So here I am at my first out of town Lindy-Hop event. I've already written about some of my out of town experiences with Balboa. In addtion, I've done the Leap Year Lindy Weekend, but that was across the street. So this is the first time that I've gotten to travel for, what has become, my primary form of swing dancing.
The travel part itself was surprisingly uneventful. This is amazing. I never fly anywhere without something going horribly wrong. That said, the trip to Boston's Logan Airport worked out just fine. I was on the plane with Jason, Emily and Jerry from Charm City Swing. Also, Bobby and Kate, two of my spectacular dance teachers, were on the flight as well. We also enede up running into some other friends of our, Elaina and Mark.
Anyway I'll skip all the hotel check in details as they were pretty standard. Onto the dancing!
The first class that I took is pretty much definitely going to be the most out there thing that I took this weekend. Well, out there for me, anyway. The class was a hip-hop dance class taught by a guy named Arjay. It was extremly different than anything else that I've done. It was crazy fun though. Lots of strange body isolations and other things that you just don't get in swing dancing. I actually had a very good time. Probably not something that I want to do on a regular basis, but definitely worth looking into now and again.
Class 2 was Rhythm and Syncopation variations with Kevin St. Laurent and Emily Hoffberg. Kevin and Emily taught the Leap Year Weekend in Baltimore. They are awesome. I'd actually say that they're probably the best dance teachers that I've had for a group class so far. They've really thought about all the things that are going on when you dance and explain in ways that are really funny and crystal clear. They start off with synchopated rock steps. Great stuff, but something that they already taught. Whatever, I'll take a refresher course from the best of the best. It worked out even better though, because that was just the warm-up. They moved on giving us a sychopated swingout variation that I've never done before. Basically, for the lead, I replace the late triple of my swinout with a kick-cross-over. The follow does as well. Then I hold, sinking back on counts 1 and 2 of the next swingout while the follow does a side scoot. Then we continue with the swingout as normal. If that made no sense: They taught something that was new, fun and hot looking.
Class 3 was a lindy routine class, taught by Dave Frutos and Kim Clever. I've never taken a calss with them, and routine classes can be pretty hit or miss, but this one was a definite hit. It was a cool thing with lots of charlestony stuff that really fit my style. It was a good choice for me. I'll definitely be incorperating stuff from it into my social dancing.
The next hour I took a class from Peter Strom and Ramona Staffeld. It was a tought choice because there was a Kevin and Emily class going on in another room. That said, I'm pretty happy with what I took. The class was called Hustle and Flow. They taught two variations designed for smoothness. One is a swingout with a strange handhold that morphs into this neat turn. I really like this move. It was immediately added to my sical dancing repotoir. The other was a change on the Texas Tommy. IT loos awsome, but I find myself always turning the wrong way. Whatever, what's the point of a workshop weekend if you come out of it without somehting to practice.
There's so much more to write about, but now I must be off to my dance classes for today.
I'll write again soon.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
CCS 3rd Year Anniversary
Hey all,
So I've been a bit remiss in keeping this blog up to date. As in, I haven't posted anything in 3 months. Well that all stops right here!
As is the point of me keeping this blog, I'm kinda obsessed with swing dancing. As far as things go, it could be a lot worse. Anyway, the dance organization of which I am a member and occasional indentured servant, Charm City Swing, held their 3rd year anniversary party on Monday night. Amazin! Rocked! A lot. So much so, that I will use sentence fragments.
Before I start, I need to offer absurd amounts of thanks to Dorry and Sommer for creating this community. I know that I've already posted that they saved my life by doing it, but you really can't thank people like them often enough. Let me describe why I'm thanking them this time specifically. Upon walking into the Grill on Monday one was greeted by the following:
1. Jason and Emily, sitting at the door handing out new, great quality, gorgeous, shoe bags to everyone who entered. Emily designed them, using the CCS "feet" logo. Sommer added the text "We're Gonna Party Like It's 1939." Note D&S paid for these things and were just giving them to people for being part of the community. There are also pins that Em also designed. It's nice to have a really good graphic designer on staff, eh?
2. There's a buffet. D&S had bought everyone dinner. I mean everyone. I'm talking the 200 + people that show up to Austin Grill to dance at CCS's Monday night dance. Generosity, thy names are Segev and Gentry.
3. Joy. You can't quantify how happy we are to be hanging out with each other, enjoying the company of the great people who share in there love of this beautiful, high-energy, fun dance. The mood in the room was electrically happy. 3 years. They've been bringing this to us for 3 years! (Note that I've only been doing it for 1, but it really has been the best year of my 29 thus far.)
Jason and Emily haven't gotten anything to eat for the first hour or so of things, so I volunteer to watch the door while they go take a break. Jason is good enough to come back with his food and keep me company.
Anyway at 8:00 Colleen and Marty starts the lesson and we're off into normal Monday night mode. 9:00, the dance starts. Holy crap is the place packed. The Grill is always tight. Lots of people love the music and the energy there. They want to dance. The community has grown. But there is nothing, NOTHING like it was on Monday. I have never paid more attention to details of where I was putting my follow like I did. A typical sequence in my brain went something like:
"Crap! Guess I'm dancing in closed for a while. Lets see if that dancing in tight spaces class paid off."
"Wait! A spot! I see floor. Swing-out, here we go!"
"Crap! Random person walking by with a drink. Turn that swing-out into a circle... now!"
I won't complain though. I looked hard enough, found my spots and got some great dances in.
At about the normal time for announcements, they start the thing that I've been waiting for all night: the Jack and Jill competition. This will be the first swing comp that I've ever entered. For those who don't know, a Jack and Jill competition is one that you enter without a partner. Leads and follows are randomly paired just before the dance. It's all lead an follow ability. This particular contest is in a bit of a non-standard format. I will explain:
1. Prelim rounds - Leads and follows are randomly paired. They dance for 1.5 minutes with their partner. Judges watch and score. Wash, rince, repeat twice more. Once that's all done, the judges pick the 5 best leads and 5 best follows. This part is pretty standard for all J&J comps, though the number of finalists vary with the number of entries.
2. This is where we are different. In a normal J&J what would happen now is that each finalist gets paired randomly with another finalist of the appropriate dance-gender (This means lead or follow. Note that these don't always correspond to male and female. Also, note that I'm taking a lindy class as a follow on Wednesday nights now. Dorry frequently points out that this makes me dance-genderqueer. I'd like to note that by this logic he then needs to say the same thing about his wife.) Then, after the pairing, you would dance with that partner for the whole final and be judged as a couple. At CCS, we strive to be different, and so we have variant rules.
In OUR contest each finalist lead dances with each finalist follow. At the end, the leads rank the follows that they danced with and vice versa. The person with the best average ranking wins.
Here's where I detail my experience in the prelim round: First, everyone should know that since we got to choose our own numbers to wear on our backs, I chose
. Not to be topped, Amanda, another dancer/mathematician (At least by training. she's now an actuary) chose 
. We were the irrational number duo. (I was transcendental and she algebraic, but you can't always have perfect symmetry.)
