Shake it like a Tahitian

by Andrew Evans on

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In a language that’s mostly all vowels, a bit of interpretive dance helps communicate one’s deepest thoughts and feelings. Sad? Lower your eyes. Fierce? Scowl and posture. Happy? Shake it, baby. Travelers have been awestruck by Tahitian dancers ever since they first landed on these dancing shores. The bearded missionaries of long ago secretly loved it and today’s MTV backup singers wanna steal these moves but ain’t got no rhythm.

Every two-bit hotel in Tahiti puts on a decent dinner dance show for the tourists, but when the natives start dancing for the natives, things get hot fast. I caught this little show at an official awards ceremony on a hot white sand beach on Bora Bora. Sit back and enjoy, and just ask yourself, can you shake it like a Tahitian? I didn’t think so.

Get out and go: Events around the world (November 18-21)

by Brenda Yun on

It’s time to look at the festivals and events happening around the world, and this week has a particularly international selection of happenings. If you’re close and have time, then you have no excuse to get out and go!

  • Mexico – Birders will unite in the Yucatan Peninsula for the Yucatan Bird Festival from November 19-22. For the 8th consecutive year, the festival offers a wide range of field trips, exhibits, conferences, and a “birdathon.” Objectives of this annual festival include promoting the rich diversity of bird species found in the Yucatan and developing a conservationist culture among tourists and tour providers.
  • California – The California Surf Festival celebrates awareness and support for surf history preservation this weekend from November 19-22. It is an international event destination bringing people from all over the world to Oceanside, California, to experience surf culture through films, music, art, photography and interaction with those who embody the culture as well as highlight the surf community of California.
  • Amsterdam – The International Documentary Film Festival begins this Thursday, November 19. The film extravaganza will present over 300 documentaries over the course of 10 days, ending on the 29th.
  • Israel – Shalem Dance Festival will begin this Thursday, November 19 in Jerusalem. Over 50 Israeli and guest dancers perform in original contemporary dance works. This year’s highlight will feature contemporary dance ensembles from Africa. The festival ends on the 21st.

  • India – The Mim Kut and Pawl Kut Festival will be celebrated this Friday, November 20 in Mizoram. Celebrated in the last week of November or the first week of December, the festival celebrates the completion of the harvesting season.
  • Helsinki – This year Helsinki’s Chocolate Festival has a larger “box,” as it is held at Wanha Satama fair centre November 21-22. The festivali celebrates the diversity of the sweet stuff. Choco-connaisseurs share their sweet wisdom about the impact of chocolate on health, wellbeing, history of chocolate, production and variety.

If you make it to one of these events, let us know how it was, or if you know of an event that’s coming up, please let us know and we’ll be sure to include it in the next “Get out and go” round-up.

November is the month for arts in Madrid

by Sean McLachlan on

Two major festivals in Madrid this month are enough to keep any culture lover happy.

The first and biggest is the Festival de Otoño, an annual extravaganza of theater, dance, music, and even a trio of circuses. The plays are all in Spanish, but dance and music are universal languages so you can still enjoy this festival even if you don’t speak the the local lingo. The styles lean towards the modern and experimental, like the theater/dance fusion of the Belgian production Isabella’s Room about an old blind antiquities collector recounting a life lived through the highs and lows of the Twentieth century, or the multinational collaboration of Whale Watching Tour that fuses avant-garde experimental and folk music. One show to watch out for is The New Vietnamese Circus, which will portray life in a traditional village through juggling, acrobatics, martial arts, and music.

Another cultural highlight this month is the XXVI Festival de Jazz de Madrid. Jazz in Madrid? Yep, while it’s not as famous as Chicago or New Orleans, jazz is big here and there are a lot of cool venues that will be pulling out all the stops for this, the biggest annual jazz festival in Spain. There will be dozens of concerts at clubs around the city featuring artists playing all styles of jazz.

The Festival de Otoño runs from November 4-29. The XXVI Festival de Jazz de Madrid runs November 4-28.

How do you prepare for your flight?

by Grant Martin on

Everyone has their own pre-flight ritual to make the upcoming torture bearable. I personally wander over to the lounge, check my email and try to make sure that I’m top of all of my active projects. Others have a more, well, active ritual. This guy at LAX was drawing such a crowd that someone pulled out his camera to film the spectacle. Take a look:

Perhaps if we all did this before our flights we’d no longer have angry passengers and cranky flight attendants.

Thanks to the lovely Paula Berg at Southwest Airlines for the link.

Woman sues Hyatt after dancing wedding guest breaks her arm

by Katie Hammel on

Weddings are a time of celebration. People like to have a few drinks, maybe hit the dance floor. But there always seems to be one guest who takes things too far – who drinks a little too much and gets a little too wild. At a wedding at a New Jersey Hyatt in 2008, that guest not only got a bit too drunk, he allegedly got so forceful on the dance floor that he broke another guest’s arm. And now Hyatt could be held responsible.

According to the New York Post, Christine Mancision was getting her groove on when James Graeber grabbed her, and flung her so violently across the dance floor that she fell down and hurt her arm. She went to the hospital, where she found out her wrist was broken and she needed surgery. She’s now suing the Hyatt for over-serving Graeber, who she claims was visibly intoxicated.

The suit is for $1 million and claims Hyatt violated New Jersey’s “dram shop” laws by serving someone who was obviously drunk. Mancision’s lawyer said the Hyatt “owes an obligation to its guests . . to not fuel the fire of intoxication by pouring alcohol down the throat of an intoxicated person.” Really, a Hyatt staff member poured alcohol down the throat of Graeber?

Getting manhandled by some drunk buffoon at a wedding is not fun (though probably not all that uncommon). But how can the court say that wouldn’t have happened had the Hyatt not given the guy another drink? And how can they prove he was “visibly intoxicated”? Everyone does the chicken dance at weddings. That proves nothings. Will the wedding video be called in as evidence?

If it’s true, what happened to Mancision was unfortunate. But it seems like her “assailant” should be the one who pays for her hospital bills, not the hotel.

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[via Vagabondish]