Category: 2013 Dance Travel

No Rest in Bucharest

There are times I wish I still possessed my stolen smartphone. Times when I see a picture I’d like to capture, but my camera is inaccessible. Times when I’d rather map directions on my phone rather than paper. Times when someone says something insightful and I wish I could write it down for memories sake.

It seems that I learn a lot about a swing dance scene at the first meeting, oftentimes the car ride from the airport. My job isn’t always merely to teach my material, it’s to improve the scene.

Bucharest has a small west coast swing scene. They’ve been teaching for 3 years, but have 20-30 regular dancers. Cristian has calculated that he has taught at least a couple hundred people, though. However, being that people are social animals, they prefer parties where greater numbers gather. This means salsa and tango.

The WCS Intensive Weekend is meant to change that. It’s to be a catalyst where dancers from across Romania can come and learn west coast swing. It’s the first west coast swing weekend in Romania. There will be dancers from at least 3 other Romanian cities and a couple from Bulgaria. There will be dancers from salsa, tango, ballroom, and lindy hop. Lindy hop will also be offered since it’s virtually non-existent except with a very new group in Brasov.

Overall, I think the weekend was successful. I was pleased with the overall attendance. Classes seemed full for the space and, as I said before, dancers from surrounding communities came to support this event. The organizers did a great job taking care of myself, Estelle Bonnaire and Julien. We had an apartment to ourselves, received spending money for food, and there was always someone to take us home and get us to the venues on time or even early. They also took us to get great food and if there wasn’t time, food was ordered. I really enjoy events where I can focus on my duties rather than worrying about a needy chaotic organizer.

You could see the maintained energy gradually dwindle on Sunday night. Visiting dancers had already traveled home. I was exhausted, having arrived for morning classes and taught 5.5 hours. The organizers seemed happy. Attendance numbers seemed higher than anticipated. The Saturday night dance featured 7-8 performances including a social west coast swing demo, zouk, salsa, tango and more. This also meant these styles influenced the dance floor a little. It was fun to witness the intermingling. Hopefully, this means more people will seek out west coast swing and this event will happen again and grow.

Oh, and I left the dancers clamoring for more lindy hop. The joys of teaching dance.

Camp Hollywood 2013 – UJC and Weird Faces

Skidoo-wilds, weird aerial faces, Nick Peterson is again wearing eye makeup. It’s another year at the wild and wonderful Camp Hollywood/National Jitterbug Championships. This is place where LA brings its fun madness to bear on all its participants.

There’s something about LA Swing that I really enjoy. Maybe it’s because their scene feels truly unique in our YouTube cookie cutout homogeneous modern age swing world. Maybe it’s because Camp Hollywood is home to routines you wouldn’t see anywhere else.

Or maybe the most logical explanation is that I grew up on California Swing. Sometime during my early swing dancing life, I was attached to a Kansas City ballroom studio that held regular Saturday night East Coast Swing dances. Lindy hoppers were welcome to attend, but this was home to neo-swing, zoot suits, rockabilly types, and people that wanted to have fun. KC’s lindy hoppers were a bit drab in comparison (sorry, guys). My free time was eventually consumed with watching Monsters of Swing videos and idolizing Tip and Holly, Ryan and Jenny, and the Flying Lindy Hoppers. I loved the energy and aerials and still do. It’s one of the reasons I moved to Denver. I saw 23 Skidoo perform at DLX 2004 and wanted on their team.

So, once more I’m throwing mad Ballew air in Nick Peterson’s ode to NJC, the Underground Jitterbug Championship, World Edition. Allow me to explain this sweet picture James Bennett took. Some people didn’t realize what was happening. They could only acknowledge both aerials look pretty similar. This is the Skidoo-Wild, created for 23 Skidoo’s winning 2007 Lafayette routine. Heather and I helped Hyun Jung and Soochan with this aerial while they were in Denver. They were missing a handhold transition to make the finishing backflip easier. They started nailing it and we talked about throwing the same aerial together if we made NJC Open Lindy Finals. Hyun Jung was nervous and I never met them to spot this aerial for the competition. It was never thrown.

We finally met late Sunday night because we knew, if given the opportunity and space, we could throw it during the UJC comp. The competition was awesome to be in. I found it to be more a celebration of international lindy hop rather than USA versus the World. This was most evidenced during the Big Apple that enclosed the California Routine seen here. Eventually, the numbers dwindled, room opened up. We were supposed to go out one at a time, but I ran over to conspire with Hyun Jung and Soochan. Swingout, lindy circle, sk-wild. Nearly simultaneous landing.

Oh, and the plank aerial still lives. It was created for Tise‘s special request last year and re-issued for Moe‘s special request this year.

Sweet Georgia Blues – Rediscovering the Blues

Darn writer’s block. I’ve been trying to craft an opening paragraph about Sweet Georgia Blues, but it’s proving difficult. 8 opening sentences later, I’m still running dry.

How do I describe a weekend that was both torturous and invigorating? My laptop completely died Friday morning and I spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon in a state of panic.  I needed my notes, all my music with my DJ software, my Fast Blues playlist, my Spirit Moves videos. Best Buy fixed it and then my computer wouldn’t start Saturday morning. It was dead. Dead, dead, dead. I dealt with partially transcribed notes on my cell phone, recreating material in my notebook (who uses pens anymore?), and playing music off my limited iPod collection. Evin and Noah Galang helped me greatly with this unfortunate situation.

Anyway, I discovered I have people at Sweet Georgia Blues. From Virginie Jensen, Andrew Twiss, Evin Galang, and Heather Ballew, I saw great blues dancing, quality that hasn’t been matched in years. I saw great body movement, spatial awareness, individual style, momentum, and musicality demonstrated. Their blues dancing is touched by other influences and it looks great. I was home (for a weekend).

