Today’s dance lesson comes courtesy of guest instructors Kerri and Kristen, who will provide a few easy steps to get even the most anvil-footed beginners moving like champions.

Step 1: Accept death

Step 2: Literally just give up

Step 3: It’s over

Step 4: Pray

“In the name of the Father, the Cornrow, and the Holy Mrs. Strauss.”

Step 5: Warm up those wrists

The American uses all parts of the wrist.

It is sacred in their culture.

Step 6: Know where your foot is, kind of

Continue reading American Dancing →

Breaking news. We have just learned that, earlier this week, Aliya Mustafina gave birth to a daughter.

Well, according to Valentina this happened. So that probably means Valentina cut open the innards of a bat, added some powdered broken dreams, and the arrangement of the goop foretold the birth of an Olympic champion.

Meanwhile, Aliya ate a mango and sneezed and was like, “She said my uterus did what?”

It’s currently unclear whether the baby will be winning Olympic gold in the all-around or just the uneven bars, but the latest training videos indicate that baby Svetlana Mostepanova Omelianchik Zaitseva’s dismount work is coming along quite nicely.

UPDATE (10:21pm Moscow Time): Russian media is now reporting that Mustafina managed to connect the birth out of an Onodi for two tenths, though Nellie Kim still has to rule as to whether that truly fulfills the acro series requirement.

It’s a tough one because, if the baby displays rebounding action, does Aliya get credit by proxy? Or does only the baby get the composition requirement?

Here is Aliya training the Onodi + birth series as long ago as 2014.

UPDATE (12:17am Moscow Time): Valentina just appeared in a cloud of smoke behind a lectern to announce that she has stolen the baby, pointing to a contract signed by Aliya in 2009 while singing a lullaby to a rabbit in a meadow in which Aliya promised all children in perpetuity to Valentina should she make Aliya “the most confident and glorious of all queens.”

Continue reading Aliya’s Baby 2036 →

It’s going to kill us. That’s just a given at this point.

A new study suggests that Claudia Fragapane beam-panic-induced coronary embolisms are currently the third-most common reason for hospitalization among Britons under 30.

But like most unhealthy acts, it’s so worth it.

She’s not exactly afraid of some risk, this little chickadee. If it gets more than five tenths, Frags has already married it. She’ll curl herself into a ball like a little armadillo, pop into the air, and just see where she lands. Same country: optional. No one misses on beam quite like our Frags.

Girl’s not just going to wobble. She’s not going to pitifully bend and lean and hop off like it’s some Russian podium training session. No no. If Frags is going to fall, she’s going to fall.

Commitment. A good, proper, money’s-worth beam fall. That’s how you do it.

But flailing to the ground in a swirl of limbs can only get you so far in this world. (Meaning: nowhere except my heart.) Frags is more than that.

You see, with hilarious falls also come ridiculous—equally hilarious—saves. And in that world, Frags is a true master. She has bestowed upon us so many expressive works over the years. A new Picasso. Millions of viewers from all around the world have glimpsed her installations and said, “Just…how even?” Continue reading Claudia Fragapane on Beam: A GIF Tribute →

If there’s one thing we can say about the first half of 2017, it has really put the “HA” back in “harrowing disaster.”

And for that, we owe it a great deal. It has saved us, returning us to our roots and reminding us that to take the mundane and modern view of a beam fall simply as “a mistake” or “a deduction” or “a miserable storm of hate-diarrhea that has ruined everything” is to obscure the original purpose of falling on beam: comedy.

When Toulouse-Shelgunova called us to her side and said, “I’ll just pick up this flyer for free piano lessons and…NO IT’S A TRAP…”

When Flavia Magritte tried to teach Double Dutch to that clan of militant gibbons…

…they joined a pantheon as old as time itself. One that truly understands them.

Because sometimes, you just have to droop down and…succumb to the pox once and for all?

“Who wants to bring Nana a barf bag?”

And sometimes you would resume your routine after a fall, but the beam just doesn’t deserve it.

“You know what? No. Not for you today.”

Continue reading Great Moments in Beam Falls →