Bright Light Bright Light Bleeds Glitter In His "Love Part II" Music Video

Bright Light Bright Light gets showered with disco glass.

British singer Bright Light Bright Light is fittingly obsessed with lights. From light sabers to different colored lighting, his music video for his new single, "Love Part II" tells a story of metamorphosis by using light contrast. Contrast is the key.

The chorus on "Love Part II" proclaims "I'm in love again", which implies that the song is about a person being in love, but the video offers another interpretation. It's clear that the video is about a man falling in love with God or some higher power. There are many examples in the video and on the song that hint at religion and God.

Bright Light Bright Light opens "Love Part II" singing "Clever boy, you got one eye on the clock, so you don't waste time, do you." One eye is commonly associated with God's All-seeing eye, like the eye on the U.S. one-dollar bill. As Bright Light Bright Light lies down with a profile view of his face covered in black making him a silhouette, shots of him are intercut wearing all-black clothing resembling a priest. These intercut shots look like flashbacks or memories. With the black background of these shots and Bright Light Bright Light's all-black clothing, the scene looks like a priest sitting in the darkness of a confessional. It's clear that he is in the shadows.

As the first chorus explodes with urgency, his black jacket is unzipped revealing a black tank top. It's a change from the all-black jacket that made him look like a Catholic priest. Two people, a man and a woman wear black wedge hats covering their eyes, signaling blindness. They stand and dance behind Bright Light Bright Light, winding their arms around like the hands on a clock. Remember "one eye on the clock." The background is various black pyramids doused with white light.

Bright Light Bright Light opens the second verse singing "Clever boy, you've got one hand on my side, don't let me slip out of view." He stands against a black backdrop wearing a black jacket. The scene lights up revealing the wedge-headed duo holding poles of light that look like light sabers from "Star Wars." Bright Light Bright Light's black jacket turns from black to a gray color. The light sabers could be phallic. Sigmund Freud would think so since he thought all symbols are related to sex. Maybe the two light sabers represent two penises, meaning homosexuality.

This is why the "Love Part II" video is so open to interpretation. Bright Light Bright Light could be expressing his gay love for the world to see or he could be expressing his love for God. I'm confident the video is about making a life change because time isn't promised.

By the time the second chorus arrives, Bright Light Bright Light is dressed in a windbreaker (jacket) and a wrinkled t-shirt and his hair a bit mussed. He sort of looks like he's been jogging in the streets. As the chorus explodes into action once again, Bright Light Bright Light is showered with glittery pieces that could very well be the remnants of a disco ball. The wedge-headed duo are still present, but they're less in focus, and their black wedge hats have turned gray instead of black. They're fading away. Time is weightng less on the mind of Bright Light Bright Light.

Next, he walks towards the violet light, his face soaked in purple light. As the last chorus explodes, the scene explodes with red light and red confetti. The wedge-headed duo wear red wedges, eyes still covered, but they wear red pyramids in the center of their torsos. What do the pyramids mean? The crimson red of the scene clearly represents love. Something about the glittery red scene reminds me of the Queen of Hearts from "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland."

Now a close-up shot of Bright Light Bright Light lying on broken glass, that appeared as a flashback at the beginning of the video, intercuts the red scene. The close-up shows a black gloved hand shielding Bright Light Bright Light's face as glass shatters. Does this gloved hand belong to his protector? Then he falls onto his back, in the red scene, as well as the broken glass scene. The scene with broken glass seems to be reality and the red scene is his unconscious. Crimson red fills in the cracks between the shards of glass that Bright Light Bright Light lies upon. The ending is ambiguous because he could be going to sleep, back to a dream, or it could be dead. Maybe Bright Light Bright Light takes the metaphor of "falling in love" literally, and somehow he has fallen from a building to a bloody death---that is, the bloody death of his loneliness and darkness.

