Dancing

The most ballyhooed name change of the year became official Friday morning when a Los Angeles County Superior Court commissioner approved the former Ron Artest's request to become Metta World Peace. Amid labor discord that threatens to delay, if not wipe out, the NBA season, there is World Peace. Photos: Famous name-changers He is 6 feet 7, wears No. 15 for the Lakers and once participated in the infamous "Palace brawl. " Anyone now making his acquaintance will be meeting Metta World Peace.

The Times is pleased to have Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver guest-blogging for us while he competes on "Dancing With the Stars." Driver, a Super Bowl champion and three-time Pro Bowl player, was named the winner of the competition this week and, as he has throughout the season, answered a few questions from Sports Now editor Houston Mitchell. Here are Driver's thoughts about winning the competition, which he offered via email. Q: Champions! Congratulations!

Emmitt Smith was the first athlete to win "Dancing With the Stars. " That was in Season 3, after Jerry Rice finished second in Season 2 to Drew Lachey, the less famous but maybe more talented younger brother of singer Nick Lachey (who used to hang out with USC quarterback Matt Leinart, but that's a whole other reality show). Since then, four other athletes have won the mirror-ball trophy given to the winning couple and, counting Pittsburgh Steelers great Hines Ward on Monday night, 12 have made it to the final three.

After weeks of competition, we are down to the finale of "Dancing With the Stars" on Tuesday night, when the final three competitors will learn who has won, and who goes home without the Mirrorball Trophy. Breaking down the three remaining competitors:William Levy: The world's perfect man, whom every woman loves. All he has to do is smile and hearts flutter around the world. And every time I see him, I think I'm looking in a mirror.

The Times is pleased to have Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver guest-blogging for us while he competes on "Dancing With the Stars. " Each week, Driver, a Super Bowl champion and three-time Pro Bowl player, will answer a few questions from Sports Now editor Houston Mitchell and give some insight into the competition. Here are Driver's thoughts about Week 5, which he offered via email. Q: You were the last one to dance Monday. If you had the choice between going first or last, which would you choose and why?

A nightly dance party created as a last-minute diversion to entertain idle hordes waiting for a wildly popular attraction at Disney California Adventure has turned into an ever-evolving mainstay that might just become an accidental institution. PHOTOS: Mad T Party at Disney California Adventure The new Mad T Party scheduled to debut this summer at the Anaheim theme park replaces ElecTRONica, which replaced Glow Fest, which was designed to give visitors something to do back in the summer of 2010 while waiting hours upon hours to watch the instant hit "World of Color" water show.

The Times is pleased to have tennis legend Martina Navratilova guest-blogging for us while she competes on " Dancing With the Stars . " Today, Navratilova answers a few questions from Karen Chaderjian and gives some insight into the competition. Here are Navratilova's thoughts, which she offered via email. Q: You had a very indefatigable response immediately after the disappointment Monday night, saying, "You just pick yourself up and dust yourself off. " What would you compare this experience to?

Pasties and a G-string are no good to an Indian erotic dancer. With sari firmly tied, she just flashes some navel, or bares her back, to fire up a bar full of men into a money-throwing frenzy. Striptease is out of the question, table dancing an unimagined horror of Western promiscuity. Women who entertain men in India's nightclubs are supposed to do so more or less fully clothed, with a vague nod to an ancient art of suggestion.

At a popular Northridge nightclub, dancers won't be waltzing in ballroom attire or square-dancing in cowboy hats and gingham skirts any longer--in fact, they won't be wearing anything at all. Formerly the Breakers Seafood Restaurant and Nightclub, the club has been renamed Extasy and the new owners plan to offer a different type of entertainment. "It will be a completely nude adult cabaret," said Steve Gamer, club spokesman. Some residents and local officials are not pleased with the change.

A half dozen singers and dancers from Fiji's Conservancy of Music are performing at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show on Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday, the lively exhibit was drawing healthy crowds and serving the traditional kava, a non-alcoholic drink made from the root of the pepper tree. In Fiji, it's used as medicine, and also to mark important occasions, such as weddings, or a new tribal chief. Also, ask about a “tapa, a piece of Fijian artwork.

