Midwest Lindyfest 2012

Midwest Lindyfest is an event that everyone should experience at least once in their swing dancing career. It’s relatively small compared to the mega events such as Camp Jitterbug, Camp Hollywood or ILHC, but the quality of dancing is quite high, which leads to killer jams, great competitions and good social dancing. Small events mean you don’t get swallowed up in the masses. It’s easier to meet people and find them again for a dance the next night. Smaller events also mean smaller classes, which means dancers are more likely to get some sort of personal attention during class.

In addition to that, there’s a show on Friday night, live music at every main dance, and dancing on a riverboat. Seriously; dancing, booze and live music on a riverboat meandering down the Mississippi River. What more could you ask for in an evening, really?

One thing I loved about Midwest this year was the blocked classes. It is a truly wonderful thing to spend more than just an hour with a pair of instructors, and I’m sure the instructors are happy about it too. Each class was about 1 hour and 40 minutes, so it gave everyone ample time to teach and learn the material for each class.

The very number 1 thing I loved this year at Midwest: class tryouts during lunch. There is nothing more painful than waking up at 9am to be at 10am tryouts and to sweat it out cold first thing in the morning. The dancers trying out hate it, and it looks like the instructors hate it too. Tryouts were at 1pm, the perfect time for the night owls to crawl out of bed and grab food without bringing their grouchy suits with them. And, to make matters better, lunch was 2 1/2 hours long, so it gave everyone plenty of time to try out and eat lunch leisurely. Woo!

The competitions were baller. The competition was steep and everyone came ready to play.

After Christian and Jenny did those hacksaws, the competition was pretty much over. They murdered us! And thanks to Glenn Crytzer and his Syncopators for making it quite the competition indeed. They killed it in the strictly.

The Jack and Jill finals were so much fun! Not just to be in, but to watch too. It had a great vibe throughout the entire competition.

Unfortunately, the clips from the show aren’t up yet. I didn’t get to see most of the acts since I was backstage most of the time, but word on the street (and when I say street, I mean dance floor. And when I say dance floor, I actually just mean the lovely Stacia Martin) said there were a lot of great acts this year. So keep your eyes peeled for them on the tubes.

Finally, I want to give a big Heyo! to the organizers, Stacia Martin and her crew. It was evident that every decision they made was meticulously thought out, and I appreciate their passion and hard work to make this such a smooth sailing and successful event.

 

505 Stomp 2012

There are three things I have to say about 505 Stomp 2012: dodgeball, light sabers, and limbo. Yeah, that stuff actually happened. All at the same time. Oh, and by the way, Brett Dahlenburg was dressed up as Darth Vader.

Seriously though. I’m biased, obviously, but 505 Stomp this year was good. Really good. There are a few things that make workshop weekends successful. Having a well organized event, obvious; having friendly, knowledgeable instructors, again, obvious. But the number one thing that makes an event successful is the people, hands down. And it was the vibe that everyone brought to the event this year. It was fun, friendly, and more fun.

Here were some of the highlights from the weekend:

Dani Easley, Eva Robinson, and I performed our first time together as an all girls’ troupe. Name still pending.

I didn’t expect everyone to laugh at my solo, but it was awesome when they did. And it was a good thing we had all those feathers. I felt a little naked and cold without them.

Special thanks to Karen Turman for being the rockstar of the weekend. She made my costume, did my hair and my makeup.

Mikey Pedroza, Nirav Sanghani and Yossef Mendelssohn performing a hat trick shim sham. They were adorable.

The Jedi Jack & Jill competition. We made it go a little faster than at ABQLX, but we’re still honing our skills on running this competition more efficiently. Dodgeball comes in at about 21.:27. Dizzy bats came after that, which was also great. You’ll see what I mean.

There’s no video of this up yet, but the winners of the Jedi Jack & Jill were awarded light sabers, which quickly turned from a planned competition into an unplanned one, as people started a limbo competition during our Saturday late night dance. Limbo turned into jams, which led to an epic end of the dance.

The organizers of 505 Stomp are not professional organizers. We have a very limited budget to work with, and convincing people to visit New Mexico isn’t always easy. But we try our best to make the event run as smooth as possible, to provide the best instruction possible, and to make the event an environment that’s condusive to creating and having a lot of fun.

This was our best year yet, and we hope next year is even better. We hope you had as much fun as we did.

