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.