I Love Dance | Dance Competition | Photos of the Month

Photos of the Month - March 2021

Although we LOVE all of our participants at I LOVE DANCE, we select a few to highlight each and every month.

Additionally, we LOVE meeting Celebrities and people whose achievements and creativity qualifies them for special recognition.

We hope you'll check each month to see who we feature -- all deserving a huge round of applause!

BRAVO and THANK YOU to those whom we are delighted to show our extra appreciation...

Until we are actively producing Competitions again, we will be featuring a "Quote of The Month" as well as featuring inspirational content on our Facebook posts.

Quote

March 2021
Quote Of The Month
Bette Davis
April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989

Bette Davis is remembered as one of Hollywood's legendary leading ladies, famous for her larger-than-life persona and for her nearly 100 film appearances.

American actress Bette Davis was born on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her early interest was dance, before pursuing acting and the stage. After a brief theater career, she became one of the biggest stars in the Hollywood studio system, appearing in nearly 100 films before her death in 1989. Davis is still considered an icon for her performances in such films as Dark Victory, The Little Foxes and Now, Voyager, as well as for her larger-than-life persona both on and off the silver screen.

In 1950, Davis gave one of her most indelible performances in the show-business drama All About Eve, starring as Margo Channing, a theater actress who fends off the insecurities of approaching middle age (and the scheming of a manipulative protégé) with sarcastic wit and more than a few cocktails. In one of her many memorable lines, she quipped, "Fasten your seat belts: it's going to be a bumpy night.”

In 1989, she died in France, at the age of 81 years old. She was in Europe and had attended the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain where she was honored for her career and spent her final days in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside of Paris. The breast cancer she had did slowly debilitate her and she never made it back to Los Angeles.

There have been many biographies written about her. Davis published two autobiographies during her lifetime: The Lonely Life (1962) and This 'n' That (1987).

Sweetheart

March 2021
Sweetheart Photo Of The Month
Sweetheart from Spokane, Washington
Cherrise Pawlak (née Gadd)

Cherisse grew up dancing in Washington State at Debbi’s Dance Etc, then under the Directorship of Founder, Debbi Halfhill. She will never forget when her name was announced as the Spokane, Washington Sweetheart. It was such a special moment for her, as she was completely surprised. From that moment on, she embraced every aspect of being an I LOVE DANCE Sweetheart.

She remembers, “The Sweetheart program was a great experience that challenged me not only physically but mentally as well. Having to push through competing during the day, and then going straight to rehearsals was so challenging, and yet so empowering. To know that I could push my heart and soul and passion for dance to such limits was exhilarating!”

She was a part of the 1995 Sweetheart program and performed in Kim McKimmie’s epic floorshow, “On The Dark Side.” It was a glamorous, technically challenging and very exciting production. The cast (and the huge audiences) loved everything about this full scale musical. Cherisse remembers much of the staging to this day. “I remember the costumes for the entire show were black and red until the very end when one featured Sweetheart came out and performed a beautiful solo in all white.” She also reflects, “Performing along side some of the most talented dancers in the country was a great step to preparing me for my professional career.”

Immediately following Sweethearts, and right out of high school, she started her dance career in Las Vegas, Nevada as an acrobat in the legendary Folies Bergere.

Cherrise then continued her performing journey onboard cruise ships as a Singer/Dancer. She worked with Norwegian, Holland American and Cunard cruise lines. She moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and trained as an aerial artist which lead her to literally travel the world even more, while performing trapeze, lyra, silks, and other specialty acts. One of her favorite accomplishments was Choreographing two long running shows at Casino Estoril in Estoril, Portugal.

While living in Florida, she also became a very popular Teacher - teaching both dance and aerial arts to many wonderful students for 9 years at Dancer’s Gallery and for 2 years at ProAm Dance Studio.

Cherrise, along with her husband Keith (married for 19 years!), have two boys, Reef who is eleven years old, and River who is seven years old. They now live in Asheville and enjoy all the beauty the mountains have to offer.

Cherisse said, “I am so grateful for the opportunity of being an I LOVE DANCE Sweetheart.”

Photos include: Cherrise backstage during the Sweetheart show “On The Dark Side” and backstage in Las Vegas with the Folies Bergere and with her beautiful family!

Teacher

March 2021
Teacher Photo Of The Month
Houston, Texas
Crystal Cavazos
Dancepiration By Ms Crystal
Crystal Cavazos, Director

Celebrity

March 2021
Celebrity Photo Of The Month
Kim McKimmie with Andrew Sean Greer

Miss Kim met with this up and coming author in 2004 during his book tour of The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Just look at him NOW!

His website BIO: Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of six works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. Greer has taught at a number of universities, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, been a TODAY show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He is the recipient of a NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in San Francisco.

Andrew Sean Greer grew up, an identical twin, in the suburbs of Washington, DC, the son of scientists. He studied writing at Brown University, where he was the commencement speaker at his own graduation. After years in New York working as a chauffeur, television extra and unsuccessful writer, he moved to Missoula, Montana, where he received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Montana. He soon moved to Seattle, where he wrote for Nintendo and taught community college, then to San Francisco where he began to publish in magazines such as Esquire, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker before releasing a collection of his stories, How It Was for Me. The New York Times Book Review praised it, commenting that "Greer's descriptive talents are immense.

One year later Greer achieved acclaim for his first novel, The Path of Minor Planets. The San Francisco Chronicle*= listed the book as one of the five most important literary events of the year. It is the story of a group of astronomers who from 1965 to 1989 met every six years to observe a comet discovered by one of them. This narrative frame explores the central theme in Greer's work: time as both the playground and stage for the bonds between humans who in their own way are all outsiders.

But it was his second novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, that drew national attention when it was published in 2004. In The New Yorker, John Updike wrote of the novel as "enchanting, in the perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment brought to grandeur by Proust and Nabokov." Time has dealt the protagonist a bad card: he is born into the world in the body of a seventy-year-old man, who becomes ever younger. The novel reexplores the old theme of love and the role of time, and is reminiscent of Vonnegut’s science fiction, Grass’s picaresque Oskar Matzerath and Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert. The novel has appeared in over twenty-two countries. It was a TODAY show book club pick and won two prestigious awards: the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award for an author under 35.

Greer's fourth book, The Story of a Marriage, published in 2008, is a more intimate novel, set in just a few months of 1952. It is about a San Francisco housewife who opens her door one day to a stranger who makes an incredible offer, one than upends her world and reveals secrets and lies going back decades. The New York Times said of it: "Mr. Greer seamlessly choreographs an intricate narrative that speaks authentically to the longings and desires of his characters. All the while he never strays from the convincing and steady voice of Pearlie." The Washington Post chose it as a book of the year, and called it "thoughtful, complex and exquisitely written."

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, Greer's fifth book and fourth novel, further develops the themes of love and time by presenting his main character with three versions of her life. Each morning, she awakens to the same room, the same city, the same aunt and brother and lover. The only change: the year in which they all are living: 1918, 1941 and 1985. Threads of war and disease connect the worlds, and Greta watches characters sometimes unable to live their lives, sometimes bound to repeat them. With sacrifices to be made in every world, which one would she choose? It was published in June 2013.

His sixth book, a comedy entitled Less, was published by Lee Boudreaux books in July 2017. It is the comedy of a man fleeing the humiliations of love, middle-age, and failure by accepting invitations that lead to a trip around the world and back, at last, to face his final demon: himself. It won the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, entered the *New York Times* bestseller list and, in April 2018, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.