If you want to come participate in the next Jedi Jack & Jill competition, we’re resuming the epic battle October 12-14, 2012 at the 5th Albuquerque Lindy Exchange. Bring your sabers,  bring your shields, and bring your strength. It’s going to be glorious.

Keeping The Rhythm Querque

In a few weeks (actually the weekend of 505 Stomp) will be the 1 year anniversary of Rhythm. In addition to it being 1 year since Albuquerque lindyhoppers found a permanent home, it will also be 1 year since we decided to  do a complete overhaul of the scene; we started consistent, progressive classes with The Rhythm Project, and within The Rhythm Project we gave our weekly swing dance a face lift. Our dances have more than doubled in size over the past year, our classes are growing, and we’re retaining students. We have more dancers involved in running the dance, teaching the drop-in lesson and DJing. We’ve made a point to either have a snowball or a jam every week, even if the jams aren’t always created in an organic way, and we encourage and cheer on newbies who go into the jam. We spend more time investing in individual newbies, inviting them out for food after the dances or to go to parties with us. For the first time, I feel like I can honestly say that not only is our scene really growing, but it’s progressing and becoming more than just the infant stages of a dance scene. It’s legit.

We don’t have the best dancers, or the biggest scene, or even quazi-decent live music to dance to, but we don’t care about that, because that’s not what makes a dance scene great. It’s the people, the attitude and the personality of the scene. We have each other to learn and grow from. We don’t care about winning competitions or being the best. It’s not about fame or glory or money. It’s about fun, about finding a sanctuary to be ourselves, to give our all to something wonderful. It’s about changing your bad day around, bonding together as a community and having a great time. We do it because we have to it. We’re obsessed. There’s nothing else any of us could even begin to think of doing instead of Lindy Hop. And, in all honesty, why would we?

We dance because we love it. And we love it because of each other. I couldn’t ask to be in a better dance scene than this.

Nob Hill in the 1940′s

The tall Motel sign on the right with the flower shape at the top is where Rhythm is today

The Lindy Hop Mating Call: The Story Behind The Silly Sound

So, I’ll just go ahead and make my shameless plug now to get it out of the way. If you haven’t signed up 505 Stomp yet, you should. Seriously, it’s going to be really awesome. I’m super excited about it, I know the instructors are really excited about it, and you should be too.

Today I’m telling you the story that led up to this:

It all started about a year ago when I was hanging out with some friends, when Dani Easley and I created this noise randomly to annoy Kevin Clark. It succeeded gloriously. It rapidly began to be used for other situations too, like cheering Brett Dahlenburg up when he was being a grouchy pants, or making each other laugh by seeing how loud we could make the noise.

It wasn’t until we had a lindy bomb in the early spring and made the noise that someone said that it sounds like a mating call for lindyhoppers. And so that’s what we called it. The point of the mating call is to make the noise when you don’t have anyone to dance with, and someone will be attracted to you and immediately run up and start dancing with you. In non-dancing environments, it can also be used as a call of distress or to find others in large crowds. We swore at that moment we’d make a video of it. Someday. Somehow.

Fast forward to July, we’re at The Rhythm Is Jumpin’, and after a few people hear this noise, I promise them I’d do it during the finals of a contest. And thus I did at about 1:09:

I’m pretty sure one of the judges broke his clipboard from pounding it on the ground from laughing so hard.

Fast forward to September. I had no idea about this until yesterday, actually, but Sarah Carney created this in inspiration of TRIJ 2011.

It’s spreading. And before you know you’ll be making the noise too. It’ll start in your home, by yourself as to not embarass yourself. You’ll tell your friends about it, make the noise for them. They’ll make it too. See how fast it spreads? It’ll be a thing. Just wait.

Oh, and don’t forget. 505 Stomp. The whole reason that video was made.

Lone Star Championships 2012

I’m pretty sure Lone Star Championships posesses some sort of magical powers. Why is it that it’s everything you want and need in a weekend event to have a great time and grow as a dancer? I know they don’t necessarily feel like they deserve the credit, but Scott Angelius and Tena Morales put on a killer event this weekend.

Seriously. Free food AND free booze? Come on. Come on. You can’t not love that.

Most dancers don’t realize everything it takes to create a seamless event, and it’s often a very thankless job. I always feel it’s important to give kudos to those organizers that really put their hearts and souls into their events. It shows and it makes every single dancer’s time at the event better.