Good form makes for a better workout, and that's one of the keys to ballet-inspired barre workouts. These exercises also increase flexibility and tone the muscles without adding bulk. Pasadena-based fitness expert, video host and teacher Tracey Mallett (www.traceymallett.com) is the founder of Booty Barre, a technique that combines elements of dance, yoga and Pilates to strengthen and stretch the body. No prior experience in any of those disciplines is necessary. Make sure the spine, neck and head are aligned and the movements are slow and deliberate.

Cranberry is not vodka's best friend. Real vodka drinkers know this, but for years their taste has been marginalized by a craft cocktail scene obsessed with whiskey. Change is on the horizon, however. As Los Angeles bartenders vie to keep up with the next trending drink wave, venues all over town are favoring clear spirits. Well-regarded mixologists including Aidan Demarest and Marcos Tello of the cocktail consulting firm Tello/Demarest Liquid Assets are leading the way, serving as brand ambassadors to Stoli Elit vodka and Bols Genever (a grain-based, gin-like spirit)

MOVIES Comprised of Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh, the original Upright Citizens Brigade helped shaped a generation's worth of sketch comedy with their now bi-coastal improv schools and Comedy Central series. Now reunited in a feature film directed by Besser, "Freak Dance" promises a glimpse of "the dirtiest of all the boogaloos," but like all the best in movement-based movies, it's all done in the name of saving a community center (so it's completely justified)

Imagine tens of thousands of cycling fans gathered in front of Staples Center on Sunday morning for the final leg of the country's largest stage cycling race, the Amgen Tour of California. Now mix in 20,000 hockey fans, nearly all of them giddy in the anticipation of watching their underdog Kings clinch a berth in the Stanley Cup finals, and another 20,000 basketball fans, with the Clippers trying to reach the Western Conference finals for the first time. Those sports worlds will collide on the streets outside the arena Sunday; the Kings are scheduled to take on the Phoenix Coyotes in Game 4 of the NHL Western Conference finals at noon — about the same time some of the world's best cyclists will be barreling toward the finish line.

LA JOLLA - From Florenz Ziegfeld's synchronized showgirls toAndrew Lloyd Webber's roller-skating actors to aSpider-Man who flies, musical theater has often encouraged dance and movement extravaganzas. So imagine the anxiety of the team putting together the new musical, "Hands on a Hardbody," which has its premiere Saturday at the La Jolla Playhouse. The story's 10 characters are tied - figuratively - to a Nissan pickup truck. How do you take that reality and turn it into a show-stopping number?

Packing a lot of action - if not a lot of sense - into its story, the Indian film "Dangerous Ishhq" likely won't win over any new believers to the idea of reincarnation as it weaves between a quilt of romantic thriller and historical drama. The film opens with a Mumbai supermodel (Karisma Kapoor, a star making her return to the screen after an absence of a number of years) preparing to leave for Paris to be an international face for a luxury fashion brand. As she is wavering about whether to leave behind her wealthy industrialist boyfriend, his beachfront home is attacked by a gang of kidnappers.

They're doing the dance again -- the soul-sapping, time-wasting annual ritual of figuring out how many of society's most important public servants to push off a cliff. RIF season, some call it, for Reduction in Force. This year, Los Angeles Unified is going for the gold. An astounding 9,500 teachers, nurses and human services employees have been notified by mail that their jobs are on the line, as well as 2,000 administrators. Nowhere near that number will be laid off in the end, but the law requires that teachers be notified of the possibility of impending doom long before budgets are set. And so, year after year, we go through this maddening, disruptive and costly process.

The owners of the Battle of the Dance dinner show had hoped to catch the wave of tourists from nearby Disneyland with family-friendly entertainment boasting European dancers and a gourmet meal of smoked salmon salad, filet mignon and a "decadent" dessert. But when the paying customers failed to materialize in the numbers foreseen, they cut the number of dinner shows, amped up the volume and turned to a different crowd. There was a "topless DJ," go-go dancers and an appearance by an adult film performer to entertain late-night partygoers in Anaheim's manicured resort district.