My blues dancing is influenced by my lindy hop, ballroom, west coast swing, and jazz dancing background. It’s so great to create a wide variety of movement because your partner is also widely versed and connection skilled. I say embrace your influences, keep learning, and dance to the music. Dancing to blues music will lead you to the blues.

For example, this couple was jamming out at The Speakeasy in Longmont, CO. They were shaking it, working the fishtails, leading and following a few simple patterns. They were in the moment and rocking it. I get caught up in our tiny “dancer” community subculture and forget about this entire group of people jamming at blues bars and festivals. We could all learn something from them.

Dance. Have fun. Don’t forget to breathe. Let loose.

You can find me teaching the blues I enjoy at these upcoming events:

September 21 – Teaching a Bluesli Workshop in Zurich

October 5-6 – Teaching lindy hop, blues, solo charleston and aerials in Luxembourg with Jesse Hanus

October 19-21 – Teaching blues at Drag the Blues in Barcelona

 

Team Building – Recent Performances

Time flies when I’m keeping busy. Denver locals are always asking me “how long are you here?”, assuming I’ve only recently arrived. The truth is, I’ve been in Denver since mid-April, keeping a low profile as I work, train, and search for new restaurant gems. When you must wake up at 6am and insist on sleeping 8 hours a night, there’s not much opportunity for dance socializing. That’s my current world – the one where if you don’t dance, you’re invisible.

Big Finish

If you want to be highly visible, try team routines, partner choreographies, or bust out in a jam circle.  This picture illustrates Three Bones’ big finish at Beantown Bounce 2013.  I was happy when Alain and Gen asked Jesse and  I to perform with them, Jon Tigert, and Heather Ballew.

It’s been so long since I did any team performances. I quit 23 Skidoo back in late 2009 because parkour was awesome and Skidoo was sk-lame. Fortunately, Three Bones had prepared choreography, defined performance goals, and great dancers. So Jesse and I broke down their choreography from their teaching videos and their MWLF performance.  Thank goodness we were prepared upon arriving, because we had two days to ask questions, solidify problem areas, and practice with everyone. I was pleased with the result.

Since I had so much fun working with everyone, I decided to also do the Pink Track Performance at Beantown. It was great working with Mike & Casey. They purposefully kept the routine simple yet high energy because they wanted to focus on the performance aspect. We practice Charleston arms. We practiced mentally running through the routine while a metronome played. We practiced dancing our parts solo to said metronome. We practiced laying out our crazy legs. We practiced holding our lines. We practiced. Again, it was worth it.

Needless to say, I wanted to perform more. I missed it. 23 Skidoo had a good run, but eventually my goals didn’t align with their demonstrated ones. Fortunately, July continued being performance month.

A production company contacted Heather needing 6 swing dancers for several dance numbers and taxi dancing. Boom! Let’s deliver 6 badass Denver dancers in the form of Joe & Danielle Demers, Delilah Williams, Ceth Stifel, Heather Ballew and I. It was great working with all these dancers again. We easily collaborated as we threw aerials, jam sections, and reviewed Stops Part I and the California Routine.  The attending renewable water experts even approved.

Teams helped me arrive where I am now. And now I’m hoping for more future team opportunities as I continue traveling and teaching dance around the world and in Colorado.

Beantown Rejuvenation Spa

Beantown was rejuvenating. If you had personal dealings with me during the week leading into Beantown and Beantown’s first three days, rejuvenating would probably not be the word you would use. Frantic, hurried, busy, neurotic would have been much more fitting.

This was Beantown’s first year for auditions and the organizers asked me to be the Auditions Coordinator. Yes, I’m the guy you can blame for not getting into the level you wanted. On a more serious note, Aurelie, Tony and I spent many hours figuring out this process. We wanted it to be successful for the auditioning students, the instructors, and the organizers. While these processes can always be improved, I was pleased with my behind the scenes staff organizing the lines, volunteering to dance, scoring, refreshing the judges sheets, and checking people in. I’m also thankful for the judges scoring all 140+ people even when things got crazy with two circles.

Not only were the weekend hours spent with the regular auditions, I also ran morning late auditions, evaluated each track’s class level, talked to teachers, ran the appeals process, taught 4 classes, and finished learning a routine that I performed Sunday evening.

Sounds exhausting, right? That’s where Beantown Rejuvenation Spa comes into play. Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five along with Gordon Webster and Friends were what I needed. I needed music that demanded swingouts. I was tired of hot jazz and charleston sounding tunes. So I sweated through my clothes, dancing in front of the band with as many great dancers as possible. I was selfish. I needed this.

Since I returned to Denver three months ago, I went social dancing twice. There are several factor involved, but I would rather spend my hours fitness training, working, and brainstorming curriculum or making new YouTube videos. Traveling and teaching takes a toll, so it’s nice to take care of myself. Then Beantown’s final two bands arrived on stage for four nights and I could finally feed my dance soul. When it’s just you and the music, nothing else matters. You can temporarily forget your responsibilities and just let loose. All this thanks to two kickass swingoutable bands.

Beantown was a blast. I had a great time teaching with Heather Ballew and Jesse Hanus. Other great moments include a champagne picnic, a challenging plank, many bananas, Suite D, Feats of Strength, severe rain, the Track 6 performance, my psoas collapsing and the many Bulgarian lunges to keep me dancing, Elaine Silver and I assisting Javier Johnson during Beantown’s Got Talent. There’s probably more, but if I list any more, I’ll go bananas.