1. First dance is with Camille. Yay Camille! Camille is a great dancer, and someone I've danced with lots. She has this great exaggerated style, and loves doing thing like throwing her head back and really shouting out the "I surrender, I surrender," when we're dancing to "Safronia B." It's a really great song segment with her, as we both love doing silly things that highlight our strengths.
2. Second dance is with Jennifer. Yay Jennifer! Jennifer is also a really good dancer, but I don't have nearly as much experience dancing with her. As such, I don't have the great advantage that came when I danced with Camille. Despite that, she's really strong technically, so I just try to lead interesting, musical things and focus on footwork. I think it went reasonably well.
3. Third dance is with a woman whose name I don't know. I'm sorry, I try to get to know all the follows in the scene, but sometimes you just meet SOOOO many people your brain gets overloaded. Yay woman whose name I don't know! I've danced with her in the 7:30 intro to Lindy class before when I was taking it as a ringer-lead. She's not as experienced as the Camille and Jennifer, but still can follow and keep the steps going. I lead simpler stuff that I'm sure she knows rather than busting out all my tricks. I figure that since I'm not sure how much she remembers/ how much she practices, it's better to do simple things really well than try something hard and have it bomb.
Anyway with those dances over, we have 3 songs of open dancing while the judges tabulate their scores. I'm nervous. I don't think that I made the final. My dance with Camille went great, but I know that I had some mistakes in the other two. It really all depends on the competition, and when the judges were watching me. There were only 3 judges watching leads and over 20 guys for them to be looking at, so there's a chance that I got away with stuff. We'll see.
Anyway, finals are announced and it follows first. Alphabetically, by first name, they are:
Amanda ( Wearing. Go team R-Q!)
Barclay
Elaina
Emily
Riley
And now leads.....moment of truth:
Craig
Jason
Marty
Tim
and.....
Ian! (Yes, they called my name last.)
Holy crap! I'm in the final of my first ever dance competition! I'm keeping my expectations low at this point. I'm far and away the least experienced dancer in this group. The next closest dancer in experience to me has still been dancing for twice as long. The most, somehting like 10 times as long.
The final goes great. We now have space to move around more. What's even better is that I've danced LOTS with most of the finalists. I know what they are capable of and most importantly, what they think is fun.
Dance 1: Barclay - Barclay is a professional ballet dancer. Umm...yeah. So she's kinda...you know...good. She's actually doing this whole comp on a sprained ankle that she got from her real dancing job. Anyway, we seem to have a good rapport when we're dancing, as is normally the case. We both do fun and goofy really well, and this time was no exception
Dance 2: Elaina - Elaina is another dancer from my performance team. She's amazingly smooth, and just gorgeous to watch move around a dance floor. I always have good dances with her. She's one of these people who seems to read my mind more than follow. Every move is crisp and exactly what I was trying. Tonight, she's on. I mean, she's always great, but holy crap, there must be something special going on right now. She has opened the floodgates of dance whoop-ass. If she's dancing like this with everyone, she's unbeatable.
Dance 3 - Emily - Emily is one of the first CCS students ever. She's basically been doing thins since D&S started teaching. She's obviously good, and is hella-strong, since she's a climber. In addition she, when with Jason, can do aerials like nobody's business. This girl can seriously fly. I decide to go into my Ian=Charleston mode. The timing is impeccable. It's musical. It's fun. We land a jumping S-turn into tandem Charleston perfectly in time to when the song just asks for it...and then Dorry cuts the music! Damn!
Dance 4 - Riley - I don't know much about Riley outside of dancing with her, but I've do try to get in at least one dance with her each week at the Grill. We have fun. The music is bouncy and exciting, which fits both of our lindy styles pretty well. Solid performance. I have to judge these people? I love them all. This sucks.
Dance 5 - Amanda - I've danced with Amanda a whole lot. I traveled with her to Montreal to a blues exchange, and I was her partner for the aerials workshop on Leap Year Lindy Weekend. This dance should go well. It doesn't. It's all my fault. My leads are all over the place. My timing is off. This is clearly my worst effort of the final. I think I was so psyched up for how much stuff would work that I just lost focus. Anyway, she still does her job well. Can't begrudge her my mistakes, but grrr....this should have been my best dance of the night; it certainly was not.
We turn in our score sheets:
A short time later the results are announced. Mad props to all -
3rd place - Tim and Amanda
2nd place - Craig and Emily
1st place - Marty and Elaina
Yeah. No one was going to finish above Elaina on Monday.
Now, anyone who knows me is aware that I'm the most competitive person alive. I like to win. A lot. That said, I'm not all that upset. None of the people who finished ahead of me would even be eligible for the novice level competition that I'll be entering this weekend. They've all been dancing too long or have competed before. Hell, Marty's been doing this for somewhere on the order of a decade. Gotta crawl before you can Flying Lotus, right? (That's the thing at the 0:55 time marker.) Congrats to all of them. They earned it. (I still wanted to win one of those Grill gift cards...)
With the J&J over, its JAM TIME! Oh yeah. Marty and Elaina start, as is their right from their win. I eventually get into the circle with Colleen. We give a solid performance. Colleen's one of the instructors and a fantastic follow, but when it comes to jamming, I just feel more comfortable with the people I'm used to. Hallie and I are just at this level where we have moves that are "ours," things we do that are different and that no one else in the scene does. Nothing like J&E's "jump-rope", but still... It would have been nice to bust some of those out for the anniversary. Too bad she's at a conference in LA.
There's a second jam song. More girls flying through the air.
For jam 3, Dorry decides that our dance scene has come of age. The only appropriate rite of passage is ... Helzapoppin'! If you don't know what Helzapoppin' is go here. That song is fast. Like 310 bpm fast. The real pros are in the room. They go in. Holy shit. I need to remember to pick up my jaw from the lost and found.
The rest of the night is just fun social dancing. Great music. Great people. Fun, fun , fun. I love it here!
Happy Birthday Charm City Swing!
Many, many, MANY more.....
So I've been a bit remiss in keeping this blog up to date. As in, I haven't posted anything in 3 months. Well that all stops right here!
As is the point of me keeping this blog, I'm kinda obsessed with swing dancing. As far as things go, it could be a lot worse. Anyway, the dance organization of which I am a member and occasional indentured servant, Charm City Swing, held their 3rd year anniversary party on Monday night. Amazin! Rocked! A lot. So much so, that I will use sentence fragments.
Before I start, I need to offer absurd amounts of thanks to Dorry and Sommer for creating this community. I know that I've already posted that they saved my life by doing it, but you really can't thank people like them often enough. Let me describe why I'm thanking them this time specifically. Upon walking into the Grill on Monday one was greeted by the following:
1. Jason and Emily, sitting at the door handing out new, great quality, gorgeous, shoe bags to everyone who entered. Emily designed them, using the CCS "feet" logo. Sommer added the text "We're Gonna Party Like It's 1939." Note D&S paid for these things and were just giving them to people for being part of the community. There are also pins that Em also designed. It's nice to have a really good graphic designer on staff, eh?
