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
All Balboa Weekend 2007 Diary - Prologue
It struck me recently that a bunch of people who wanted to read it, never got a chance to see my diary of All Balboa Weekend from this summer. As such, I'm posting it here. As you'll see, it was a blast.
Hey all,
For those of you unaware, I'm here in Akron, OH at the All Balboa Weekend. If figure that I'll write a bit each day about what's happened in the previous.
To start, allow me to explain what Balboa is. In the 1920s there was a ballroom callled The Balboa Peninsula in California, near LA, that wanted to invent their own form of swing. They had problems with the wild kicks of Charleston and the more uncouth (read black) moves of other dances. So they began to develop a swing dance done entirely in closed position. By the 1930s it was well formed enough to give a name, and they called it the Balboa. The original form of the dance, which is done entirely with the partners in body contact with one another is called Pure Bal. Eventually some of the cool Lindy spins and such made their way into Balboa, and the more modern form of the dance called Bal Swing was formed. The thing that makes a lot of people like Bal of both sorts is that the actual steps are very small, and so it can be done to crazy fast music.
So anyway, when I started dancing again at Charm City Swing, one of the intermediate classes offered in their next 8 week cycle was an introduction to Balboa. I took the class bu found it incredibly difficult and not as much fun as Lindy. By the end of the course, I had a few steps down, but nothing great. I didn't dance Bal at the social dances, instead preferring to work on my Lindy. Luckily for me Tim, the instructor, is one of the most persistent human beings on earth. He's really into Bal, and wants a lot of people to be dancing it in Baltimore. As a result he very kindly booked 3 extra hotel rooms at the All Balboa Weekend in Akron, OH. This meant that if anyone wanted to go only had to pay for registration and transportation. The cost of the beginners track of lessons was really cheap, and the most expensive part (housing) was taken care of. Well into my dance obsession at this point, I said, "What the hell," and registered.
Anyway, in the weeks leading up to here, I became at least casual friends with some of the other folks at Charm City Swing, some of whom were going. At the social dances I tried to practice a little bit of Bal even as I was learning awesome Lindy stuff from the Charm City Swing people. They day of the event drew closer, and I was a little intimidated by 3 days of solid lessons and dancing, something that I've never done before. Anyway, Thursday came, and with butterflies in my stomach, I got in the car and headed up to Akron.
Here's a run down of the Baltimore folk who are here with me -
Tim - Tim was my Bal teacher at the CCS events. He also taught my intro to Lindy class. He's only been doing this for about 2 years, but got completely obsessed with Bal and went to every class and workshop he could. Now he's really good, and really fun. In his real life, he's a federal police officer and former military. Overall he's a sweet guy and a dork that's into Sci-Fi and comics, so we get along.
Amy - Amy is Tim's girlfriend and soon to be coworker of mine. We met dancing. I found out that she was looking for teaching jobs. I let her know about the math opeining at Cardin, and she came in and got the job. She's a a physicist by trade and also really fun and math-nerdy. This is why I love CCS. They're all really my people, the sort I would be friends with anyway, even if they didn't have dancing as a common interest. She's a great Bal dancer, and is very good at giving leads pointers to make them stronger at letting the follow know what to do.
Rob and Elaina - Rob and Elaina are a married couple who met at Cornell. They're both about my age and, of course, do nerdy things. Anyway, Rob and I have basically identical tasted in music, comics, books, etc. Elaina is just a very sweet person. They gave me a ride to Akron.
Mike - Mike's my roommate here at the hotel and the only other person in the Baltimore crew in the beginner track with me. He was in the Merchant Marine and spends time on boats for a living. He's also an amateur photographer and musical theater nerd. IT goes without saying that he's a nice guy, if a bit of a goof ball. He also has a silly way of hitting on everything with two X chromosomes and a pulse.
Yasmina - I met Yasmina at my first dance class. She's French and a professor of French literature at Hopkins. She has this great sense of humor where she says incredibly silly things without ever breaking a strait face. She's a fantastic dancer too. She started Bal at the same time as me, and is in the Intermediate-Advanced track.
Matt - Matt's a college student in physics and one of the most naturally good dancers that I've ever seen. He's from the Baltimore area, but goes to Case Western University, so he's crashing here in Ohio with college friends rather than staying in the hotel.
Anyway, gotta go for now. Rob and Elaina are going out to breakfast and want to know if I'll join them. More on my exciting day yesterday when I return.