Since the Art Director for the "Love Part II" video is Alun Davies, it's no surprise that the video is bursting with creativity and visuals that touch the human senses. The elements of glitter and glass in the video are also reminders that these elements are constant in a lot of Davies' work. Davies designed outfits for Lady Gaga's "Monster Ball" tour, which he calls "mirror ball" outfits. Mirror ball is basically the same thing as a disco ball. Also, the shattered glass in the "Love Part II" video looks like pieces of a disco ball. Maybe the broken glass as a disco ball is a symbol of Bright Light Bright Light seeing himself reflected in the world's earth-as-disco-ball. He's at one with the world, and now he can be reflected through the world. He's opened up his soul, whether to a man or a woman or to God, and now he's reached a state of piece.

Watch the "Love Part II" video after the jump.

RedOne Introduces His New Artist Mohombi

Mohombi in the studio with RedOne

RedOne is the producer behind almost all of Lady Gaga's hit songs ("Poker Face" and "Bad Romance" to name a few) and now he has own record label.

The label is called 2101 Records, distributed through Universal Music. 2101 Records' first artist is singer Mohombi who's already won a South African Grammy. The 23-year-old singer was born in the Congo, but raised in Sweden. His music reflects his heritage, which is a mixture of African-soca and Swedish pop.

RedOne says he signed Mohombi because he's a global artist who has his "own world" like Lady Gaga and can write killer hooks and melodies. By "own world" RedOne means Mohombi knows what image and vision he wants to show to the world.

Mohombi's first single "Bumpy Ride" , produced by RedOne, will be released October 4, 2010. It's sure to be a number one hit. The song has RedOne's trademark submarine bass-lines and simple, catchy hooks, yet it sounds like Trinidadian carnival music. Just think of Kevin Lyttle's 2004 hit "Turn Me On." Mohombi vocals are of a nice, tenor tone that sound all his own. He even sort of shouts out Lady Gaga with the line "I'm on top of my love game and you're gonna get it tonight." I guess Mohombi is the guy with "a smile on his mouth his hand on his cock." Best believe he'll work his disco stick.

Like Gaga, RedOne is a good marketing strategist and he points out in a BBC interview that Mohombi is not only a gifted songwriter, but a man that "every girl will want to dance with" in a club and "put his poster on their wall." 

Check out his music video for "Bumpy Ride." There's lots of sandy beaches, bikinis and Mohombi's talent. The choreography is hot and matches the song perfectly.

That Loveable, Gender-bending, Savior Of Our Souls Named Alejandro

sketch by Mario Laterza

Alejandro in his chili bowl cut.

*Links for performances mentioned listed at the bottom of the page:

Do you want to reinvent yourself? You know, like changing your hair color and clothes, or do you want to change your whole being. Like become a totally different person. Lady Gaga knows how to do that and she knows someone who can help you, and his name is Alejandro.

Lady Gaga’s song “Alejandro” is one of the most abstract songs you’ll hear in pop music because the lyrics are more like symbols, and although there’s a narrative, the metaphors make it ambiguous. Since the song’s release, Gaga has used several visual concepts when performing her song “Alejandro,” but there’s a steady message in all of the performances, and that message is metamorphosis. The process of metamorphosis only happens when people never look back to their past, and keep evolving.

“Alejandro” is a song from Gaga’s album The Fame Monster, and the song doesn’t seem very monster-like, but if you’re knowledgeable about Gaga’s avant-garde approach to music then you’ll see the connection. Gaga once said when describing her album’s monster theme that we humans are all born with the demons inside of us, as in Christianity’s original sin, and we will all sin in our lives. She finished with saying the monster theme is about the evolution of humanity and how we begin as one thing, and we become another.

