Jump to content

Madonna New 2013 Photos

XXL

By XXL
in ARCHIVE - Madonna

 Share

Recommended Posts

LCD Community Regular

LCD

Posted
Posted

I'm obviously biased as alumni but I truly love Ann Arbor. It's one of the best college towns in the country, seriously. It was actually once named the most liberal town in America although not sure how they measure that exactly :lol: Very international study body too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Roland Barthes Proficient

Roland Barthes

Posted
Posted

I stumbled upon this while searching for pics of M & Lola visit at UofM

Alumni
Dancing with Madonna

by Whit Hill

September 8, 2011

email | print | comment | 0 More Sharing Services Share on print Share on email Share on twitter Share on facebook

madonna-cover.jpg

Click cover image for more on "Not About Madonna"

In 1977, Whitley Hill arrived as a freshman at the University of Michigan and met the fellow dance major who would share her tiny room in University Towers: a talented, eccentric dynamo named Madonna. Hill's memoir about those days, "Not About Madonna: My Little Pre-Icon Roommate and Other Memoirs" (Heliotrope Books, NYC), is available now in bookstores and online, and is filled with funny, poignant, sexy recollections of the days of her youth. Some of it isn't quite suitable for print in an alumni magazine, but we've excerpted a lovely, and telling, scene here.

Ann Arbor seems a ghost town. A few plows clunking by, an intrepid student now and again. No children with sleds. I'm not certain there are any children in Ann Arbor. I certainly never see any. No dogs with frozen spittle and panting glee. Just frat houses gilded in white. The snow is very deep and everywhere. It's hard walking—big wind—but we're laughing and cussing and I'm feeling a tad self-righteous as we reach the Dance Department door and yank it open. There's a big wall-unit heater in the vestibule and we lean against it gratefully, loving the fact that howling Arctic winter is just on the other side of the glass where we're not. Warm, warm. We peer down the fluorescent-lit hallway looking for any sign of life but all is still, as if maybe even we aren't really here. Wasn't there an "Outer Limits" about that? I get that empty-building feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I decide to say "C'mon" first and thus appear eager to get started with actually working out on a Saturday.

We climb up to Studio A on the second floor. No need to hit the dressing rooms; we strip down and change into sweats right in front of the bank of windows that looks out onto a small parking lot and a boxy apartment building across the way. The walk has made our muscles cold and I wonder if I will ever be loose and stretched out again. I start on the floor, rolling around, cheap and easy full-body massage. Madonna's facing the barre, seems to be looking out the window, then remembers why she's here, grips the wood, takes a couple of steps away and bends over, as if trying to pull it right out of the wall. A very effective hamstring stretch. She ripples her back gently a few times then stands up in first position, heels together, tailbone dropped down, neck long. The first plié sends her knees straight out over her feet—wide, wider, then slowly up. As Christopher has reminded us a thousand times, the simple plié is a lot more than just a knee-bend.

"Don't think of dropping doooown. What you're reeeally doing is separaaaaating your knees," he likes to say, sometimes dropping to the ground and crawling through the negative-knee space of some hapless freshman from Grand Rapids. "You want to grow taaaaller with each plié, taaaaller, taaaaller …"

So Madonna does her pliés, separates her kneeees, and grows taaaaller while I roll around on the cool, smooth wood floor. No one's talking. Outside, the wind roars. I think of Siberia and wish for tea. And maybe some hot, savory corn muffin dripping with butter.

I join Madonna at the barre. Second position, demi-plié, stretch, relevé, heels down, demi, stretch, relevé, heels. Then grand plié. Fourth position. Two demis and a grande, two and a grande. Then fifth, feet smashed together, the connection traveling right up the legs to the crotch. Demi, demi, grande, go slow now, slow and controlled. Don't drop your weight at the base of the plié. Keep lifting out of it, lifting out (growing taller), 'til you replace the heels and rise through the demi to that delicious, solid stretch, knees tight together. Relevé once more to finish, hearing someone's old Chopin, just a fragment, arms en haut and hold, hold, hoooold….

We turn and do the other side, which means she's got her eyes on my back now.

"Whit, did I ever show you my aging ballet teacher impression? Wait, close your eyes."

I turn around and shut them.

"OK. Open." her voice is strangely tight.

I bust out laughing. Madonna's got her eyes open wide and her lips pursed and has somehow made every tendon in her neck stick out about an inch, like subcutaneous pencils. She's the victim of a very, very bad facelift.

"Get that leg higher! Higher!" she squawks, then drops down giggling, rubbing her neck.

We finish an abbreviated barre and mosey onto the floor for a quick stretch.

