Highland Airwaves

The April 2013 television advertisement for Wrigley's Airwaves got a few people talking, mainly because it opens with an attractive young woman in Lederhosen, gyrating herself while mouthing a ginormous alpine horn. It also had other things though, like bagpipes and modified Highland dancing. It's one of those horrendously annoying ads that makes you instantly reach for the remote when it comes on, but then you sit there, mesmerised. Mesmerise yourself here now, by watching a 10 minute loop of the "Highland" section.

Some notes: The ad. was directed by Jonathan Gurvit [be.net] and choreographed by Corinne de Beer. A tweet [twitter] by the latter puts the production schedule as Jan/Feb 2013. Full credits (minus actors) found here [vimeo].

Darcey Bussell Nose Job

If you start typing "Darcey Bussell" into Google, one of the suggested search terms is "Darcey Bussell nose". If you then start to type nose you get "Darcey Bussell nose job" (and "Darcey Bussell nose surgery"). I found this an interesting inclusion, so I clicked on it.



The results included quite a few links where people were not only questioning if she had a nose job, but some even traded insults over how obvious it was. A sample of Daily Mail comments below:

- She is beautiful but THAT NOSE!! Oh my why did she ever ruin her beautiful nose?
- Darcey is beautiful but she really didn't need that nose job.....!
- Good to see that Michael Jackson had a donor card. Clearly Darcy was the recipient of his nose. 

- I think she has the same surgeon as Michael Jackson!!!
- She has admitted having a nose job its no secret - and anyone - who thinks thats her God-given conk needs their eyes testing! I hope she sued the surgeon - its terrible, nostrils like dustbin lids!
- You are clearly deluded if you think that nose is natural..its a well known fact shes had a nose job which evidently went wrong! who on earth would be pleased with that result..oink oink! Pig Nose

And similar comments appeared on Twitter too...


Did Darcey Bussell have a nose job that went wrong? Her nose is so wrong-looking! 

Darcey Bussell...you're dancing skills are second to none...but why did you have a rhinoplasty? Wasn't necessary. #nosejob



I wondered where these people were getting their conclusive knowledge from. Surely there must be something concrete on the story, and then I found it. This is perhaps my favorite link that I came across when researching this...



There you have it, case closed. You can all go to sleep happy now. Definitive proof, and the internet never lies! But let's have a look at a few things first...



On the left is a photo of Bussell, taken in Novemeber 2012 [flickr], on the right is a still from her performance in the 1991 Royal Ballet production of La Bayadere [amazon], and in the middle is a photo by Arthur Elgort, taken in 1989 when Bussell was 20 years old.

So this "nose job" she allegedly had, it must have happened when she was very young. How young? Well let's look at the stills from a video [youtube] where she is reported as being around 15 years old.



So from these images we can conclude that she must have taken valuable time out of her formative years, to have, and recover from, a rhinoplasty operation, just to get a "Michael Jackson" nose.

I laboured this post just to make a point of it. It's all utter, fucking, nonsense. This is what happens when you go on these mainstream television shows, designed for the unthinking majority. Every moron suddenly becomes an expert about everything. Only those viewers are the ones who concerned themselves with her nose. Proof of this comes from a forum post by the owner of "Ballet News" website [balletnews.co.uk], who noticed a trend in visitor referals.



And proof also comes from Google Trends, which show the search term "Darcey Bussell nose job" only appeared during the period when "Dancing on ice to the stars" (or whatever that shite is called) was broadcast.

Sarah Lamb - A World Stage 2009/2010

Video footage [youtube] [youtube]

Pointe X-Ray

 [via]

Steven McRae - Jolly Jete

Kenneth MacMillan's "Concerto" - First Movement

Pointe

via [flickr]

Motion Tracking Ballet Belly Dancing

The title of this post is a mouthful, but it really sums up what this is all about. A collection of video clips I made while experimenting with a plugin [flaXen's Advanced Stabilizer v2.1b] for VirtualDUB [virtualdub.org]. I didn't come up with anything profound but it seemed a shame just to delete the footage. Youtube has really obliterated the detail in the videos, which look quite memorising in their uncompressed form, but you still get the idea.



The source video material is from a DVD titled "Ballet for Belly Dancers" with a dancer known as Brianna. It's actually quite a nice production, blending ballet positions into belly dance routines, an idea of that will either make you scream, or pique your interest. If I had one criticism about the DVD, it's that things only really get going near the end, when the routines become a bit more complex, but as a training video, it's perfectly fine.
More information and purchasing details [cheekygirlsproductions.com]