It was in November 2009 that Gaga started performing “Alejandro” for the first time. The performance was pure Performance art that featured Gaga penetrated by men in simulated ways. Interestingly, Gaga says “Alejandro” represents the Fear of Sex monster. The male dancers are dressed in flesh-colored bodysuits and masks on their head made of what looks to be a mini version of a human rib cage. Presumably, the rib masks are a reference to Adam and Eve. Christian religion states that God used Adam’s rib to make the world’s first woman Eve. One of Gaga’s male dancers uses his hand as a phallus to lift Gaga up by her crotch. Then another male dancer arrives to caress both his fellow male dancer’s hand and Gaga’s body.

She then lowers to the ground lying on top of the two men as if they were her sofa. At an awkward position with her butt in the air, Gaga smokes a cigarette. Then she takes another puff of the cigarette and rubs her sparkly cone bra, as if for luck and raises her hands to the sky, perhaps God. Next the other dancers disappear, and Gaga throws away the cigarette as different male dancer approaches her. he sticks in his crotch in her face and starts thrusting against her face. She hangs upside down with her back resting on his thigh, and his butt facing the audience. As he puts his hands out as if sacrificing himself, Gaga pats his butt on makes the all-seeing eye of God with her fingers, placing in front of her dancer’s butt. They are two people as one.

“This is for all the lovers you left behind,” says Gaga after that sensual display of interpretive dance and Performance art. The “left behind” part stands out because it refers to the past, and Gaga encourages her audience to never look in the past because there’s a fear of getting stuck there, and never escaping. The religious aspects of the performance lie in the masks made of rib bone, and the phallus (means the penis is an object of generative power) symbols throughout that reference the male as primary, and the female as secondary. This performance from November 2009 evolved over the future months into something even more religious.

In March 2010, “Alejandro” as a performance evolved into a place resembling the Garden of Eden, full of trees, vines and benches. A large silver statue of an angel or Saint with spread wings in the middle of a fountain full of blood. Gaga tells her audience that it’s the Fountain of Youth, which is “the only fountain that bleeds for you.” The male and female dancers perform ballroom dances and strike balletic poses. Some men dance with women, and some men dance with men, but all the women and men are human, making them all of the same flesh, the human flesh.

The Alejandro saint.

In the Bible, it says that there will be a day of Rapture where Christ will present a glorified church, the church that he laid down his life for. He died for the sins of the human race. People prepared for the day of Rapture by cleaning their physical bodies and spiritually washing in blood, which means that their sins were forgiven by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. A verse from the Bible is as follows. Even though the outward man perish, the inward is renewed day by day. No matter how old we get in years, and if this body of clay does deteriorate, wrinkle and become old, we can have a beautiful, new, fresh lively spirit in Jesus Christ, new, without spot or wrinkle, and full of life. And when we are called at the time of the Rapture this old body will be changed in an instant. Or if we are called before that time, the beautiful soul will just slip out of the body. And at the time of the Rapture or the Resurrection, we'll be given a beautiful new body. Our bodies will be changed.

This verse is all about metamorphosis and evolution. It’s about how existence (physically and spiritually) is about taking different forms. Even in death, a person’s existence evolves.

The most recent televised performance of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” on NBC’s “The Today Show” connects the song’s theme of metamorphosis to gender. The men begin the performance as just dancers, with nothing gender-specific about them, other than their obviously male bodies. The male and female dancers performed the same choreography. It’s not until the second verse that some men engage the only two female dancers on stage (note: there are five male dancers on stage) in a ballroom dance.

At this point, the dancers have embraced recognizable gender roles assigned by society. In the middle, the two sets of opposite-sex couples embrace and bite each other in the necks like vampires, and they drop to the floor, feeling weak. But of course they rise back up and are visibly different. The “masculine” men who led their women in a dance only minutes before are now reborn as stylish catwalk creatures strutting with ferocious glamour. Gaga’s newest male dancer Cassidy Noblett visibly mirrors his former female partner, Amanda Balen by putting his hands on hips and striking a pose right after she does. I’m sure the mirroring part is a nod to diva worship well-known in gay culture.