2. There's a buffet. D&S had bought everyone dinner. I mean everyone. I'm talking the 200 + people that show up to Austin Grill to dance at CCS's Monday night dance. Generosity, thy names are Segev and Gentry.
3. Joy. You can't quantify how happy we are to be hanging out with each other, enjoying the company of the great people who share in there love of this beautiful, high-energy, fun dance. The mood in the room was electrically happy. 3 years. They've been bringing this to us for 3 years! (Note that I've only been doing it for 1, but it really has been the best year of my 29 thus far.)
Jason and Emily haven't gotten anything to eat for the first hour or so of things, so I volunteer to watch the door while they go take a break. Jason is good enough to come back with his food and keep me company.
Anyway at 8:00 Colleen and Marty starts the lesson and we're off into normal Monday night mode. 9:00, the dance starts. Holy crap is the place packed. The Grill is always tight. Lots of people love the music and the energy there. They want to dance. The community has grown. But there is nothing, NOTHING like it was on Monday. I have never paid more attention to details of where I was putting my follow like I did. A typical sequence in my brain went something like:
"Crap! Guess I'm dancing in closed for a while. Lets see if that dancing in tight spaces class paid off."
"Wait! A spot! I see floor. Swing-out, here we go!"
"Crap! Random person walking by with a drink. Turn that swing-out into a circle... now!"
I won't complain though. I looked hard enough, found my spots and got some great dances in.
At about the normal time for announcements, they start the thing that I've been waiting for all night: the Jack and Jill competition. This will be the first swing comp that I've ever entered. For those who don't know, a Jack and Jill competition is one that you enter without a partner. Leads and follows are randomly paired just before the dance. It's all lead an follow ability. This particular contest is in a bit of a non-standard format. I will explain:
1. Prelim rounds - Leads and follows are randomly paired. They dance for 1.5 minutes with their partner. Judges watch and score. Wash, rince, repeat twice more. Once that's all done, the judges pick the 5 best leads and 5 best follows. This part is pretty standard for all J&J comps, though the number of finalists vary with the number of entries.
2. This is where we are different. In a normal J&J what would happen now is that each finalist gets paired randomly with another finalist of the appropriate dance-gender (This means lead or follow. Note that these don't always correspond to male and female. Also, note that I'm taking a lindy class as a follow on Wednesday nights now. Dorry frequently points out that this makes me dance-genderqueer. I'd like to note that by this logic he then needs to say the same thing about his wife.) Then, after the pairing, you would dance with that partner for the whole final and be judged as a couple. At CCS, we strive to be different, and so we have variant rules.
In OUR contest each finalist lead dances with each finalist follow. At the end, the leads rank the follows that they danced with and vice versa. The person with the best average ranking wins.
Here's where I detail my experience in the prelim round: First, everyone should know that since we got to choose our own numbers to wear on our backs, I chose
. Not to be topped, Amanda, another dancer/mathematician (At least by training. she's now an actuary) chose . We were the irrational number duo. (I was transcendental and she algebraic, but you can't always have perfect symmetry.)1. First dance is with Camille. Yay Camille! Camille is a great dancer, and someone I've danced with lots. She has this great exaggerated style, and loves doing thing like throwing her head back and really shouting out the "I surrender, I surrender," when we're dancing to "Safronia B." It's a really great song segment with her, as we both love doing silly things that highlight our strengths.
2. Second dance is with Jennifer. Yay Jennifer! Jennifer is also a really good dancer, but I don't have nearly as much experience dancing with her. As such, I don't have the great advantage that came when I danced with Camille. Despite that, she's really strong technically, so I just try to lead interesting, musical things and focus on footwork. I think it went reasonably well.
3. Third dance is with a woman whose name I don't know. I'm sorry, I try to get to know all the follows in the scene, but sometimes you just meet SOOOO many people your brain gets overloaded. Yay woman whose name I don't know! I've danced with her in the 7:30 intro to Lindy class before when I was taking it as a ringer-lead. She's not as experienced as the Camille and Jennifer, but still can follow and keep the steps going. I lead simpler stuff that I'm sure she knows rather than busting out all my tricks. I figure that since I'm not sure how much she remembers/ how much she practices, it's better to do simple things really well than try something hard and have it bomb.
Anyway with those dances over, we have 3 songs of open dancing while the judges tabulate their scores. I'm nervous. I don't think that I made the final. My dance with Camille went great, but I know that I had some mistakes in the other two. It really all depends on the competition, and when the judges were watching me. There were only 3 judges watching leads and over 20 guys for them to be looking at, so there's a chance that I got away with stuff. We'll see.
Anyway, finals are announced and it follows first. Alphabetically, by first name, they are:
Amanda ( Wearing
. Go team R-Q!)Barclay
Elaina
Emily
Riley
And now leads.....moment of truth:
Craig
Jason
Marty
Tim
and.....
Ian! (Yes, they called my name last.)
Holy crap! I'm in the final of my first ever dance competition! I'm keeping my expectations low at this point. I'm far and away the least experienced dancer in this group. The next closest dancer in experience to me has still been dancing for twice as long. The most, somehting like 10 times as long.
The final goes great. We now have space to move around more. What's even better is that I've danced LOTS with most of the finalists. I know what they are capable of and most importantly, what they think is fun.
Dance 1: Barclay - Barclay is a professional ballet dancer. Umm...yeah. So she's kinda...you know...good. She's actually doing this whole comp on a sprained ankle that she got from her real dancing job. Anyway, we seem to have a good rapport when we're dancing, as is normally the case. We both do fun and goofy really well, and this time was no exception
Dance 2: Elaina - Elaina is another dancer from my performance team. She's amazingly smooth, and just gorgeous to watch move around a dance floor. I always have good dances with her. She's one of these people who seems to read my mind more than follow. Every move is crisp and exactly what I was trying. Tonight, she's on. I mean, she's always great, but holy crap, there must be something special going on right now. She has opened the floodgates of dance whoop-ass. If she's dancing like this with everyone, she's unbeatable.
Dance 3 - Emily - Emily is one of the first CCS students ever. She's basically been doing thins since D&S started teaching. She's obviously good, and is hella-strong, since she's a climber. In addition she, when with Jason, can do aerials like nobody's business. This girl can seriously fly. I decide to go into my Ian=Charleston mode. The timing is impeccable. It's musical. It's fun. We land a jumping S-turn into tandem Charleston perfectly in time to when the song just asks for it...and then Dorry cuts the music! Damn!
