Gay Dancers (there are straight dancers?) Compete on New Lifetime Show
An old High School buddy, Silvano Merendi, tracked me down an told me about his performance on LIFETIME. Check it out! This was taken from GLAAD’s website spot Eye on the Media.
| February 28, 2008 |
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| Lifetime premieres its first dance competition series, Your Mama Don’t Dance, on Friday, February 29, at 9 PM. Three gay men – Silvano Merendi (48, pictured), Dante Puleio (31) and Jonathan Silva (19) – will be featured as contestants. Since openly gay performers are rarely showcased within a competition format, their presence is a remarkable degree of visibility.The program features ten young professional dancers who are each paired with one of their parents, a surprise that the young dancers are unaware of until the show begins. Each week, the three judges – actor Ben Vereen, choreographer Cris Judd and singer Vitamin C – will put the two teams with the lowest scores up for a vote, allowing the public to decide which team stays. The series will end with a live finale on Friday, April 18. Silvano will be paired with his daughter, Celia, whom he raised with the help of his partner in Miami, Florida. Dante, from New York, trained at Wilkes University and moved to England to study at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. He will be dancing with his stepmother, Dolores. Jonathan, from Los Angeles, recently appeared in Bratz: The Movie and performed in Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular. He will be paired with his mother, Rodilyn, a hairdresser. For more info on the show, visit: http://www.MyLifetime.com | |||||||||
My name is Peter Bagetakos, and I now live near Atlanta, Georgia, in the town of Smyrna.
I went to junior high school and high school classes with Silvano Merendi. He is a great guy, although I was under so much peer pressure–or perhaps I only imagined that I was– that I was one of the morons that made jokes about Silvano because he is gay.
If you ever read this e mail, Silvano, please forgive me. God has let me know more than 100 times over how terrible it was of me to act in that way. People have asked me if I am gay, even though I am not. I just don’t happen to be the best looking guy in the world, so I can’t find some gorgeous woman. I am bald, and God lets me know that I must be kind to other people.
I will light a candle at Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, hoping that you are okay. I hope everything is going well for you and the people in your family.
Peter- If you went to JHS with Silvano, then you probably went to JHS with me as well. I was too big to make fun of in school. Most of my friends knew I was gay and my mother was a PFLAG mom, AND she is from Amsterdam Holland, so I had it easy with respect to coming out in the 70s, which I look back as the “golden age.”