Random Recognition

The other night I sat down to watch "So You Think You Can Dance" and I was enjoying the mind-blowing moves, hilarious and sad attempts at dancing, and heart-warming courageous armless and legless dancers when all of a sudden I recognized someone. That someone was Shane Sparks. When I was 19-years-old and going to Glendale Community college trying desperately to find my academic niche I attended several dance classes focusing on Modern, Hip Hop and Jazz dance. My introduction to the Militaristic postures of Hip Hop was from our artist in residence Shane Sparks. The guy could dance and that was for sure, but even then he seemed quite full of himself which tainted my learning process. It was as if he demanded adulation from all the girls in the class. Most of the girls cooed at him, but I stood outside the pack and rolled my eyes. I mean, please, ladies keep your leotards on! He smugly smiled as the pretty obnoxious ladies stood like pillars on each side of him. Sometimes it seemed that he got so wrapped up in being popular that, in my opinion, he was a lazy teacher. This is why I don't speak highly of him. There is another reason too, I may sound like a prude, but it honestly disturbed me: on our first performance night he walked into the ladies locker-room with the pretense of pumping us up for the dance, but instead gawked at the half-naked ladies chuckling to himself. He looked like he had hit the jackpot.

Little did I know that a decade later he would still be surrounded by 18 and 19-year-olds and slyly gazing at them under his baseball cap: a happy man indeed!