The blurring of gender in this performance is the same concept used in Gaga’s “Alejandro” video where her male dancer s dress as German WWII soldiers (think “Cabaret”) wearing monk bowl-cut wigs and high heels to bikini briefs and stilettos. What the gender-bending men in “The Today Show” performance and the “Alejandro” video do so well is keep their audience guessing: do they really act like that, are the “effeminate” or “masculine” or both, or are those physical actions just part of the show? All of these physical actions demonstrated could be their real identities that make up one diverse identity.

Alejandro turned out to be quite a man, didn’t he? You got more than what you bargained for, but I hope it was worth it and I hope that you are enlightened. Lady Gaga tells him that she doesn’t want him to call her name anymore, but you can call his name. He wants you to, so remember that.

Link for November 2009 performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ByNhI1gesM&videos=eKF7j67Mklo

Link for Garden of Eden performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLYDxdjPmVs&videos=37oq5GfscVM

Link for Today Show Performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEdhOS72998

Michael Silas Sacrifices His Life For Lady Gaga

Michael Silas performs at Gaga's Monster Ball in St.  Louis

Link to the performance:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehfqXJO1umQ&videos=-1lqehQ2juc

Dancer Michael Silas becomes an important part of Lady Gaga’s lesson about blood, sex and religion in front of 20,000 people. She sacrifices Michael and lets him bleed to death with her on stage, and then she brings them both back to life.

As a classically-trained dancer, Michael Silas has been using his body as art for almost his whole life, but he has only been using his body as part of high-profile Performance art since he started dancing for pop star Lady Gaga. Recently Gaga showcased Michael in a July 17 performance of “Teeth” comparing him to a famous savior, and in the process revealing a scintillating detail about Michael.

At the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, Gaga seemed like she was winding down to the finish of her song “Teeth” wailing like a soloist in a black gospel church. Wearing a blond, Marilyn Monroe wig, a skin-tight latex leotard and blood smeared all over her body, Gaga looked like she stepped out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Her dancers stood behind her frozen with their backs bent forward and their blood-dripping teeth clenched. The cameras flash in the audience, and the crowd screams with delight. Then Gaga addresses Jesus saying “Jesus, way up there…heaven…psssst. Some people say, Jesus, that you only love a certain kind of people. Some people say that Jesus only loves one kind of person, and not everybody, not every religion or every race or every ethnicity or sexual orientation.” The crowd roars when she says the last thing, and Gaga pauses for a few seconds. “But you have blessed me. And I know bleeding to death in front of 20,000 people every single night on a world arena tour that Jesus must love everybody.” She pauses and then repeats “Jesus, must, love, everybodddyyyyy!”

Gaga gets on the floor, and crawls until she’s lying on her back directly under Michael Silas’ crotch. He’s frozen in the same position he was before, and his legs are wide open. She speaks “This is Michael” and she caresses his leg, from calf to thigh. She proceeds “I like Michael so much because Michael likes American girls” and Michael sticks out his tongue and starts moving it as if he’s eating cherry pie. Then Gaga continues “But I also like Michael because Michael likes American boys.” The crowd explodes with cheers. As she says this, Michael moves his tongue around his mouth as if he has a lollipop in his mouth. Hmm…American boys. Then Gaga says “Just like Jesus…” and Michael crosses himself in the Sign of the Cross and spreads his hand as if presenting himself to the crowd, as Gaga says “Michael loves everybody.”

Next Gaga starts singing like a gospel singer as the rapturous electric guitar starts back up, “Show me your teeth” and Michael gyrates to the moaning guitar riffs, and removes his hood and thrusts his hips forward with Gaga still under him. It’s almost as if Gaga’s singing and the guitar-playing are speaking for Mike, who as a dancer can only use his body to communicate. Gaga has resurrected Michael, just like Jesus. This is made particularly clear when Gaga sings “I’m a free man, and Jesus loves everybody,” because obviously she isn’t the man, but Michael is. He makes a motion like he’s choking on a disco stick as Gaga wails, and then he even lip-synchs her wails. The words “I am a man. I am a human being. I am a me, and I was born this wayyyyyy! Show me your teeth!” It’s clear as day that Gaga is a reverend and this performance is her sermon.

