Beginning Baton Twirling with Denise Wilson

I'll never forget David Foster Wallace's description of a baton twirling competition at an Iowa State Fair, where 7-8 year-old girls losing control of their batons caused a fair amount of ducking and weaving amongst the audience members (amusingly recounted in his 1997 essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again). Baton twirling is a tricky combination of speed, dexterity and grace, and a good video on the subject would be more than welcome. Beginning Baton Twirling with Denise Wilson is, unfortunately, not it. Shot outside, using a basic two-camera set-up, with an inexpensive mike that picked up background noise (at times, it sounded like a neighbor was running a Weed Whacker without a muffler) and a shooting style that occasionally moves too slow to capture the action, the first 3/4ths of the program features Wilson demonstrating horizontal twists, wrist twirls, finger twirls and figure eights, with minimal narration. In addition, Wilson shows viewers various types of "batons," including a pair of units called "Samoan Swords" which looked precisely as suitable-for-maiming as they sound (demonstrated here without any accompanying warnings--such as "may remove fingers or split skull"). The tape concludes with a 5-minute reprisal of Wilson's high school and college twirling career, replete with home movie footage and less than riveting commentary. Not recommended. Aud: E, I, J, H, P. (R. Pitman)