Snapshot: Madonna as yogi, in the plow position. Head, neck, shoulders on the floor, hips up high and legs slung back behind her. Her feet tread the floor like this, press, press, using her elbows to support her back. Her T-shirt flops to the floor, revealing that bruised spine, a row of slight plums. She's chatting idly, not knowing I'm watching all this, getting it down for use in some book in the misty future. She peeks at me as she talks, turning her head to the side. Green cat's eye, half hidden by scrunches of faded shirt.

I've brought my cassette player and the Bach tape which everyone in the apartment adores. Madonna and I play a game I've imported from Brockport—"bop and leap"—taking turns making phrases of movement and stringing them together. After thirty minutes or so of this, we have a good phrase of movement to dance in unison, then in canon. Everything fits together nicely and we're sweating and feeling at one with Bach and each other. Just a coupla undergrad white-girl innocents emoting to classical music. Could be anywhere, anytime, but damn, it does feel special, and with all the snow—mmmm.

"I'm done," I say, flopping down to the floor, breathing heavily. Madonna walks her walk about the room, cooling down racehorse-fashion. Heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe. It's the walk of someone whose passion is making the exactly right footprint, every step she takes. Madonna crosses the studio (heel-toe) and drops beside me.

* * *

We walk to the corner of Washtenaw and South University and wait there with our thumbs sticking out. Little blasts of blowing snow now, no big deal. Madonna, bundled in jackets and sweaters and scarves, looks like a tailor from the Lodz Ghetto. All you can see are her eyes through a slit in the knitting. She catches me looking and squints.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm not. I'm not looking at you any way at all."

"Well, why aren't you, you little s---? Why aren't you looking?"

She laughs and flicks snow on me.

Click for comments >>

whit-hill.jpg

Whit Hill was born and raised in New York City and graduated from The University of Michigan with a B.F.A. A writer and songwriter, she now lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, musician Al Hill. She is the mother of two grown children.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LCD Community Regular

LCD

Posted
Posted

Love that popeline, thanks for posting. I always like reading about M at that time.

M ate dinner at Sava restaurant at Ann Arbor this evening too. The manager posted about it on Facebook and is a huge fan and is ecstatic. Someone HAD to have at least copped a photo on their phone or something!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nikki Veteran

Nikki

Posted
Posted

i find this so sweet :p M is so down to earth in a way. she wears joggings and tracksuits, eats at probably her daughter's next school's cafeteria.. all without making a scene or asking for attention. (i hope the food was good :p) we know she loves attention, but in her normal life she seems low key. this is about her daughter, not about her. and I like that. Ive seen tv specials of celebs (even local ones) who go with a film crew to their kids' school and pick them up early and shit like that. :roadrunner:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Butter9 Proficient

Butter9

Posted
Posted

Thanks for posting. OMG am excited for them .

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Jazzy Jan Veteran

Jazzy Jan

Posted
Posted

So now that lovely Lola is going to college, Madonna may finally tour Australia :laugh: Remember how she said she could not tour here because she wanted to spend time with her daughter as she would be leaving home soon and going to college. Perish the thought if she was thinking of Mercy. How many years then before she tours here. :mellow:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

So now that lovely Lola is going to college, Madonna may finally tour Australia :laugh: Remember how she said she could not tour here because she wanted to spend time with her daughter as she would be leaving home soon and going to college. Perish the thought if she was thinking of Mercy. How many years then before she tours here. :mellow:

:rotfl:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest Not4Pussies

Guest Not4Pussies

Posted
Posted

So now that lovely Lola is going to college, Madonna may finally tour Australia :laugh: Remember how she said she could not tour here because she wanted to spend time with her daughter as she would be leaving home soon and going to college. Perish the thought if she was thinking of Mercy. How many years then before she tours here. :mellow:

haha well Rocco only has 5 left before he is off to college.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nightshade Rising Star

Nightshade

Posted
Posted

haha well Rocco only has 5 left before he is off to college.

I have this strange fear Rocco is going to end up like Uncle Marty = Wannabe rapper.

Please Rocco, no.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
XXL Mentor

XXL

Posted
  • Author
Posted

How great :inlove:

This is another thing I love about Madonna

She's one of the richest individuals in the world yet she sends her daughter to a public high school in NYC. And now University of Michigan, which I understand to be one of the finest universities there but with her fortune you'd expect her to send her daughter to some really fancy place like Harvard or Yale, one of those $100k a year places. That's continuing in the tradition of how grounded she's always wanted her kids to stay and appreciate and be grateful for the luxury they were born into

She's not that type of celebrity that isolates from the REAL world and much less wants her children to

She's so fantastic, down to the smallest details

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LCD Community Regular

LCD

Posted
Posted

U of M has like 43,000 students and not one scammed a M pic on their cell phone?? My people are failing me! :lol:

It is a public university but it's quite competitive to get into. It's one of the "public Ivy" schools and was established in 1817. One of the top research and business schools as well. As an out-of-state resident, Lola's tuition would be about $40,000+ per year not including living expenses.

whbl1h.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...