Dance 4 - Riley - I don't know much about Riley outside of dancing with her, but I've do try to get in at least one dance with her each week at the Grill. We have fun. The music is bouncy and exciting, which fits both of our lindy styles pretty well. Solid performance. I have to judge these people? I love them all. This sucks.
Dance 5 - Amanda - I've danced with Amanda a whole lot. I traveled with her to Montreal to a blues exchange, and I was her partner for the aerials workshop on Leap Year Lindy Weekend. This dance should go well. It doesn't. It's all my fault. My leads are all over the place. My timing is off. This is clearly my worst effort of the final. I think I was so psyched up for how much stuff would work that I just lost focus. Anyway, she still does her job well. Can't begrudge her my mistakes, but grrr....this should have been my best dance of the night; it certainly was not.
We turn in our score sheets:
A short time later the results are announced. Mad props to all -
3rd place - Tim and Amanda
2nd place - Craig and Emily
1st place - Marty and Elaina
Yeah. No one was going to finish above Elaina on Monday.
Now, anyone who knows me is aware that I'm the most competitive person alive. I like to win. A lot. That said, I'm not all that upset. None of the people who finished ahead of me would even be eligible for the novice level competition that I'll be entering this weekend. They've all been dancing too long or have competed before. Hell, Marty's been doing this for somewhere on the order of a decade. Gotta crawl before you can Flying Lotus, right? (That's the thing at the 0:55 time marker.) Congrats to all of them. They earned it. (I still wanted to win one of those Grill gift cards...)
With the J&J over, its JAM TIME! Oh yeah. Marty and Elaina start, as is their right from their win. I eventually get into the circle with Colleen. We give a solid performance. Colleen's one of the instructors and a fantastic follow, but when it comes to jamming, I just feel more comfortable with the people I'm used to. Hallie and I are just at this level where we have moves that are "ours," things we do that are different and that no one else in the scene does. Nothing like J&E's "jump-rope", but still... It would have been nice to bust some of those out for the anniversary. Too bad she's at a conference in LA.
There's a second jam song. More girls flying through the air.
For jam 3, Dorry decides that our dance scene has come of age. The only appropriate rite of passage is ... Helzapoppin'! If you don't know what Helzapoppin' is go here. That song is fast. Like 310 bpm fast. The real pros are in the room. They go in. Holy shit. I need to remember to pick up my jaw from the lost and found.
The rest of the night is just fun social dancing. Great music. Great people. Fun, fun , fun. I love it here!
Happy Birthday Charm City Swing!
Many, many, MANY more.....
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Addendum
So Roger Ebert made Juno his best movie of the year, and NOW Baltimore theaters have started to pick it up. Thanks Roger. You ruined my rant.
Juno
Okay, reason why Baltimore needs to get with the program, number 2334:
My housemate and I went to see the movie Juno at the Ritz at the Bourse in Philadelphia this weekend. It was one of the best movies that I've seen in years. Fabulous acting. Great story. Amazing soundtrack.
Do you know why we had to see it in Philly? Yep, it wasn't playing in this sorry excuse for a city. Yes, we have the Charles, and that's great and all. BUT: it's one theater. It can't possibly play every limited release movie. Clearly, they dropped the ball by not picking this one up. I can't fault them since they are dead on so often. Rather, they need backup in case the best movie of the year slips through the cracks and is nowhere to be found in this little blip between Philadelphia and DC that I call home.
Best,
Ian
My housemate and I went to see the movie Juno at the Ritz at the Bourse in Philadelphia this weekend. It was one of the best movies that I've seen in years. Fabulous acting. Great story. Amazing soundtrack.
Do you know why we had to see it in Philly? Yep, it wasn't playing in this sorry excuse for a city. Yes, we have the Charles, and that's great and all. BUT: it's one theater. It can't possibly play every limited release movie. Clearly, they dropped the ball by not picking this one up. I can't fault them since they are dead on so often. Rather, they need backup in case the best movie of the year slips through the cracks and is nowhere to be found in this little blip between Philadelphia and DC that I call home.
Best,
Ian
Friday, December 7, 2007
All Balboa Weekend 2007 Diary - Part 3
(Please note that these All Bal diaries appear on the blog in reverse order. Obviously, if you really want to read them, start 3 posts down with the prologue.)
I wrote this message while still at All Bal. My network connection totally flaked so I couldn't send it until now. Anyway, here is the Day 2 rundown. I'll send the one for Day 3 tomorrow at some point.
--------------------------------
Well, I have about 40 minutes before my next class starts, so I'm going to do my best to get something off before then. Like the day 1 diary, this one may have to split over two emails.
Day two starts with a much better breakfast than day 1. Rob gets directions to a diner outside the hotel and he, Elaina, Mike and I all pile in his car and make it over there. The food is good and cheap. The service is friendly and competent. Things are looking up.
Class number 5 starts. It's being taught by Marty Klempner and Val Salstrom. Marty and Val are the ones responsible for putting on the event and are, of course, fantastic Bal dancers. In addition to bringing modern Bal eastward from CA, and starting the first ever weekend event devotes only to Balboa, they've also have the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of World Records for participating in the longest ever non-stop dance party (52 hours and 3 minutes). Marty notices how many more leads than follows there are. This pisses him off. Apparently he spends a lot of time organizing trying to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen. There is a procedure for switching classes that involves coming to him early enough in the weekend for him to make changes. Apparently the follows who've been leaving haven't been following it. He walks next door to the Intermediate classes and grabs some of them back.
The class is devoted to crab walks, which are kind of like scoots but with a forward and backward motion tacked in in addition to the moving rightward. It's harder than it sounds or looks. I was hoping for a new Bal Swing move, but I'll take a new Pure Bal move. I think that I've got it mostly down. In the end they show how to transition directly from crab walks to other ad-lib steps. Learning transitions is nice, since it looks a bit silly to have to put a basic between stuff.
Then there was class 6. Oh god. Class six is taught by Bart Bartolo, the old time legend, and Tise Chao (first name pronounced Tee-Say). Now, Bart is a legend and clearly deserves a lot of respect, but:
1. He's not a teacher
2. He insists that the basic step that we've been doing for a day and a half is wrong.
3. His response to couples that he doesn't think are close enough to have a good connection is not to tell them this, but rather is to squeeze them together.
Now, I have no problem being really connected to my follow, but understandably some of the women feel a little awkward having their breasts up against a total stranger. Having an 82 year old basically force you together into a bear hug is not fun for them. Furthermoer everyone is really messing up because he's changing the thing that's been our foundation the whole time.
This exacerbates the only real problem of the weekend as follows start just getting up and leaving the room.
So far, this was my only bad class.
Next is lunch, and I just grab a tuna sandwich from a snack stand. IT was horrible, but at least I got the food this time.
