teleturia

lucky you - two blog posts in one day! but this deserved its own blog post. i semi-unintentionally ended up on italian tv! it was one of the most hilarious evenings of my life. backing up a few steps, my roommate jeremy is an insanely talented tap dancer - definitely the best one i've seen ever and he's fantastic and we share shoes. the only relevant part though, is that he's an awesome tap dancer and that tap is pretty rare in italy. through some process that we still don't quite understand, a tuscan television station asked him to do some tap on one of their programs. also, the dancers in his dance class were invited to be in the studio audience for the show. being pushy and wanting to be on italian tv, i asserted my rights as jeremy's roommate to get into the studio audience along with the rest of the dancers.

so last night, three teachers drove us to the tv studio so we could watch jeremy's moment of tuscan fame. as we entered though, we discovered that we were in the studio audience of some strange tuscan version of star search (a talent competition tv show for kids/teenagers). not just the studio audience, though, the television station was so enthused by the notion of a crowd of american exchange students that they put us on a separate couch that was essentially onstage. so while "gli americani" sat literally right behind the competitor of the moment in full view of the main camera, the italian studio audience watched both the tv show and us. essentially, we were part of the spectacle. which made me really happy that i had showered beforehand.

we commenced to view a two hour competition of mildly talented and adorable italian youth sing and/or dance from onstage, with enthusiastic instructions from a tall italian woman in 5inch heels that we should cheer very enthusiastically, clap, and sway to the songs that the kids were singing. it's a good thing that we were a group of dancers and movement-trained actors, because sitting on that backless, strangely-poofy, overly modern couch with a smile and decent posture was not a simple task. we paid for it all day today with backs that were incurably stiff.

once we realized what was going on, i decided the most fun would be to play an italian-tv version of fan cam at the red sox game. i hammed it up as much as possible and competed for the audience close-ups. if i do say so myself, i got a decent amount of facetime while goofily dancing or emotionally smiling to whichever 11 year old was singing in front of me. jeremy, we discovered, was the guest performer. kind of like on "so you think you can dance" when the judges are deliberating and votes are being counted and lady gaga performs. by the transitive property, my roommate is lady gaga. he did amazingly as always though, and the italians loved him.

supposedly, the show is going to air online after its live and non-live tuscan television appearances. when i get my hands on that link i promise to post it here so you can all watch me ham it up on italian television.