Johnny is interviewed after the conclusion
of Monday night's episode of Battle of the Blades.
Special thanks to Agentress Extraordinaire
Tara Modlin for the photo!
"Just Dance" is one of my favorite Lady Gaga songs. I love the deeper meaning of dance as a metaphor for what we do in this
life--that no matter what gets thrown at us or how many times we fall, we gotta get up, hear and feel the music all around us ... and just dance.
It is Johnny's dance, both on and off the ice, that awakened me so many months ago to a whole new, amazing, technicolor, love-drenched world that I had been missing and that I now could never leave. It's a dance that inspires me anew every day.
So I was thrilled when he tweeted on Sunday that, with the help of the lovely Sandra Bezic (yes! She has a Twitter! And a Facebook fan page!), he had finished creating a "snippet" to "Just Dance" to perform on Monday night's Battle of the Blades (and my thrill defiantly refused to be deflated by the fact that it is impossible to watch clips from this Canadian show if you live in a godforsaken-middle-of-nowhere-hell-it-might-as-well-be-Neptune place like ... the US). Because I knew some fan out there somewhere would find a way to hook us up, eh?
Yep.
Thanks to Dana Harold, who recorded the performance in two segments with her cellphone as she watched it on TV, and to Judith Dale, who then patiently spliced the two segments together because we fans are just that obsessed and just that generous in sharing our addiction with one another, we have this glorious little masterpiece of a snippet that, even with the less-
than-ideal conditions Dana had to work with, just leaps right off the screen at you:
I could not love his hair and makeup more, or that beginning
close-up when his eyes fly open. OMGaga!
Li Mann also posted another spliced version on Johnny's Facebook fan page (thanks, Li!).
Lucky us, we also have this dress-rehearsal footage courtesy of Agentress Extraordinaire Tara! And I love how, even though she's seen Johnny skate a zillion-plus times, we can hear Tara squeeing just like the rest of us would, exclaiming to someone else at about 1:25, "This looks SO good!" And then there's the laughter and delighted clapping in response to what he does around 1:48. :)
UPDATE: And now, thanks to sharp-eyed fans
Coa Coa Barnett and Wendy Stevens, we have found the broadcast-quality video on YouTube! OMGIDIE:
So wow. I really hope he has an opportunity to do this "snippet" again, because I would love to see just this program about a zillion times myself. And I'm guessing I'm not the only one, judging from the Twitterverse reaction to Johnny's performance. Here are two of my favorite tweets that popped up:
And really, we have an embarrassment of riches in Weirlandia today. There's also a fabulous interview with Johnny by Sarah Nicole Pricket (@xoxSNP from Twitter, who inspired our survey--please keep voting!--of Halloween suggestions for Johnny. See which of our tweeted ideas made it into her article!). And a brief but excellent interview with Ben Mulroney from which Tara posted this twitpic.
Tara also shared this post-show "We Love Canada!" twitpic of Johnny at his hotel ...
... to which the only proper response is, of course, #hombre.
Meanwhile, on an entirely different part of the continent, in Wake Forest, NC, there was a special victory for an up-and-coming 11-year-old figure skater, who just happened to capture first place among her group of Intermediate Ladies in the 2011 South Atlantic Regional Figure Skating Championships. Her name is Brianna Laxson. And not only is she a champion--she's also the VERY FIRST girl to wear a JOHNNY WEIR ORIGINAL skating dress! Congratulations to Brianna and her coach, Andrey Kryukov! You can see Brianna's winning style in these videos from the 2010 May Day Open competition on her website. Hoping to find a photo of her in her unique costume soon!
And that brings us to the final bit of WIN for the day: Johnny's 1,000th tweet, which offers inspiration to all the Briannas and everybody else out there:
I love that more than 100 people retweeted this ...
Johnny is skating at the
ITNY 25th Anniversary Gala Benefit and Performance
honoring Olympic Champion Dorothy Hamill
next Monday, October 25!
Buy tickets here; more info here!
They have great tidbits to offer,
and you get a special sneak peek at an exclusive photo
from the Artbook when you sign up!
In exchange for a donation to Toys for Tots,
Trish Aaron-Misiura will send you one handmade,
Johnny-inspired Christmas ornament! More info here!
of translated interviews from the Mook Book
courtesy of the fabulous Akiko Nakata!