We come back and we have Randy Maestretti and and Kara Britt for lesson number 7. This is a lesson on crossover steps. I've technically learned these before from Tim, but I really didn't get them. The idea is that you let the follow out to create room and then crossover your own feet while the follow moves toward and away from you to create a neat effect. The lesson goes well, and I pretty much get it. The lack of follows is again an issue after the Bart and Tise class. As a result, I still have trouble getting out of the move. I understand what to do in theory, basically, I step around the follow after one of the crossovers to start a comearound, but just didn't get enough practice. That said I can get into and do the move just fine.
We then have an hour break where I wrote one of my email diaries.
Next is a musicality class. It's very interesting. A band leader explains some of the history of jazz and swing music and why we dance to it the way that we do. His band is with him and they do a lot of playing to demonstrate the differences between 20's, 30's and 40's jazz and how the music sort of forced the evolution of Charleston into Shag and then into Lindy and Bal. It was a great lecture comeplete with audience participation dancing.
For dinner the Baltimore crew goes out to an Irish pub typle place. The food is good and cheap. We chat and laugh a lot. I love the Baltimore swing dance crowd. They're great people.
We're back and get to watch the finals of the amateur ACBC and Jack and Jill. Unfortunately, Tim didn't qualify for the final :-( . Still its fun to watch a lot of cool dancing.
Afterwards it open dancing. By this time others are starting to notice how utterly exhausted I am. 30 minutes into things I can't lead to save my life from sheer exhaustion. I go up to the room to try to take a nap so that I can come back down and dance. I can't fall asleep at all. My body's tired by my brain is still running on rocket fuel. I chill out in bed and try to at least give my muscles a break. I head back downstairs at just the right moment.
The Open ACBC finals start. WOW! These couples are good. I mean scary good. I mean, I can't even imagine being close to this good ever. I should be getting a DVD of the competition, so if anyone is interested, I can show you, but I don't even know the names, never mind the intricacies of some of the cool stuff that they do.
After that, it's more social dancing. I've got a bit of a second wind so I dance to a few of the more reasonably paced songs. (I still can't keep up with the 250 bpm stuff.) After about an hour, I'm toast and head upstairs for the night.
Wow, I did get through all of day 2 in this email. Great! I'll report on day 3 once I'm back in Baltimore. Now its lessons and then I'm off for a 6 hour car ride.
-Ian
Post Script - I never did write the day 3 diary. I just lost steam during the long car ride, and didn't feel like a remembered with enough detail to do a very good job. I promise that I'll do better at ABW 2008 :-)
I wrote this message while still at All Bal. My network connection totally flaked so I couldn't send it until now. Anyway, here is the Day 2 rundown. I'll send the one for Day 3 tomorrow at some point.
--------------------------------
Well, I have about 40 minutes before my next class starts, so I'm going to do my best to get something off before then. Like the day 1 diary, this one may have to split over two emails.
Day two starts with a much better breakfast than day 1. Rob gets directions to a diner outside the hotel and he, Elaina, Mike and I all pile in his car and make it over there. The food is good and cheap. The service is friendly and competent. Things are looking up.
Class number 5 starts. It's being taught by Marty Klempner and Val Salstrom. Marty and Val are the ones responsible for putting on the event and are, of course, fantastic Bal dancers. In addition to bringing modern Bal eastward from CA, and starting the first ever weekend event devotes only to Balboa, they've also have the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of World Records for participating in the longest ever non-stop dance party (52 hours and 3 minutes). Marty notices how many more leads than follows there are. This pisses him off. Apparently he spends a lot of time organizing trying to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen. There is a procedure for switching classes that involves coming to him early enough in the weekend for him to make changes. Apparently the follows who've been leaving haven't been following it. He walks next door to the Intermediate classes and grabs some of them back.
The class is devoted to crab walks, which are kind of like scoots but with a forward and backward motion tacked in in addition to the moving rightward. It's harder than it sounds or looks. I was hoping for a new Bal Swing move, but I'll take a new Pure Bal move. I think that I've got it mostly down. In the end they show how to transition directly from crab walks to other ad-lib steps. Learning transitions is nice, since it looks a bit silly to have to put a basic between stuff.
Then there was class 6. Oh god. Class six is taught by Bart Bartolo, the old time legend, and Tise Chao (first name pronounced Tee-Say). Now, Bart is a legend and clearly deserves a lot of respect, but:
1. He's not a teacher
2. He insists that the basic step that we've been doing for a day and a half is wrong.
3. His response to couples that he doesn't think are close enough to have a good connection is not to tell them this, but rather is to squeeze them together.
Now, I have no problem being really connected to my follow, but understandably some of the women feel a little awkward having their breasts up against a total stranger. Having an 82 year old basically force you together into a bear hug is not fun for them. Furthermoer everyone is really messing up because he's changing the thing that's been our foundation the whole time.
This exacerbates the only real problem of the weekend as follows start just getting up and leaving the room.
So far, this was my only bad class.
Next is lunch, and I just grab a tuna sandwich from a snack stand. IT was horrible, but at least I got the food this time.
We come back and we have Randy Maestretti and and Kara Britt for lesson number 7. This is a lesson on crossover steps. I've technically learned these before from Tim, but I really didn't get them. The idea is that you let the follow out to create room and then crossover your own feet while the follow moves toward and away from you to create a neat effect. The lesson goes well, and I pretty much get it. The lack of follows is again an issue after the Bart and Tise class. As a result, I still have trouble getting out of the move. I understand what to do in theory, basically, I step around the follow after one of the crossovers to start a comearound, but just didn't get enough practice. That said I can get into and do the move just fine.
We then have an hour break where I wrote one of my email diaries.
Next is a musicality class. It's very interesting. A band leader explains some of the history of jazz and swing music and why we dance to it the way that we do. His band is with him and they do a lot of playing to demonstrate the differences between 20's, 30's and 40's jazz and how the music sort of forced the evolution of Charleston into Shag and then into Lindy and Bal. It was a great lecture comeplete with audience participation dancing.
For dinner the Baltimore crew goes out to an Irish pub typle place. The food is good and cheap. We chat and laugh a lot. I love the Baltimore swing dance crowd. They're great people.
We're back and get to watch the finals of the amateur ACBC and Jack and Jill. Unfortunately, Tim didn't qualify for the final :-( . Still its fun to watch a lot of cool dancing.
Afterwards it open dancing. By this time others are starting to notice how utterly exhausted I am. 30 minutes into things I can't lead to save my life from sheer exhaustion. I go up to the room to try to take a nap so that I can come back down and dance. I can't fall asleep at all. My body's tired by my brain is still running on rocket fuel. I chill out in bed and try to at least give my muscles a break. I head back downstairs at just the right moment.
The Open ACBC finals start. WOW! These couples are good. I mean scary good. I mean, I can't even imagine being close to this good ever. I should be getting a DVD of the competition, so if anyone is interested, I can show you, but I don't even know the names, never mind the intricacies of some of the cool stuff that they do.
After that, it's more social dancing. I've got a bit of a second wind so I dance to a few of the more reasonably paced songs. (I still can't keep up with the 250 bpm stuff.) After about an hour, I'm toast and head upstairs for the night.