Going to a Tena event is like going home to your mom’s house for dinner. She’s going to cook up something real nice and nutritious for you and it’s going to be the best thing you’ve eaten since the last time you ate at her house. She’s the momma bear of the Lindy Hop community, and whether or not  you know her or have even been to one of her events, she has directly affected your Lindy Hop career in one way or another.

But back to the magical powers that Lone Star possesses. Seriously, there’s something going on there.

Lone Star is the kind of event that’s intimate, casual, yet so full of content that it’s difficult to not burst at the seams with excitement and inspiration. The afternoons are stuffed full of competitions that are not for the faint of heart. The competition is fierce and you have to bring your A game. At the main dances, you’ll hear great live music and see fantastic competition finals in a large ballroom. The late nights are full of Championsips, kick ass dancing, great conversation and impromptu group singing to Disney songs in the smaller rooms of the mansion where the event is held. You’ll get so in the zone with your dancing that you forget about everything else: feeling sore or tired, feeling hungry, needing to pee. Before you know it it’s 5am, they’re cleaning up the venue and you’re still ready for more dancing. You’ll make friends, talk with people you’ve never talked with before, and sing “A Whole New World” with people from all over the country who not so secretly love the song. You’ll wander into a back room where some lindy hoppers are jamming on instruments, and before you know it, nearly the entire late night is dancing in there.

All of these things are all of the reasons why people love Lindy Hop. And that’s why Lone Star is so awesome. There’s nothing missing from it. It’s everything you need and more. Free food AND free booze!

If you didn’t get to go, here are a few things that you missed out on:

The Blues Finals. This was by far, the best competition of the weekend.

Andrew Thigpen and Nina Gilkenson tearing it up in the Invitational Jack & Jill.

The Booze. Boom.

 

 

 

The Plight Of The Lindy Hop Follower

When you’re first learning Lindy Hop, there’s definitely a learning curve. Lindy Hop is probably one of the hardest partner dances out there, since not only is the swing out your basic and arguably the most difficult move in Lindy Hop at the same time, but there aren’t really any hard and fast rules to the dance. So much of it can’t be shown or explained fully, it just has to experienced.

The learning curve is also different for leads and follows. Initially, I think it’s a lot more difficult for leads. They have to think about the footwork, the beat, which move they’re doing next and leading their follow at the same time. It’s enough for anyone’s head to pretty much explode all over the dance floor. Eventually, things ease up a lot for leads as all of those different aspects begin to work for the leads instead of against them.

As far as the followers go, I think the process can sometimes be a little more painful to endure. The beginning stages of learning to dance seem to come to followers more easily, but it’s once their leads start to improve more that their learning curve punches them in the face. Suddenly, after dancing for 6 months or a year, followers realize that  they’re pretty much relearning how to do everything in order to dance with well with others. And not only is it a complete mind bend, but it’s also a blow to their ego. It’s almost like they’ve been tricked. All this time they’re feeling like they’re improving, until they crash right into this brick wall and they realize that they don’t know anything about dancing. Ouch.

At least for leads, they can get a lot of that out of the way early on when they’re still brand new to dancing.

There are a couple of followers in our scene who are going through this right now, which is what made me decide to write about it. They’ve both been dancing for about a year or so now. They’re trying hard in classes, obviously concentrating a lot on the social dance floor, and not only look so lost in thought that they aren’t having that much fun, but they’re frustrated with themselves at the same time. I think for anyone, lead or follow, who’s going through this stage, can feel really disheartened, often times more so than you feel it should (as most of us just do this for fun). But don’t let it get you down. It’ll pass with time as long as you persevere through it.

Here are perhaps a few things to remember:

-Anything that you want to be good at, requires practice. And just because you want to be good at something, doesn’t mean that you will be right away. Besides, compared to the rest of the world, you’re probably pretty good at dancing.

-Being positive about your dancing is the best thing you can do for yourself. There’s a difference between understanding what you need to work on and being too critical of yourself. There will always be something that you’re working on in your dancing, so if something doesn’t come to you right away, don’t sweat it.

-There’s definitely an aspect of Lindy Hop that makes it more fun as you gain more skill, and let’s face it, it’s a competitve world out there, but skill isn’t everything. Having a great attitude and a smile on your face goes a long way in the social dance world.

 

 

Lovin’ The Lindy Hop

When people ask me to describe what Lindy hop is, I always tell them that it’s a dance of celebration. Obviously, that can be interpreted in a lot of different ways, and I think it should be.