Hey all,
For those of you unaware, I'm here in Akron, OH at the All Balboa Weekend. If figure that I'll write a bit each day about what's happened in the previous.
To start, allow me to explain what Balboa is. In the 1920s there was a ballroom callled The Balboa Peninsula in California, near LA, that wanted to invent their own form of swing. They had problems with the wild kicks of Charleston and the more uncouth (read black) moves of other dances. So they began to develop a swing dance done entirely in closed position. By the 1930s it was well formed enough to give a name, and they called it the Balboa. The original form of the dance, which is done entirely with the partners in body contact with one another is called Pure Bal. Eventually some of the cool Lindy spins and such made their way into Balboa, and the more modern form of the dance called Bal Swing was formed. The thing that makes a lot of people like Bal of both sorts is that the actual steps are very small, and so it can be done to crazy fast music.
So anyway, when I started dancing again at Charm City Swing, one of the intermediate classes offered in their next 8 week cycle was an introduction to Balboa. I took the class bu found it incredibly difficult and not as much fun as Lindy. By the end of the course, I had a few steps down, but nothing great. I didn't dance Bal at the social dances, instead preferring to work on my Lindy. Luckily for me Tim, the instructor, is one of the most persistent human beings on earth. He's really into Bal, and wants a lot of people to be dancing it in Baltimore. As a result he very kindly booked 3 extra hotel rooms at the All Balboa Weekend in Akron, OH. This meant that if anyone wanted to go only had to pay for registration and transportation. The cost of the beginners track of lessons was really cheap, and the most expensive part (housing) was taken care of. Well into my dance obsession at this point, I said, "What the hell," and registered.
Anyway, in the weeks leading up to here, I became at least casual friends with some of the other folks at Charm City Swing, some of whom were going. At the social dances I tried to practice a little bit of Bal even as I was learning awesome Lindy stuff from the Charm City Swing people. They day of the event drew closer, and I was a little intimidated by 3 days of solid lessons and dancing, something that I've never done before. Anyway, Thursday came, and with butterflies in my stomach, I got in the car and headed up to Akron.
Here's a run down of the Baltimore folk who are here with me -
Tim - Tim was my Bal teacher at the CCS events. He also taught my intro to Lindy class. He's only been doing this for about 2 years, but got completely obsessed with Bal and went to every class and workshop he could. Now he's really good, and really fun. In his real life, he's a federal police officer and former military. Overall he's a sweet guy and a dork that's into Sci-Fi and comics, so we get along.
Amy - Amy is Tim's girlfriend and soon to be coworker of mine. We met dancing. I found out that she was looking for teaching jobs. I let her know about the math opeining at Cardin, and she came in and got the job. She's a a physicist by trade and also really fun and math-nerdy. This is why I love CCS. They're all really my people, the sort I would be friends with anyway, even if they didn't have dancing as a common interest. She's a great Bal dancer, and is very good at giving leads pointers to make them stronger at letting the follow know what to do.
Rob and Elaina - Rob and Elaina are a married couple who met at Cornell. They're both about my age and, of course, do nerdy things. Anyway, Rob and I have basically identical tasted in music, comics, books, etc. Elaina is just a very sweet person. They gave me a ride to Akron.
Mike - Mike's my roommate here at the hotel and the only other person in the Baltimore crew in the beginner track with me. He was in the Merchant Marine and spends time on boats for a living. He's also an amateur photographer and musical theater nerd. IT goes without saying that he's a nice guy, if a bit of a goof ball. He also has a silly way of hitting on everything with two X chromosomes and a pulse.
Yasmina - I met Yasmina at my first dance class. She's French and a professor of French literature at Hopkins. She has this great sense of humor where she says incredibly silly things without ever breaking a strait face. She's a fantastic dancer too. She started Bal at the same time as me, and is in the Intermediate-Advanced track.
Matt - Matt's a college student in physics and one of the most naturally good dancers that I've ever seen. He's from the Baltimore area, but goes to Case Western University, so he's crashing here in Ohio with college friends rather than staying in the hotel.
Anyway, gotta go for now. Rob and Elaina are going out to breakfast and want to know if I'll join them. More on my exciting day yesterday when I return.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Jam Moves: 1-3
Here we have Dorry and Sommer demonstrating moves from the first three sessions of the Jam Moves class.
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