Meet the Tufts Ballroom Team. In just six weeks, three novice couples have to prove they can move and show off their steps just in time to sweep the Harvest Ball Dance-Off. Will the Tufts teams tango to the top or be made into dancing fools? Find out this time, on the Nov. 6 episode of "MADE: I wanna be a Ballroom Dancer."
Oddly enough, that's not so far from the truth. Those channel surfers flipping through their basic cable at 10 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6, may have glimpsed a few familiar faces in their regularly scheduled programming. "MADE: I wanna be a Ballroom Dancer" may be better known as "Episode 45: Keith is MADE into a Ballroom Dancer."
The episode details the life and times of Connecticut high school senior and part-time garbage man Keith, known about town as a "meathead" and a "redneck." Keith decides to show his family, friends and his new MADE coach Marcus that he's got moves to go along with his muscle; what better dance style to take up than ballroom dance?
And Keith is squaring off some ballroom Jumbos, who made brief cameos and combative comments as the competing couples that would - literally - make Keith sweat at his high school's Harvest Ball. "I wanna be 'MADE.'"
The MADE process for the ballroom episode began roughly three months before the first filming in September. Marcus Arieta, 34, a full-time dance instructor at Studio 665 in Woburn, MA, decided to try out for MTV's open casting call ranging from New Hampshire to New York in search of a ballroom dance instructor for their well known caterpillar-to-butterfly show.
"When they first came up I knew I really wanted it. I knew it was something I wanted to try out for," said Arieta, who clinched the spot at the tryouts. "I didn't know how much work was going to be involved."
First, there was a little matter of the time frame; MTV's production schedule required that Keith be "made" in only six weeks, starting in early September and ending in mid-October. Because there were no actual competitions that fit into this deadline, Arieta had to improvise. "We made [a competition] happen. They were going to have a regular dance-off at their school, and we just added a little more flavor to it." The name for the showdown? The Harvest Ball Dance-off.
Now that there was a competition, they needed competitors. Arieta called on his boss and Studio 665 owner Mark Nocera, who is also the Tufts Ballroom coach. They, in turn, tapped Tufts junior and 665 part-time employee Tom Rodda to find and train three pairs of newcomers, the technical term for those new to ballroom, as Keith's eventual competitors.
Rodda went to fellow teammate and junior Meena Bolourchi to help him audition and train the couples with three separate, distinct choreographies, bringing that "flavor" and, as the episode suggests, a little friendly (and not-so-friendly) competition to the Harvest Ball.
Freshmen pair Zach Bordonaro and Alexandra Roy would ultimately take home the second place trophy, while Freshman Zach Gorman and graduate student Leighton Collier would be shown as Keith and his partner's biggest threat to first place.
Sophomores Anthony Anguille and Natalie Koo would round out the Tufts teams, which were taught equally by Rodda and Bolourchi, who crafted complex routines for their students.
"Usually, you would have to have danced five years to dance like that," said Bolourchi, of training the fresh faces. "We just kind of threw it all on them, and they did a really good job."
The Tufts couples on the episode are edited to appear completely unrelated, fueling for some members of the team a more cynical view of "reality" TV, as this was not the case.
But there was more reality to the process than most would imagine, according to Arieta. As depicted, Keith didn't meet his MADE coach until the day Arieta surprised him on Sept. 4, searching for him by knocking on the doors of the classrooms of his high school. Keith truly had only six weeks to get himself into fighting form. And, again, as depicted, the tension between coach and student actually needed no encouragement from MTV's producers.
"I think he had no real idea how much work it was going to be. I think he thought he was going to be able to breeze right through it," Arieta said.
Keith, the perhaps-somewhat-aptly-labeled jock, had a set schedule, with school, the soccer team, his personal workout routine and his recreational mountain climbing leaving him too little time to practice his promenade. "He wanted to be able to do all his stuff and do the ballroom stuff on his own time," said Arieta. "And I wasn't having it."
The two would come to an understanding when Arieta demanded that Keith take his task seriously and contribute to his own progress. With his choreography, Arieta showcased and translated Keith's natural skills - his brawn - into his moves. "It's more of a showcase routine, which is different than a competitive routine, because when you're competing in ballroom, lifts aren't allowed," said Arieta. "I incorporated a little bit of everything backed by lifts. I knew he could make the lifts look very easy."
As it turned out, despite Keith's ultimate first place win in the competition, it wasn't that easy.
"I don't want to do sissy stuff."
Keith, despite his supposed desire to dance and shake off his meathead title, still refers to ballroom dancing as a "dream" rather than an achievable goal. At one point, in his darkest hour, he repeated the same negative phrase his father had told him at the beginning of this little adventure; "Sometimes a man's gotta know his limitations," said a frustrated Keith as he skipped out on dance practice due to sheer discouragement. But what exactly are those manly limitations?