Honestly though, I haven’t been feeling very celebretory lately. My dancing has felt like absolute crap, I haven’t been feeling inspired at any of the dances lately, and overall I’ve been in a dance slump. I’ve rarely felt eager to go out dancing, I’ve been feeling lazy and haven’t wanted to focus on improving my dancing, and I haven’t been going to any of my dance classes lately. And just the fact that I haven’t been feeling celebretory has made me feel yucky.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been in a funk over my dancing, but somehow it doesn’t seem to get any easier to deal with. Lately, I’ve just been desperately searching for that single moment that changes everything: a great dance, an inspirational student or class, an awesome event (which is hard to come by when you don’t have any money to travel). But between those middle school classes we were teaching (which, just as a quick aside, we spoke with the teacher not long ago when she came to our dance, and she said she transferred schools because those kids were making her hair fall out she was so miserable) and having a rough and perhaps somewhat embarassing weekend dance-wise at ILHC, things just haven’t been super exciting in my personal dance world.

I wrote everything above over a month ago. As you can see, with a lack of inspiration also came a complete inability to write anything worthwhile reading. I didn’t know how to conclude what I was saying, and it was largely because I wasn’t done feeling crappy. But something happened at our Saturday dance that changed everything.

I received a card from a few students who are in The Rhythm Project. There’s 3 or 4 of them that are always hanging out together, they come to every class religiously, even the drop-in class on Saturday (which is the exact same lesson every week). Every Saturday they go across the street to the gas station and get one of those giant slushies. They’re really adorable. And they’re all in their mid 30′s or older.

And it was just a card that completely changed my attitude. All they did was thank me for introducing them to Lindy Hop. They said it’s changed their lives and now they’re happier people. It was so touching that I had a glistening tear.

And that’s when I realized that they’re the reason why I do what I do. I think it’s pretty safe to say that everyone who’s been dancing consistently for while has felt that Lindy hop has changed their lives in one way or another. How can it not? The addiction of fun, the excitement of watching a jam, a competition, dancing late into the night and eating breakfast even later at diners with friends from all over the world that you’ve just met. It makes everyone feel young, no matter how old you are. It’s refreshing and invigorating.

This group of new Lindy hoppers are the kind of people that make going out dancing worthwhile. They’re the content of the scene, the new bread and butter that goes with every meal. They’re crazy obsessed, energetic, and essential. They’re the reason why every dance scene in this world exists. They’re all the things that I love about Lindy hop.

Since I started organizing and scene building, the one thing that I wanted more than anything was for people to be absolutely insane about Lindy hop. Well, here they are. Crazier and more dedicated than ever.

 

Flash Mobbing Albuquerque

About a month and a half ago, I was contacted in regards to putting together a flash mob for a wedding proposal. When they first contacted me, all the oragnizers knew was that they wanted 20 dancers and they wanted to do it at the airport, so that after Keegan proposed to Ellie (both are non dancers and had been recommended to me by some random person), they would hop on a plane to San Francisco to celebrate their engagement for the weekend. They were scrambling to nail down a date, and when they finally did, I had about 2 weeks notice to get 20 dancers together (which isn’t easy in Albuquerque), create a 4 song mash up and teach and rehearse the dancers the choreography.

In the end, I was only able to scrounge up 16 dancers, with 2 girls leading, and of which most had never performed before. We had a total of 8 hours of teaching and practicing before the big day.

So here’s what the plan looked like. Ellie thought they were coming to the airport to pick up one of Keegan’s friends. As they get onto the escalator, Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve begins to play. It’s a very etheral song if you’ve never heard it. Then, once they get to the top, the dancers start dancing, and for the grand finale, we surround them to The Big Apple and The California Routine. The dancing ends, he proposes, he hopes she’ll say yes, they go back outside to get their bags, which Keegan has already discreetly packed for Ellie, and they go on their marry way.

We arrived at the airport at 9am on Saturday (I know! Right? So early to be dancing.) with Ellie’s entire family waiting anxiously for them to come. Kevin Clark waited at the bottom of the escalator with my phone and waited for a text from Keegan that they were inside the airport. He called me on his phone (it was a whole confusing phone trading fiasco that’s not really worth getting into) to count down when the music should start, I cued Brett Dahlenburg, he pressed play, and away we went. Here’s the video:

As Dani Easley is frolicking around, Keegan and Ellie are riding up the escalator. Ellie was really confused by what was happening, so we had to kind of push them here and there to keep them out of the line of kicks and death. Once we surrounded them with The Big Apple, some of the dancers heard Ellie say, “What the hell is going on?” and Keegan replied with, “I have no idea. This is really weird!”