You may call Michael a prop for Lady Gaga’s theatrics, which he is in a way, but the art reveals a little about Michael Silas. A dancer uses his body to speak, and not his vocal cords. Gaga used Michael to exemplify her audience who are largely gay, lesbian and transgender, or however they see themselves. Gaga wants the world to know that she and her little monsters were born this way. And don’t you forget it.

Lady Gaga and Her Telephone Effect

               

Gaga in her "Telephone" video.

By Chris Cole

For her 9-minute music video “Telephone,” Pop artist Lady Gaga takes the word “Telephone” from her single's title and turns it into a human condition brought on by American commercialism. It’s called “the Telephone effect.”

There are many references in Gaga’s “Telephone” video that support the concept of nature turning into product, and this concept drives the video. Gaga uses her video to rediscover the humanity she had in her childhood before becoming exposed to the products companies sold to her through their advertisements. The Telephone effect is that urge that people get when they see a product in an advertisement. Then the telephone in their head goes off, and makes them hungry for more and more, like a vampire hungry for blood.

The video starts out in a women’s prison full of anger and violence where she sees glimpses of the life experiences that make her life uniquely hers. The guards escort Gaga into the women's prison and put her into a jail cell and strip off her clothes. The scene cuts to the prison exercise area where women lift weights. Gaga wears glasses made of active cigarettes blowing up smoke. The cigarettes on Gaga’s eyes represent her blindness from commercialism. Steel chains wrap around her body. She’s a prisoner. Next, Gaga is in a jail cell with a bunch of women. Gaga stands dressed in a black studded leather jacket with spikes down the sleeves that references the Crust Punk scene of the ‘80s. She wears short blond hair with Diet Coke soda cans rolled in it. Gaga’s mother uses to use soda cans as rollers during Gaga’s childhood. A woman with long brown hair and sunglasses stands next to Gaga. This woman is a doppelganger of Gaga’s old self before the fame, the woman with long, dark hair waiting tables in New York City. The loud speaker announces that Gaga has a phone call for her from Beyonce. Gaga answers.

Beyonce brings the food that Gaga must feed on to stay alive. Beyonce arrives in a frosted package of sweetness, like a human honey bun. The bright yellow car she picks up Gaga in is the Pussy Wagon from the film Kill Bill. She opens up a honey bun package and holds it out for Gaga to eat. Gaga takes a bite and then Beyonce takes a brisk bite. The brisk sound of Beyonce’s bite is visceral. It makes you hungry. By taking a bite out of Beyonce’s honey bun treat, Gaga is essentially taking a bite out of Beyonce because the honey bun product, in its crinkly packaging and sweet, frosted texture, represents Beyonce. Hence, her name “Honey B.” Beyonce discards the half-eaten honey bun out the window. Its image against black asphalt is a shiny piece of product on something hard and ugly. The discarding of the honey bun represents how humans crave something and then eat it to satisfy the craving, only to shit it out. The half-eaten honey bun becomes road kill.

“Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger,” says Gaga, dressed in a 1940s power suit that’s definitely an homage to legendary actress Joan Crawford. As Gaga says, if you’re going to kill something, you might as well make a product out of it because that’s what the businesses and the media do. Turning death into product is what fast food restaurants do. They kill cows and use their meat to make quick money. The media turns death into product whenever someone dies, whether the victim is famous or not. Sometimes the death is the death of a reputation, and of course the media covers this religiously. A half-finished fountain drink from a fast food restaurant, crumbled up wrappers binded inside the pussy wagon’s cup holder reference the death of the food and drink. The food and drink was consumed and then peed and crapped out. On to the next product to eat and waste out. Gaga takes Beyonce’s picture with the Polaroid camera. It’s another example of instant satisfaction, and something going in and then quickly coming out. The Polaroid camera is like a mini factory in itself where the camera makes a copy of life, and then poops it out and discards it. It dies.

