride was quite peaceful and the weather was perfect. The theater was comfortable and well equipped. The staff was cheerful, especially the costume lady named Teri. She was really nice and helpful about giving directions to near by places.

As far as the dancing portion of this tour went, we ...

My name is Babatunji William Johnson, but everyone calls me Tunji. I was born in Portland, Oregon on January 30, 1991 but grew up on The Big Island of Hawaii.

In 2007, at the age of 16, I started dancing after watching and being inspired by the documentary Rize (which is about a new style of Hip-Hop called Krumping). Since there were no teachers, I taught myself by watching YouTube. After starting a Hip-Hop crew with my friend Grady, I got hooked on dancing and began teaching myself how to pop as well as break dance. In a year, I ...

Fresno
It was weird a feeling for me to dance the Scheherazade opening pax on the stage! I had only ever danced it in the studio, and it was like dream for me to dance on the stage with LINES after the long wait for my visa. The bus ride to Fresno was about three and half hours; we had a great time joking around together. The show was great, as always, but it was little hard having to take another three and half hour bus ride back to San Francisco after the show. We got back around 1am! It ...

I participated in LINES' recent Flash Mob at Hallidie Plaza and I had the best time! It is not often people from all walks of life gather together to bust out in spontaneous dance. The process of the Flash Mob was as fun as the performance. Breton Tyner-Bryan, a regular teacher at the Dance Center, choreographed the number. She was really efficient at practice and at the same time made sure we were all having a good time. I loved our random dance party one rehearsal where you could really see people get down! It only took a couple practices ...

A list of funny/strange/crazy stuff:

• In some small French cities, Sunday (or dimanche) is synonymous with Armageddon.

• Animal flavored potato chips.
  
  
  

• I didn't know who Jessica Lange was before 2012- OUTRAGEOUS. I'm ashamed.

• Every city in France has at least one carousel or merry-go-round.

• Checks are accepted in France... in 2012... in abundance.

• The French make better parents than Americans. Read more here.

Coucou! We arrived in Narbonne yesterday, the ninth out of ten-stop of the tour. Yep, it’s almost time to fly back to San Francisco! But despite the unusually cold weather and the long rides on the bus, the tour has been going well so far. Plus, I always like to come to France to perform because I get to see family and friends! Indeed, my mum and my brother came to the show in Le Havre, my friend Julia with whom I danced at the Bavarian State Ballet saw the performance in Villefontaine, and tomorrow my dance teacher from ...

I splashed some Mediterranean on my face today. C'est froid!

We have a day off in Cannes, and while I know most of my colleagues are trying not to spend all of their per diem on wardrobe refurbishments, I'm trying to not spend my per diem all on millefeuille and cannelle. It is gorgeous today on the Cote D'azur. It is plenty cold, but I'm surely grateful for the vitamin D. Earlier, I walked up to Notre-Dame de l'Esperance, where there's an old fortified tower on a hill that overlooks the city and marina ...

I don’t like cold, and after five years living in Amsterdam and six in Germany, I am ready to not have any more winters under 15 degrees; but here I am, back in Europe with a cold Siberian wave, that is making the thermometers go under 10 degrees and less. It is a lot! And to finish the cake, I got injured three days before we started the tour. My Achilles tendon went crazy and became as big as a tennis ball. I could not even fit into my shoes! Even now, it feels awful and I cannot dance ...

Back to France. For the last few years, we have done more performances in France than we have in San Francisco...