Bordonaro, who has studied ballet for eight years, is familiar with the apparent contradiction of manliness and dance. "It's just a stereotype that you grow up with," said Bordonaro. "And as you grow up, you learn that the two are not mutually exclusive. It's just a stereotype and it's MTV and they love that."
But the stereotypes and general misconceptions surrounding ballroom remain mostly unaddressed, according to Rodda. "I feel like they sort of had the competition and he [Keith] won the medal and the show was kind of over... it seemed like the whole show he was saying 'I can't do this.'" Rodda said, "If they [at MTV] were trying to break down some roles that have been constructed surrounding ballroom dancing, I don't think they really rocked the boat."
According to Arieta, ballroom is more masculine than people think. "A lot of guys will have a complex when it comes to dance. You'll find that it's extremely masculine, the stuff you have to do," Arieta said. "The effect is control, aggressiveness, being really, really in charge. People have a warped view of what dance really is."
"I've been watching them shows on TV, like dancing with celebrities and stuff."
Warped or not, it's true that people, in general, are more aware of ballroom than they were just a few years ago. "Ballroom has just exploded," said Rodda, who credits the beginning of the ballroom trend to the general Latin music explosion. "Shakira has a tango." Even Keith, early in his journey, followed his explanation for his interest in ballroom ("...like dancing with celebrities and stuff"), with a hearty, "It's like, shoot, if Jerry Rice can do it, I can do that!"
This time, it seems that MTV's not the trendsetter. In the past decade ballroom has seen a slow but steady resurgence with the release of films like "Strictly Ballroom" (1992), "Dance With Me" (1998), "Shall We Dance?" (2004), "Mad Hot Ballroom" (2005) and this year's "Take the Lead." Television has hopped on the bandwagon as well with ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."
Bordonaro, admittedly, hasn't seen many of these movies and shows, but he has seen ballroom's growing popularity. "Ballroom is really something that just came into the social scene," said Bordonaro. "In that way, it's just caught the public eye."
Tufts Ballroom co-president, sophomore Hyejo Jun, who had no prior ballroom experience before college, credits pop culture as the force that piqued her interest in the style, and finds that it draws newcomers as well.
Bordonaro and Roy, Gorman and Collier and Anguille and Koo all had the opportunity, in the context of the "MADE" episode, to experience flashier dancing more quickly than they would normally.
Jun credits this skip as a possible reason why all six newbies decided to stay on with the team, though they are no longer able to bust into those particular moves. Jun said that seeing upper level performers "drives people to get to a higher level faster."
"It's so weird," said Roy. "We're doing these really cool moves, and then we get on the floor at our level and we're restricted to a certain level."
"I probably wouldn't have wanted to stay with ballroom if I didn't know I could get to that level in the future."
Ballroom dance is organized into five levels: Newcomer, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Open. Each level requires a certain number of semesters of experience; beginning with Bronze, a pair must place into the next level by placing at competition.
As the USA DANCE syllabus systematically restricts newcomers from certain moves, it might be years before a pair could officially dance at the level of "Dancing with the Stars," or, say, the level of an MTV "MADE" episode.
"MADE"... or Made up? Though the circumstances of the Tufts Ballroom team's inclusion in the episode seem a bit contrived, for Coach Mark Nocera, that inclusion is still a positive thing. Nocera pointed out that there's no real, obvious affiliation of the dancers to Tufts or Studio 665 in the episode, anyway; Nocera just hopes that ballroom as a sport was positively represented. "Because MTV's national, we felt like it was our responsibility was to show ballroom dancing in a good light nationally," said Nocera.
Jun harbors some skepticism about reality TV in general. She saw the portrayals of the Tufts teams, though brief, to be somewhat unfair; the Tufts couples were as new to ballroom as Keith was, and had only other students coaching them, not professional choreographers.
Both Bolourchi and Rodda note that their main complaint lies with the editing of the episode; as dance instructors, they were interested in every couple's dance routines and techniques more than Keith's trouble choosing his partner. They took pride in the performance of Roy and Bordonaro, who now boast a two-and-a-half-foot tall second place trophy from the Harvest Ball.
"It's pretty hard to get a sense of any dancer [in the episode]," said Bordonaro. "They didn't show the kid's entire routine either. I think MTV focused more on the drama leading up to it than the actual dancing."
Nonetheless, Jun appreciates the "MADE" episode as a method through which more people can be exposed to ballroom who might not be ordinarily. "I think it's cool that there are kids out there who really see ballroom and really see it in a positive light and something to work towards."
Since the "MADE" experience ended, the Tufts dancers have focused on the regular season, which includes the Fifth Annual Tufts Ballroom Competition Dec. 10 in Cousens Gym. Arieta isn't quite back to business as usual; he's found that his students have a renewed commitment to their lessons and a new appreciation of his time. "Within a week [of the airing], there's a waiting list," said Arieta. "And it's just started."