Wow, I did get through all of day 2 in this email. Great! I'll report on day 3 once I'm back in Baltimore. Now its lessons and then I'm off for a 6 hour car ride.
-Ian
Post Script - I never did write the day 3 diary. I just lost steam during the long car ride, and didn't feel like a remembered with enough detail to do a very good job. I promise that I'll do better at ABW 2008 :-)
All Balboa Weekend 2007 Diary - Part 2
Hey again. Time for the next installment.
Anyway, I'll continue where I left off.
I leave lunch from hell and end up at my thrid class of the day. Mike's there, so I tell him all about the fiasco. This class is being taught by Erik Robinson and Sylvia Skyler (or Sylvia with no exclamation point). Both of them are apparently very famous dancers. If you've seen swing dancers showcased in a commercial or music video, they're pretty much always one of the couples. That said they weren't exactly great teachers. Thankfully, they were introducing lolly kicks and things that you can do after them. Lolly kicks are a Bal Swing move where the lead does a come-around and creates distance between himself and the follow. From there they start some showy kick-tab-kick-tap things with their left (for lead) / right (for follows) legs. For some unknown reason, I'm actually pretty good at lolly kicks. I didn't have any trouble learning them from Tim in the class that I took before I got here, so the fact that they weren't exactly explaining things well or slowly didn't hurt me as much as it could have. They also showed me the first brand new move that I've learned so far, turns in between lolly-kicks! I picked up the lead for outside (clockwise) turn really fast (it felt just like a tuck turn from Lindy), and the inside turn without too much difficulty. The problem with the inside turn is that the follow has to get her elbow over yours after turning. If I start the turn too close, or they're not good at this and start to late or go too slow, I get the follows elbow into either my face or chest. I managed to lightly get elbowed in the chin twice and hard in the chest once while Erik and Sylvia were,poorly explaining to the follows the technique for getting over the leads arm. They then tried to show how to use the inside turn to get out of lollies. This went worse than the other inside turn stuff since in addition to the old problems, now I have top step around them with opppoiste momentum for a comearound while the move is going on. The result is that I'm now stepping into the "Dangerous Flying Elbows (tm)." Needless to say, this one hurt until the follows picked it up. I'm still afraid to try this on the dance floor. Besides, I know a cooler, less dangerous way out of lolly kicks thanks to ...
Class number four! Bobby and Kate! Woopee! Bobby White and Kate Hedin teach the advanced Lindy Hop class in Baltimore on Wednesdays. They're really cool. In addition to being amazing dancers who've won competitions in nearly every from of swing, they're total goofballs. Bobby's teaching technique involves explaining things with sound effects. Pa-tcha-twag-ha! has come to mean a lot more to my lindy than I would have expected. Somehow, you still always know exactly what the guy means, when you're not too busy cracking your ass up. He also speaks deeper and slower whenever he's demonstrating something so you get a real slo-mo movie feel. Kate uses actual words, but is still fun. Plus she makes Bobby easier to comprehend when his sound effects aren't quite what he wants them to be. For example, one exchange that took place during class was:
Bobby - Crrrk doink!
Kate - That's his sound representing a spring.
Anyway, Bobby and Kate taught the throw-out, which is another Bal Swing move where you release the follow to create space, create tension with your outsie arms, and spin her back in the in the other direction while you do the second half of a come around her and grab her while you're mid-turn. It's another move that Tim taught us, but not somehting that I had down. After the Bobby and Kate lesson I felt really good with it. They also showed how to do it from lolly kick position as a way to get back into closed from lollies. This means I get elbowed in the face less. This means I like Bobby and Kate even more. The finished off by showing paddle turns which are basically scoots in a circle. Its another entirely new move, for which I was greatful.
One annying trend that's made itself apparent by now is that follows have been ditching the beginner track to go to more advanced classes. This is understandable, since if the lead is good, the follow doesn't need to actually know specific moves. So, they want to get to do more fun stuff, and dance with better leads. It's annoying for us though, since now instead of the class being an 18:22 follow to lead split, it's a 12:22 follow to lead split. This sucks. There's a lot of waiting to get to practice with a partner, and the partners who can actually follow have mostly all left. The fact that Bobby and Kate made this lesson work anyway is a testimant to how good they are as teachers.
That was the end of classes for day one. Mike and I walked over to the main balroom. It was time for the prelim rounds for the two amateur division competitions that are going on: the Jack and Jill and the American Classic Balboa Champoinship. Tim is competeing in the Amateur Jack and Jill, so we want to be there to cheer him on. Just for reference, to be considered an amateur, less than 40% of your income must come from dance realted activities.
The Jack and Jill competition is interesting. Leads and follows are randomly assigned to each other, and they dance. There are a few differend go throughts of this so that they can try to judge the competitors independent of their partners. I thought Tim did well, but ehat the hell do I know about judging dance competitions. The ACBC is more standard. Couples compete as couples. They break the competitors up into heats. In the first song for each heat, they dance Pure Bal only. No leaving body contact with your partner. The second song is Bal Swing. When each heat has gotten a chance to dance their two songs, they bring everyone out on the dance floor for an "All Skate." It's very fun to watch.
Dinner time!
Dinner is a "Dress to impress" event. It's the 82nd birthday of Bart Bartolo, one of the original Bal old-timers. There's decent food, and overall its fun. We get some nice picture of the Baltimore crew all dressed up and sitting together. There's excellent dessert, and since we picked a table right next to the dessert tabel, guess who got first choice of things before anything ran out. Oh yeah! Cheescake.
After dinner is one of the coolest events of the whole trip, the Champion level Jack and Jill. The competitors are the best of the best. The best Bal dancers from around the country vote on who gets to be in this event. Apparently, you have to be amazing to even get a ballot from Marty and Valerie (the event organizers). Bobby and Kate are competing, as are many of the other instructors, including Sylvia Sykes! Somehow there are more follows than leads selected. Bobby is the guys who gets to dance twice. He gets picked randomly out of a hat by Anne-Helene, who pronounces his name Boobie due to her accent. The announcers insist on calling him this for the rest of the event. It's vaguely appropriate. They're dancing is jaw droppiungly good. Wow! I'm getting goosebumps just remembering it.
After that is a dance with a live band. I've never seen so many people dancing Bal before. At normal social dances, you get almost everyone doing Lindy with maybe one or two couples doing Bal. But now, it's the All Bal Weeekend, so it's everywhere. I think that if you do a swingout, you get thrown out of the ballroom :) . I get to dance with a lot of people, and bravely try out all my moves. They actually work! I can do this Balboa thing. I'm massively better than I was Wednesday. This intensive workshop thing really helps!
At 11:30 or so is the prelim for the Open ACBC event, it's like the amateur event, exept that you don't have to be an amateur. Some great dancing gets done by the pros. Huge applause from the crowd. There's great energy in the room. When the round's over it goes back to being a socail dance. I dance for another hour before I retire to bed. At about 1, the band is supposed to leave and they keep running the social dance with a DJ until 6. Yeah, I'm unconcious by 1:30.