Despite how little time we had to work it out, everyone did a really good job! They were super quick to pick up The Big Apple, and everyone seemed to have had a really great time rehearsing and performing.

Congrats to Keegan and Ellie!

ABQLX: The Destruction And The Aftermath

Albuquerque lays in complete and utter ruins today. The buildings leveled; the streets buckled and unusable. No one is around. There’s no sound except a slight breeze rustling through the rubble and the trash that litters the landscape now. All because the Albuquerque Lindy Exchange was the bomb that destroyed it all.

It. Was. The. Bomb.

Seriously.

Here are some of the highlights:

This year we had a new venue for our main dances: The North Domingo Baca Multigenerational Center, a brand new facility that’s soon to cover nearly a mile’s worth of land with parks, swimming pools, tennis courts, and more. The social hall had an entire wall of acordian glass doors that opened out onto a patio, so not only did it stay cool in the dance hall, but we got to be half inside, half outside. Plus, they provided drinks and snacks for everyone (most of which were free), and with comfortable seating inside and outside. We couldn’t have asked for a better venue.

Gordon Webster:

Oh. My. God. Gordon killed it Friday! The band was super energetic and tight and completely blew everyone away. He had a 3 song encore, wherein he played a blues song as his last song. I almost cried.  It was beautiful. Not to mention that everyone in the room was still dancing or gawking in awe at the musicians. Plus, Aurora Nealand, the singer/soprano sax, was one of the most beautiful sounding musicians I’ve ever heard in my life. I seriously forgot I was dancing with someone when I started to hear her play.

Saturday Day:

Our ABQLX tradition for Saturday afternoons is to have a lindy bomb in a hardwood floored gazebo in Old Town, the original settlement in Albuquerque, built circa 1779. The gazebo sits in the middle of the plaza, with restaurants, churches, and shops surrounding it. It’s a hub of culture, tourism, and festivities. Old Town was also having their Harvest Festival that day, so there were extra people out and about getting ready for the evening’s events. The weather was perfect, and the gazebo was packed the entire afternoon. Afterwards, a large group of us went to a restaurant across the way where we sat on the patio and were served free margaritas from a giant pitcher. Thanks to our waiter, Ruben, for being so nice and joining us in celebrating.

Saturday Main Dance:

Here’s a clip of our Jack & Jill finals.

Saturday Late Night:

This was probably my favorite moment of the entire event. We had a Jedi Jack & Jill Competition (Oh, it’s going to become a thing) in which there were two hats: one was to pull the type of music the competitors would dance to, the second was the task that they had to perform.

The Ultimate Task: Dodgeball Lindy Hop. Ping pong balls were flying everywhere, and dancers were, well, trying to dance. It was the most organized chaos I’ve ever seen in my life.

It doesn’t end there. We get down to our last two couples, battling it out to “You And Me And The Bottle Makes Three,” when we declare a winner. Mike Faltesek immediately sat down with his guitar, began strumming the song where it left off, and one by one, just like in Hellzapoppin’, the rest of The Careless Lovers join in to create a fabulous rendition of “You And Me And The Bottle Makes Three”. It was the perfect segue back into the social dancing.

The Careless Lovers:

I love them. They’re fun, careless (zing!) and have a great down-home, casual feel. Plus, Falty and Freddie Dickinson are great guys, and were a huge asset  to have this year.

Sunday Afternoon:

Sunday was perfect. We BBQed with the Route 66 Malt Shop next door to Rhythm, hung out outside on their patio, and there was a little dancing. The day was really all about hanging out together, eating some food, and having a good time.

A few side notes that helped our event so much this year:

Our volunteers this year were rock stars. Not only did they go well beyond their regular duties, but we didn’t even need to ask them to do something for us most of the time. They just did it. Volunteering for an event can often be thankless work. It was really great to see how much our volunteers cared about making the event the best it could possibly be, and I’m really thankful for that. The volunteers are the backbone of events; events couldn’t run without them.

The great thing about smaller events is that you see every single person at the event. No one goes unnoticed. Everyone who came this year brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm with them. People were super friendly and laid back.

ABQLX isn’t the biggest event, nor does it have the most badass dancers in the world or world class competitions, but it’s always a great time. This was our best year yet. Believe me, you’re going to want to come next year.