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.....
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