Beyonce in "Telephone" video.

It’s in a diner, a symbol of America and buddy movies, that the video’s culmination takes place. Beyonce enters and meets her boyfriend Tyrese there. The placemats on the table are shaped like American flags. The name of the diner is “Diner: Homestyle Cooking.” Another piece of America lies in Beyonce’s wig, which is pure Betty Page who was a racy 1950s pinup babe. The diner’s customers are of different races, ages, colors and sizes and probably different sexual orientations making the diner a melting pot and a symbol of a diverse America. Tyrese goes up to the diner's bar and smacks the butts of female patrons. Watching closely, Beyonce pours poison into his coffee. A logo of a skull pops up in the screen next to the bottle of poison in Beyonce’s hand. Even the poison is turned into a product, and once again death is a product.

Lady Gaga Named Most Creative Person In Business By Fast Company Magazine!

Link to Dan Macsai's article: http://www.fastcompany.com/100/2010/01/lady-gaga

Lady Gaga Is Shocked At the Honor

                                    

The moment after reading writer Dan Macsai's article about Lady Gaga in the June 2010 issue of Fast Company magazine, listing the 100 Most Creative People in Business, I knew that I had never read something like it before. This article is concise, structured, and full of colorful quotes that speak to the heart of Lady Gaga’s way of thinking.

The structure of the article is what really makes me smile because the structure makes the article flow. Macsai really composed the article smartly beginning it with an intro that mentions Gaga’s music first instead of her outfits. From there he builds the article into a presentation of Gaga as an artist and a fantastic business woman.

The article’s title “Lady Gaga, Pop artist” alludes to the dual meaning of that title. It’s her occupation, but there are two aspects of that occupation: in the musician sense and in the artsy Andy Warhol sense. Gaga is a pop singer who makes pop music, but she’s also a Pop artist who makes Pop art just as her idol Andy Warhol did. Like Warhol, Gaga takes pieces of pop culture and re-contextualizes them, and as a result assigns the pieces new meanings.

In the opening paragraph, Macsai uses Gaga’s lyrics to show that she uses references from her own life experiences in her music. He also mentions her humble beginnings and the drive she had to achieve her dreams, and this mention foreshadows the incredible accomplishments that make up the rest of the article.

Macsai sums up what Gaga does as a performance artist in the second paragraph. By talking about the references of her brand, such as “disco stick,””Madonna’s glitter-glam fashion” and shocking, Alice Cooper-like performances, he links that sentence to the following sentence about critics calling her derivative. Disco is from the past, Madonna is from the past and Alice Cooper is from the past. Then he discusses how Gaga’s brand spread like wildfire because of the Web. The paragraph ends with a sentence mentioning the power of Gaga’s brand when it’s partnered with another brand.

Macsai uses the next paragraph to show how Gaga’s ubiquity has made her attractive to other companies with their brands to sell. He talks about how the Web has helped Gaga become ubiquitous, and has made her brand global. The last sentence of this paragraph refers to her “outlandish fashion sense.”

The power of Gaga’s mind-blowing outfits is the focus of the following paragraph, and how her brand is fueled not only by the Web, but by the visual sense of her brand. The visuals support the other aspects of her brand, like music and social commentary. The last sentence points out that Gaga’s visually-strong music videos dominate the Web.

That flows into the next paragraph that has a topic sentence that points out that Gaga’s music videos function as marketing tools, as well as artistic statements. Gaga gives the brands and products exposure, and uses them as social commentary. She is simultaneously participating in the capitalist system she comments on.

