Heartland Swing Festival 2014 – BBQ, Snow, Spinning, Babies

Are We Having Fun Yet? So asks the cutout people at the Des Moines Social Club, one of this year’s Heartland Swing Festival’s venues. Based on the crowd’s enthusiasm and cheer, I would say “yes”.

Heartland Swing Festival is a rare event that places great emphasis on the amateurs. Many amateur events typically nod to the professionals in a special J&J or similar competition, but at HSF we dance with the novice finalists for their finals. That’s it and it’s nice. Also, with some of the team and showcase routines, it feels like these amateurs serve more unique pieces as if they’re untouched by frequent YouTube watching. It’s refreshing.

Heather Ballew and I had a full schedule with 8.5 teaching hours including our special team workshop where we analyze and critique their performances. This year, with a full 90 minutes, we also included swingout technique and aerial coaching where we discussed jumping, landing, and timing. It was productive and fun. My other duties included DJing the Amateur J&J and AnySwing Goes prelims Friday evening. Even with the extra teaching hours, it was a pretty fun weekend mainly focused on teaching.

In between the dancing, there were random interesting moments. Like the time someone told me I might swarmed by pregnant women in the future. Needless to say, I impressed her last year with the care I showed her on the dance floor. Sunday night I was fireman carried down a hall and spun around. Then I hoisted Evan Borst and spun him around. One of these days, there might even be video. And did you know that Des Moines has really good barbecue? Fact check me at Jethro’s and The Flying Mango. Before I leave, check out the winning team routine and a fun class recap:

Closing 2013 – The Year of the Team

Snowbound in Rochester, New York after Southwest canceled my flight. That picture illustrates the normal gear worn when trekking through the South Wedge. I was en route to Hedonist Artisan Ice Cream when the storm struck, turning buildings into misshapen unidentifiable lumps.

48 hour delayed flights equates to a busy internet time. I’m planning another national instructor led workshop March 2014 in Denver, playing Angry Birds, chatting with a Lisbon friend, uploading 11 instructional videos to YouTube, Yelping Asheville restaurants, and figuring out some way to synopsisize (new word!) my Lindy Focus experience. Where to start, where to go, how to finish?

With a nod, winks, and overt gestures, let’s start with teams. After all, it’s the year of the team for me. Michael Gamble called out for teams mid November in the Lindy Focus FB group. The team division was returning and they were short teams. I boldly inquired Denver through FB for interest. There was murmuring, but no solid chatter happened on the Merc. Thank goodness, because that would be a serious time crunch.

Then Rochester came a’callin’. 5 out of 6 members from their Groove Juice Swing aerial routine were attending and they needed an extra guy. I was visited over Thanksgiving weekend and could learn the routine, so I teamed with Rebecca Berman. We practiced the aerials, I flubbed the Stephen & Virginie rhythm section multiple times, and I learned most of the routine.

It did make life easier at Lindy Focus, though we had to still schedule extra practices at our super secret practice location and wake up early for floor trials (bah!). Couple that with early morning auditions, are you surprised I was rarely seen on the social dance floor? Results paid off for a 2nd place finish! Good times had been had.

The final team piece was “Summertime Blues,” choreographed by Dan Newsome and Lainey Silver for the New Year’s Eve show. This would prove a massive undertaking because Jesse Hanus and I would not see each other until Lindy Focus. Jesse was the most productive, practicing with Scott Lucchini, while I ran around organizing a Denver workshop weekend with Stephen Sayer and Chandrae Roettig Dec 14-15. Crazy!

Kansas City Christmas vacation was filled with solo dancing in my parent’s living room and me tracking which step goes with which beat. Do you know how hard it is to break down choreography when you can’t see the couple dance to music? Eventually, I edited all the dancing bits together, smashing 28 odd minutes to 5. Tailored learning there. Sometimes you do what you can to survive. No custom counting my steps for this guy.

So each Lindy Focus day brought a 1 hour practice where we danced to music, hammered out our formations, fine tuned our lifts, turning pieces into cohesive sections. It was interesting watching Dan and Lainey deal with our motley crew’s varied needs. And it was fun working with everyone. Some thanks goes to Joe Demers for watching my circle spacing, Mike and Ruth for the Thread the Needle tip, Jon Tigert for allowing me to work my Beyonce behind him,  Jesse Hanus for dealing with me, and Jenna Applegarth for helping organize practice spaces. Overall, I was pleased with our results.

2013 was a good year. I finished my 3 month term at Big Mama Swing, bounced around Europe teaching lindy hop, blues, aerials, and west coast swing, laid low in Denver, ran Auditions and taught at Beantown, performed with three other groups, tied Soochan Lee and Hyung Jung Choi at the Underground Lindy Hop Championships at Camp Hollywood, hop scotched around Europe some more, ran a great workshop in Denver, and finished Lindy Focus with 2 finals (blues, balboa) and 1 alternate (adv. lindy hop). What’s next, 2014?!

Blues:

Balboa:

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.