I'm a little backed up writing wise. I have a couple of Philippine travel posts to finish. Plus, I've been doing a lot of research on Lindy Hop events recently. I'll be sharing the the reason for that in a future blog post. In the meantime I thought I'd point out a couple of amusing little things I've found. This is probably the most unique theme I've found from the Vintage Swing Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Although the prom king and queen thing may be a bit much.
Herrang Instructors by the Numbers
I can get a little obsessive compulsive sometimes. For example, I was looking at the Herrang Dance Camp website and was amazed by the fact that they have 107 teachers. Granted, they are spread out over a month, but they still employ about 30 teachers a week. Only a handful of other events like Camp Jitterbug, Lindy Focus, Lindy Shock, Beantown, and Rock That Swing each have a comparable number of teachers, but those are over long weekends or one week. Herrang usually takes place over four weeks, and this year its going to be five.
Anyway, I was curious as to how they scheduled this mass-o-teachers, so I plugged them into a spreadsheet just to see what it looked like. I’m not going to Herrang this year. I’ve never been actually. I’m just that much of a planning nerd. Simple things like this amuse me.
Jazz Era Voices Goes Live and Needs Your Input
A couple of months ago I posted about Kelly Porter's oral history archive called Jazz Era Voices, and today I got word via Facebook that it is now live. As far as the Lindy Hop community is concerned, I think this is one of the most important projects out there along with The Lindy Hoppers Fund.
Know Your Jazz Dancer: Marie Bryant
Sometimes it takes me a little while to piece things together. A few months ago I attended a presentation of jazz film clips. One of them was Jammin’ the Bluesfeaturing an all star list of musicians such as Sid Catlett, Jo Jones, Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet and a host of others. I hadn’t seen the whole thing in such a long time that it wasn’t until that night that I realized that I knew who the vocalist and dancer was.
Australia Routine Interestingness
This is from Mikey Pedroza who seems really intent on doing this on every continent. It's a routine originally choreographed by Mike Faltesek.
A couple of minor things that caught my eye.
Then and Now: Skye Humphries
Staying home most of last week due to the two biggest snowstorms in recent history here in DC, you would think I would have gotten more writing done than I did. Instead I ended up passing the time by ripping a bunch of VHS tapes to digital videos. Last count, I had about 200 clips ripped, but my internet connection isn’t that fast, so it’ll take me some time before I get them all online. It’s been fun going down memory lane with these videos though. Over on the last post for "Artistry in Rhythm," I’ve gotten a couple of comments from Julius whose been talking about the element of joy that seems to be missing in many dancers coming up these days. It’s hard to talk about something like that, but fortunately I’ve dug up some clips that I think illustrate his point.
The Legend of Minnie’s Moochers
As I’ve noted in my Artistry in Rhythm series, we’re getting to a point where things that happened in the early part of the revival are starting to feel a little bit like ancient history. Minnie’s Moochers is a big part of that as I outlined in part three of that series.
The Barbell Perspective
I noticed something very cool at the end of the video for the All Star Invitational Jack and Jill at this year’s Lone Star Championships. Peter Strom and Karen Turman shared a memory in the form of one of the first aerials they learned together when they started over 10 years ago.
Few other people in that room got that reference. Among them, were the two people who went up to hug them at the end of that jam—Mike Faltesek and Amy Johnson—because they were arpund the first time it happened back in Minnesota where they're all from originally.
Responsibility
That’s one aspect of being a leader in our scene that gets the least amount of attention when people talk about becoming more active in our community whether it’s by performing, dj’ing, promoting events, or teaching. This thought doesn’t come out of nowhere. There’s an unfortunate story being revealed right now that I don’t necessarily want to talk about directly here, but it’s so big that it can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.
Questions & Answers
Naomi Uyama once told me that she sees two different kinds of performances. Those that ask questions and those that make statements. I thought of that when after I told I Karen and Andrew that I thought (and still do think) that the routine that they performed in the Lindy Hop Showcase earlier this week at Lindy Focus should win. Andrew responded that they didn’t perform to win. They just wanted to say something to their friends and anyone else that would see them. I really think that’s why I love watching them dance.