Showing posts with label Chehon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chehon. Show all posts

Friday, August 31, 2012

Chehon's Inspired Solo on SYTYCD

With three weeks left in season nine of So You Think You Can Dance, only six dancers are left in the competition.

The three men and three women who remain on the show are immensely gifted dancers, but none is more talented than 23 year-old Chehon Wespi-Tschopp.

Chehon's story is an interesting one. Born in Chicago, Chehon (pronounced key-on) was adopted in early childhood by Swiss parents, who then moved their family to Australia and later to Switzerland.

With the support of his adopted family, Chehon left home in his early teens to pursue his passion for dance at the Royal Ballet School in London. Since graduating, he has become a professional dancer, performing for two seasons with the Los Angeles Ballet.

While he is low-key and humble and sometimes even awkward in on-camera interviews, Chehon is elegant and intense when he takes the stage to dance. In July, we posted a moving contemporary routine Chehon performed with his dance partner Witney, and since then he has continued to impress.

This week, it was a solo performance from Chehon that blew me away. Though his solo only lasted a minute or two, the young dancer was particularly inspired to pour everything into the performance, as his (adorable) mother Edith had flown in from Switzerland to see him dance.

With the fluidity, grace, and power of his movement, Chehon paints the stage like a canvas.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Movement That Moves Us - Chehon and Witney on SYTYCD

A couple of months back I shared an incredibly beautiful and pained solo dance performance by a very unusual dancer named Hampton Williams. Since then, I've faithfully watched So You Think You Can Dance each week on Fox, and waited patiently for that next great inspirational routine.

Last night's contemporary number choreographed by Stacey Tookey, and danced by Chehon Wespi-Tschopp and Witney Carson, was that piece. The routine was about love, or to be more precise about the end of love, and Chehon and Witney completely gave themselves over to it. 

The choreography perfectly captures the devastation and turbulence of disintegrating love, and the bodies of Chehon and Witney, like our own conflicted yearnings during those gut-wrenching moments of life, are simultaneously fused together and forced apart.

Dance = Art.

(The first minute is fun facts about the dancers. The routine starts around 1:18.)