The article focuses on the business side of Gaga, which makes sense since it’s a part of Fast Company's “100 Most Creative People in Business” issue. It’s also appropriate because Gaga is constantly used as an example of brilliant public relations, branding, marketing, which all makes for a great business plan. She does everything right and it’s a great thing to see. The quote from Polaroid CMO Jon Pollock about how when he met with Gaga he expected her to talk about “pink boas," but instead she talked about digital strategy and the best way to reach her generation is telling. It proves that there is an intelligent mind that exists behind Lady Gaga’s artifice.

Cassidy Noblett Role-Plays with Lady Gaga and Brings Class Back to Dance

He smiles with pleasure. His eyes twinkle with seduction, and his body moves with the elegance of the Nutcracker Prince or the darkness of a monster. This body belongs to a professional dancer named Cassidy Noblett.

Cassidy is the master controller of his body, yet he never seems robotic and never unnatural. When a performance calls for energy and joy, he flashes his big, life-changing smile, and when a performance calls for tender sexiness, he becomes William Shakespeare’s Romeo. When Cassidy needs to be strong and graceful, he becomes Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Prince, and if he needs to be dark and dangerous he becomes a monster. All of these expressions show how Cassidy uses his great acting skill to make his dancing come alive, and touch your heart.

Right now, Cassidy is most famous for being one of Lady Gaga’s dancers on her ongoing Monster Ball Tour where he gets to play many different characters. The tour plays to all of Cassidy’s strengths as not only a dancer, but an actor. Recently, on July 9, 2010, Cassidy performed three songs with Gaga on NBC’s The Today Show Summer Concert series. For the first song “Bad Romance,” Cassidy’s hands become monster claws and he lopes around the stage like a panther who’s both beautiful and lethal. His hair is styled in a looser version of Elvis’ famous pompadour hairstyle. His white vest, corset, tights and Dr. Marten boots make him look like a ballerino turned punk. The peeling black polish on his fingernails adds to this image. There’s a standout moment when he gives a smoldering look of seduction that’s sexy, yet baby-faced and innocent. For the majority of Gaga’s songs, Cassidy embodies the fiercely stylish monster that knows how to work the runway and eat you for dinner at the same time.

During the song “Alejandro,” Cassidy plays three different roles in the space of three minutes. He begins the song a dancer acting out the narrative of Lady Gaga’s narrative about a woman and her struggle with resurrecting a love. By the time the second verse comes, Cassidy is a Spanish lover boy dancing a passionate tango with a female dancer.
The musical crescendo of “Alejandro” arrives and now Cassidy is strutting like a catwalk diva like Naomi Campbell, full of long strides and attitude. All of these performances show that Cassidy is one of the dancers most dedicated to his roles.

A few years ago, Cassidy said that he wants to bring a classical element to the commercial dance business because classical training allows for artistic depth. What he’s saying is that classical training is ageless and stands the test of time, as well as the basis for many other types of dance. I’ve heard that classical ballet training is good to have because it gives a dancer a base for his body, a good foundation, physically and mentally. Of course, Cassidy was trained in classical ballet at the North Carolina School of Arts. From what I’ve seen, classical ballet training makes dancers look like sculptures molded in the right stances. Their posture is regal, with shoulders firm and relaxed, and the lyrical lines when they dance look like they’ve been drawn by a painter. Cassidy is a perfect example of this because he moves to the strokes of the music, where he uses his body as the paint and texture atop the canvas of the music. Clearly, Cassidy is an artist, a human artist who makes each dance a work of art.

In a 2004 article from ExploreDance.com, Jennifer E. Wesnousky describes Cassidy Noblett as “technically and emotionally brilliant" in her review on the dance production Rhapsody: The Company. Wesnousky writes, “Poetry in Motion was both awe and tear-inspiring as Mr. Noblett, shirtless yet sheathed in intricately-tied white cloths which resembled bandages, unselfconsciously revealed his raw sentimental range and determination to continue on in the face of lost love and pain.” Cassidy Noblett is flesh and blood and makes you feel better of life when you watch him perform. His fluidity and spirit make me glad to be a human, and glad that Lady Gaga introduced me to such an extraordinary artist.