Next installment may have to wait until I'm home. I'm going to be dancing more today, and these diary things take a while. I hope that you're enjoying them.
-Ian
Anyway, I'll continue where I left off.
I leave lunch from hell and end up at my thrid class of the day. Mike's there, so I tell him all about the fiasco. This class is being taught by Erik Robinson and Sylvia Skyler (or Sylvia with no exclamation point). Both of them are apparently very famous dancers. If you've seen swing dancers showcased in a commercial or music video, they're pretty much always one of the couples. That said they weren't exactly great teachers. Thankfully, they were introducing lolly kicks and things that you can do after them. Lolly kicks are a Bal Swing move where the lead does a come-around and creates distance between himself and the follow. From there they start some showy kick-tab-kick-tap things with their left (for lead) / right (for follows) legs. For some unknown reason, I'm actually pretty good at lolly kicks. I didn't have any trouble learning them from Tim in the class that I took before I got here, so the fact that they weren't exactly explaining things well or slowly didn't hurt me as much as it could have. They also showed me the first brand new move that I've learned so far, turns in between lolly-kicks! I picked up the lead for outside (clockwise) turn really fast (it felt just like a tuck turn from Lindy), and the inside turn without too much difficulty. The problem with the inside turn is that the follow has to get her elbow over yours after turning. If I start the turn too close, or they're not good at this and start to late or go too slow, I get the follows elbow into either my face or chest. I managed to lightly get elbowed in the chin twice and hard in the chest once while Erik and Sylvia were,poorly explaining to the follows the technique for getting over the leads arm. They then tried to show how to use the inside turn to get out of lollies. This went worse than the other inside turn stuff since in addition to the old problems, now I have top step around them with opppoiste momentum for a comearound while the move is going on. The result is that I'm now stepping into the "Dangerous Flying Elbows (tm)." Needless to say, this one hurt until the follows picked it up. I'm still afraid to try this on the dance floor. Besides, I know a cooler, less dangerous way out of lolly kicks thanks to ...
Class number four! Bobby and Kate! Woopee! Bobby White and Kate Hedin teach the advanced Lindy Hop class in Baltimore on Wednesdays. They're really cool. In addition to being amazing dancers who've won competitions in nearly every from of swing, they're total goofballs. Bobby's teaching technique involves explaining things with sound effects. Pa-tcha-twag-ha! has come to mean a lot more to my lindy than I would have expected. Somehow, you still always know exactly what the guy means, when you're not too busy cracking your ass up. He also speaks deeper and slower whenever he's demonstrating something so you get a real slo-mo movie feel. Kate uses actual words, but is still fun. Plus she makes Bobby easier to comprehend when his sound effects aren't quite what he wants them to be. For example, one exchange that took place during class was:
Bobby - Crrrk doink!
Kate - That's his sound representing a spring.
Anyway, Bobby and Kate taught the throw-out, which is another Bal Swing move where you release the follow to create space, create tension with your outsie arms, and spin her back in the in the other direction while you do the second half of a come around her and grab her while you're mid-turn. It's another move that Tim taught us, but not somehting that I had down. After the Bobby and Kate lesson I felt really good with it. They also showed how to do it from lolly kick position as a way to get back into closed from lollies. This means I get elbowed in the face less. This means I like Bobby and Kate even more. The finished off by showing paddle turns which are basically scoots in a circle. Its another entirely new move, for which I was greatful.
One annying trend that's made itself apparent by now is that follows have been ditching the beginner track to go to more advanced classes. This is understandable, since if the lead is good, the follow doesn't need to actually know specific moves. So, they want to get to do more fun stuff, and dance with better leads. It's annoying for us though, since now instead of the class being an 18:22 follow to lead split, it's a 12:22 follow to lead split. This sucks. There's a lot of waiting to get to practice with a partner, and the partners who can actually follow have mostly all left. The fact that Bobby and Kate made this lesson work anyway is a testimant to how good they are as teachers.
That was the end of classes for day one. Mike and I walked over to the main balroom. It was time for the prelim rounds for the two amateur division competitions that are going on: the Jack and Jill and the American Classic Balboa Champoinship. Tim is competeing in the Amateur Jack and Jill, so we want to be there to cheer him on. Just for reference, to be considered an amateur, less than 40% of your income must come from dance realted activities.
The Jack and Jill competition is interesting. Leads and follows are randomly assigned to each other, and they dance. There are a few differend go throughts of this so that they can try to judge the competitors independent of their partners. I thought Tim did well, but ehat the hell do I know about judging dance competitions. The ACBC is more standard. Couples compete as couples. They break the competitors up into heats. In the first song for each heat, they dance Pure Bal only. No leaving body contact with your partner. The second song is Bal Swing. When each heat has gotten a chance to dance their two songs, they bring everyone out on the dance floor for an "All Skate." It's very fun to watch.
Dinner time!
Dinner is a "Dress to impress" event. It's the 82nd birthday of Bart Bartolo, one of the original Bal old-timers. There's decent food, and overall its fun. We get some nice picture of the Baltimore crew all dressed up and sitting together. There's excellent dessert, and since we picked a table right next to the dessert tabel, guess who got first choice of things before anything ran out. Oh yeah! Cheescake.
After dinner is one of the coolest events of the whole trip, the Champion level Jack and Jill. The competitors are the best of the best. The best Bal dancers from around the country vote on who gets to be in this event. Apparently, you have to be amazing to even get a ballot from Marty and Valerie (the event organizers). Bobby and Kate are competing, as are many of the other instructors, including Sylvia Sykes! Somehow there are more follows than leads selected. Bobby is the guys who gets to dance twice. He gets picked randomly out of a hat by Anne-Helene, who pronounces his name Boobie due to her accent. The announcers insist on calling him this for the rest of the event. It's vaguely appropriate. They're dancing is jaw droppiungly good. Wow! I'm getting goosebumps just remembering it.
After that is a dance with a live band. I've never seen so many people dancing Bal before. At normal social dances, you get almost everyone doing Lindy with maybe one or two couples doing Bal. But now, it's the All Bal Weeekend, so it's everywhere. I think that if you do a swingout, you get thrown out of the ballroom :) . I get to dance with a lot of people, and bravely try out all my moves. They actually work! I can do this Balboa thing. I'm massively better than I was Wednesday. This intensive workshop thing really helps!
At 11:30 or so is the prelim for the Open ACBC event, it's like the amateur event, exept that you don't have to be an amateur. Some great dancing gets done by the pros. Huge applause from the crowd. There's great energy in the room. When the round's over it goes back to being a socail dance. I dance for another hour before I retire to bed. At about 1, the band is supposed to leave and they keep running the social dance with a DJ until 6. Yeah, I'm unconcious by 1:30.
