This frees me up to talk about the Harlem Hot Shots' huge week. Last weekend they performed in the show “The Last Bounce” which is supposed to be the last show featuring the Stockholm based dance company Bounce. As you’ll see from the video, it was a huge arena sized show in front of thousands of people. According to the website they did five shows in front of a total of 54,000 people!
What do you call a one man flash mob? Canadian. Relax. It's the weekend.
Bonus: Check out this sweet routine from an event called Shuffle The House from a few weeks ago in, I think, Switzerland.
Bonus 2: A nice two woman Charleston routine from Portugal by Diana Rocha and Abeth Farag. According to an earlier version of this routine, it was partially choreographed by Nina Gilkenson.
April is getting pretty crazy with all the cool videos coming out. I've posted quite a bunch of videos from far off lands, but I wanted to spotlight a few American ones that have come out in the past few weeks. They all happen to be college teams, and are a nice look at the next generation of Lindy Hop.
Just needed a change in scenery as you can tell. Besides the light background is less conspicuous when viewing from work. Not that I would ever do such a thing. Also for your Sunday viewing pleasure, a beautiful and inspirational video created by a dancer from Seattle named Cheryl Crow which I found through the magic of Facebook. She created this for the 2010 Swing/Jazz Dancing Video Contest. Watch it and share with others.
And because sometimes you can't let the Man keep you down, I got an account on Dailymotion.com. I probably won't post there very often, unless its stuff like this that won't go down the YouTubes properly.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xczmwb_tatianna-mollman-skye-humphries-nad_creation
I realize I'm a bit behind on these things, but I've been busy and there's a lot of Lindy Awesome out there. This week's videos come all the way from Singapore at SEAJam 2010 run by Sing Lim. Sing Lim is a dancer that I think more people need to know about. Ask people like Nina and Naomi and they'll go on and on about her. In my opinion, she ranks up there with modern Lindy Hop legends like Steven Mitchell, Sylvia Sykes, and Ryan Francois. In fact here's a video of her performing with Ryan in 1993.
Our friends over in Seattle had a neat event a couple weeks ago called Savoy Swing Jam to showcase their awesome local scene. I spotlighted the J & J finals in a post last week and thought I’d put up the rest to complete the set. In addition to your standard partnered and solo competitions, Savoy Swing Jam also featured a Short Showcase which allowed contestants to perform a 30-60 second routine. A few other place have done something similar in the past including us over at The Jam Cellar. The time limit makes it a little easier for new performers to give it a go without having the pressure of choreographing and performing a whole song. As you’ll see below, a wide variety of pieces were submitted from Katie McLaughlin & Jared Luxemberg’s clever use of Mess Around variations to Michael “Dargoff” Darigol & Carolyn Palma’s staright forward attempt at swinging out to a song that I think clocks in under 340 bpm’s. At a certain point, it just becomes a little impossible to measure such things. Check 'em all out below. It won't take long ;)
I’ve discovered that one of the barometers to measure the quality of an event is to see how many videos, how high quality they are and how fast they’re posted after the event is over. On all counts, Lindyfest from a few weeks ago wins. It took a little while for me to sort through them all because they’re all really good. There's at least three videos of every performance and jam. I recommend going over to Jo Hoffberg's blog where she posted the Houston Swing Dance Society's own videos from the event. They had a a few camera's going and were able to pick up the performances from some cool angles.
Those crazy French put on the Crazy Rhythm Challenge in Toulouse France a couple of weekends ago. Lot’s of good stuff posted by Teedee Hop. You can find more videos over on their YouTube page here.
This week's highlights come from Germany's Rock That Swing Festival 2010. Kelly Arsenault and Mickey Fortanasce
Videos courtesy of
http://www.youtube.com/user/SwingVideos
I'm going to be offline for the next week for my vacation. So if you post a comment somewhere, and it doesn't show up, rest assured that I'll get to it when I return. I'm sure you won't miss me especially with so many other online disctractions to keep you occupied. You can still come back and be entertained since I finally figure out how to time delay posts. So you should see some new content pop up this week while I'm away.
