You'd be this happy too if you were playing at Lindy Focus.
Jonathan Stout's Lindy Focus All Star Orchestra is delivering the goods, and people are taking note with more and more people crowding around the bandstand each night to bask in the aural glory. Here are a few things to watch and listen for over the next remaining nights of unprecedented musical goodness.
For quite some time, my standard answer for how long I’ve been dancing has been “about 10 years.” It’s getting to a point where I need to re-evaluate that answer. I took my first Lindy Hop class in January of 1999, almost 13 years ago, from a woman who still inspires me to this day.
I feel like I’m a broken record in saying how many great videos and performances there were this year. It’s part of the reason why I broke up the video selections like I did. I would have had no problem sharing all the other videos, but that would have been a long frickin’ post. (Not that I usually have a problem with that) I really enjoyed all the videos that have been posted so far, but I reserved this post to highlight stuff that somehow fell through the cracks for whatever reason. A lot of them are from earlier this year, and just didn’t meet the metric standards of the earlier posts based on this blog's Facebook Page simply because of sheer numbers. However, it’s still all quality stuff.
I was distinctly unproductive on this blog this year, so I’m going to make up for it by commenting on (almost) everything in one shot. In looking up all the videos and blog links on this blog’s Facebook Page for other posts I noticed some things and was reminded of a few more. Obviously, this can’t be a comprehensive recap of the entire Lindy Hop scene, but I think it’s still pretty amazing that all this information is in relatively easy reach.
This post is the part where I decided to do a not very easy search for the most viewed Lindy Hop related videos on YouTube. It wasn’t easy because the search filter on YouTube doesn’t allow you to search a specific date range. Plus, people like tagging their random crap with the words “Lindy Hop.” I have a feeling that is how stuff gets tons of views because users will tag their videos with all kinds of unrelated words to get suckers like me to pull them up in searches.
But you probably don’t care about details, so here’s the list. More details after.
Over at Bug’s Question of the Day, someone asked for people’s favorite competition videos from 2000-2004. No one answered seriously, so I whipped out a post I wrote on Yehoodi a few years ago when they asked for the top American Lindy Hop Championship moments through 2006. I was just going to cut out the excess years and post that to Bug’s question, but then in a fit of late night random productiveness, I added a whole bunch of stuff I could remember.
Any event would murder to have any one of these people in charge. We have so many of them on staff that there are seasoned organizers just keeping an eye on the doors. Rather than a clash of approaches and personalities, everyone understands of how they fit in the greater whole. They made my job 5 million times easier. It’s embarrassing to even admit that some of these people answer to me because most of the time they run themselves.
The common thread that unites everyone is simply a willingness to be a part of something worthwhile.
That something is this forum for creative ideas. It takes place in the form of competitions of all levels and formats for dancers from all over the world to show everyone else what they’re about; To show the world what Lindy Hop is about.
When I asked Skye if he was doing anything over ILHC weekend, he said he was hoping to, but didn’t have anything prepared. This was last Thursday. Classic division was on Friday, which was the same night that Frida was flying in.
Dear Jerry,
I have never been this into facebook stalking someone I don't even know. Thank you for all of the amazing posts.
Sincerely,
Miranda
Wandering & Pondering - JSAlmonte
You're welcome. Now you know how I feel stalking an entire community.
Hopefully I’ll talk a bit about the Lone Star Championships by next week. Until then I thought I’d point out Jo Hoffberg’s dance with Nick Williams in the Invitational Jack & Jill of that event.