Next installment may have to wait until I'm home. I'm going to be dancing more today, and these diary things take a while. I hope that you're enjoying them.
-Ian
All Balboa Weekend 2007 Diary - Part 1
Hey there again. Here's my story from yesterday (Friday) at All Bal weekend.
So after getting in at 1:15 am or so from the actually fun car ride with Rob and Elaina (I say actually enjoyable not becasue of anything about R&E but rather because 6-7 hour drives are not often described as fun.) I crashed out and woke up Friday morning at 7:30ish.
After I showered, Mike and I headed down to breakfast, where Rob, Elaina, Amy and Tim were already eating. Their booth wasn't big enough for more people so we had to wait for our own table. We waited. Then we waited some more. Then some more. .... you get the idea. All the time, BTW there were dozens of empty tables. They just wouldn't let people sit down. It was a buffet, so the reasons for this are unclear. Suffice to say that the hotel restaurant has been the major lowlight of the trip. Anyway eventaull y we paid a ludicrous amount of money for a pretty crappy breakfast buffet.
Onto classes!
Class one was with a french couple named Bernard and Anne-Helene. They kept asking if we understood their "Fraglish" as they called it, but they were perfectly good English speakers. Far better than any of our French, I'm sure. Anyway the class was pretty well distributed. There were only about 4 more leads than follows, and in a class of over 40 people, that's not so bad at all. They went over one of the two Balboa basic steps. It was a little odd, since they taught the one that most people learn second, but it was just fine. It was good practice for my form. They then taught some scoots, which are neat little ad-lib steps where you slide sideways. I'd learned these before, but they really helped me with my transitions in and out of them. Overall, it was a great, fun class.
After class one we had an hour break. I browsed the shop for Bal merchendise, and got a few shirts. They're neat looking. One is an eggplant colored polo with silhouettes of all the instructors dancing on them. The other is a jersey type T-shirt with All Balboa Weekend written on it. Good times.
Class two was awsome! It was taught by Nick Williams, a great dance champion and Sylvia Sikes! (The name Sylvia Sykes! must always be followed by an excalmation point, as explained in the next sentend.) Sylvia! is basically the reason everyone dances Bal. She learned from the original dancers, and broke it down and brought it to modern swing ballrooms. She's an absolutely amazing dancer and a crystal clear instructor. Summer, one of the founders of Charm City Swing, learned from her. Anyway, we went over the other basic (step, step, hold, step) and the come-around, which is the move that gets you into and out of half the other moves in Balboa. Again it was stuff that I'd learned before, but after this class, I felt like I owned these moves. It was absolutely great for my form and for my confidence.
We then broke for lunch.
This is where the hotel restaurant story gets even more absurd. So Rob, Elaina, Yasmina and I decide to go get lunch in the hotel restaurant. Anyway, we put in our order and waited. And waited. Now we had like an hour until the next classes, so we weren't too worried, but then after we went another 30 minutes without so much as seeing a waiter, I got concerned, walked out to get someone and asked about our food. After 10 minutes of wandering around aimlessly, the waiter went back to the kitchen and returned with 20 minutes to lesson time to tell us that they had lost our food ticket and were just putting the food in now. I of course told him that I need to be dancing in 20 minutes and had no desire to wolf down a personal pizza and then try to dance. They handed me some complementary greasy breadsticks and I left. The rest were in tracks that didn't have a class right after lunch, so they stayed to get their food. There were aparently more screw ups, but I wasn't around for them, so I won't report. Suffice to say, we won't be eating there again.
End of part 1. I'm off to my next class. More rundown afterward! Woot woot!
-Ian
So after getting in at 1:15 am or so from the actually fun car ride with Rob and Elaina (I say actually enjoyable not becasue of anything about R&E but rather because 6-7 hour drives are not often described as fun.) I crashed out and woke up Friday morning at 7:30ish.
After I showered, Mike and I headed down to breakfast, where Rob, Elaina, Amy and Tim were already eating. Their booth wasn't big enough for more people so we had to wait for our own table. We waited. Then we waited some more. Then some more. .... you get the idea. All the time, BTW there were dozens of empty tables. They just wouldn't let people sit down. It was a buffet, so the reasons for this are unclear. Suffice to say that the hotel restaurant has been the major lowlight of the trip. Anyway eventaull y we paid a ludicrous amount of money for a pretty crappy breakfast buffet.
Onto classes!
Class one was with a french couple named Bernard and Anne-Helene. They kept asking if we understood their "Fraglish" as they called it, but they were perfectly good English speakers. Far better than any of our French, I'm sure. Anyway the class was pretty well distributed. There were only about 4 more leads than follows, and in a class of over 40 people, that's not so bad at all. They went over one of the two Balboa basic steps. It was a little odd, since they taught the one that most people learn second, but it was just fine. It was good practice for my form. They then taught some scoots, which are neat little ad-lib steps where you slide sideways. I'd learned these before, but they really helped me with my transitions in and out of them. Overall, it was a great, fun class.
After class one we had an hour break. I browsed the shop for Bal merchendise, and got a few shirts. They're neat looking. One is an eggplant colored polo with silhouettes of all the instructors dancing on them. The other is a jersey type T-shirt with All Balboa Weekend written on it. Good times.
Class two was awsome! It was taught by Nick Williams, a great dance champion and Sylvia Sikes! (The name Sylvia Sykes! must always be followed by an excalmation point, as explained in the next sentend.) Sylvia! is basically the reason everyone dances Bal. She learned from the original dancers, and broke it down and brought it to modern swing ballrooms. She's an absolutely amazing dancer and a crystal clear instructor. Summer, one of the founders of Charm City Swing, learned from her. Anyway, we went over the other basic (step, step, hold, step) and the come-around, which is the move that gets you into and out of half the other moves in Balboa. Again it was stuff that I'd learned before, but after this class, I felt like I owned these moves. It was absolutely great for my form and for my confidence.
We then broke for lunch.
This is where the hotel restaurant story gets even more absurd. So Rob, Elaina, Yasmina and I decide to go get lunch in the hotel restaurant. Anyway, we put in our order and waited. And waited. Now we had like an hour until the next classes, so we weren't too worried, but then after we went another 30 minutes without so much as seeing a waiter, I got concerned, walked out to get someone and asked about our food. After 10 minutes of wandering around aimlessly, the waiter went back to the kitchen and returned with 20 minutes to lesson time to tell us that they had lost our food ticket and were just putting the food in now. I of course told him that I need to be dancing in 20 minutes and had no desire to wolf down a personal pizza and then try to dance. They handed me some complementary greasy breadsticks and I left. The rest were in tracks that didn't have a class right after lunch, so they stayed to get their food. There were aparently more screw ups, but I wasn't around for them, so I won't report. Suffice to say, we won't be eating there again.
End of part 1. I'm off to my next class. More rundown afterward! Woot woot!
-Ian
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