Housekeeping: ILHC Posts

Just a quick note that I've updated the previous ILHC 2009 posts with videos or links to videos, including my current favorite footage of Skye & Frida's Classic Division routine. I have some time since I got sick during the weekend, so the good news for you is that I'll be able to finish posting my observations from the event in the next day or two.

Official results for ILHC 2009 will be posted online on the ILHC website hopefully within the next week as the staff makes their way home and catches up on the rest of their lives. I'll post an update when that happens.

Dates and a brand new hotel for ILHC 2010 have been locked in, so stay tuned for that information as well.

AIR pt. 8: Competition Concerns

“[I]t is obvious that artists reflect their times and backgrounds and their art works are oftentimes more eloquent than any politician’s speech or sociological study.”[1] Marco Pignataro

Also at the ALHC 2000, Ben Furnas and Lucy Dunne performed one of the competition’s most infamous routines where they lampooned the general state of competitions in both the Lindy Hop and West Coast Swing worlds.

ILHC 2009-Swing It On Out There

Saturday night was so good that I didn't get to bed until 7:30 am. When you plan an event, there's only so much you can hope for. Especially when you're dealing with a creative community like the Lindy Hop one. Most times you just hope that people don't take the opportunity to embarrass themselves. That didn't happen last night. Too much. I haven't seen a show that consistently good in a very long time.

ILHC 2009: The Stuff is Here

The Friday night and Saturday day activities at ILHC are in the books. Great music from the band and the DJ's and awesome dancing from the competitors. We had workshops through the day before the evening events started. I was able to sit in on Sylvia Sykes' "What Judges Look For" workshop which drew a pretty big crowd in the main ballroom.

I didn't really take notes, so I don't want to put any words into Sylvia's mouth. But I think that if anyone there was looking for the secret to doing well in competitions, they would have been sorely disappointed. However, it was a very pragmatic and insightful look into the other side of competitions.

ILHC 2009: Frida and Skye, Classic Division

One of the first videos to come out of ILHC this weekend. Frida Segerdahl and Skye Humphries performed in the ILHC Classic Division on Friday night a little before midnight. This video hit YouTube about four hours later.

ILHC 2009: Eye of the Storm

Setting up for ILHC yesterday went pretty well, and ended ahead of schedule. I really like the fact that we started on Thursday instead of Friday like we did last year. Last year we dove head long into the weekend; setting everything up, having people practice their routines on a dance floor that wasn't completed, and then going straight into the dance and competitions.

This year felt much more casual. A lot of that had to do with the dedicated volunteers we have plus the super professional contractors.

Reputations are made or broken at big events, but this isn't limited to performers. Tena Morales likes to run an event with fewer hard working volunteers instead of having a bunch of warm bodies filling out the volunteer schedule. She values reliability over numbers. Exceptional volunteers are remembered, rewarded, and referred to other events. Bad volunteers are shown the door. Sometimes mid-event.

Random Links & Videos: International Week in Review Edition

With the International Lindy Hop Championships coming up I noticed the amazing array of lindy videos from around the world uploaded onto YouTube just in the past week. It makes the spread of Lindy Hop in the past two decades that much more impressive.

Ghost of ILHC past

At 1:00 pm on Friday afternoon, we got official access to all the meeting spaces at the hotel. At that moment we had planned for the sound and the floors to be installed simultaneously, plenty of time before the risers arrived and the chairs to be set up for the 8:00 pm opening of the ballroom for social dancing.

At 1:01 pm on Friday afternoon, I was standing in the middle of an empty ballroom.

America's Best Dance Crew-1933: The Four Step Brothers

You may remember a performance by The Harlem Hot Shots on Thursday night of Frankie95. Someone uploaded the original clip and I thought it would be nice to put them together. The scene is from a 1933 short film entitled "Barber Shop Blues" featuring Claude Hopkins and His Orchestra. He was leader of one of the house bands at the Savoy Ballroom in 1931.

AIR Pt. 7: Connection Junkies

Another interesting trend during this period was the growing number of people, regardless of style, who worked intensely on partnering mechanics. Again, this is where crossover events had a major effect. Even if a Lindy Hopper would not appreciate the music or the general aesthetic of West Coast Swing, there could be no denying that WCS during this time period had a much more superior grasp of connection than was generally known in Lindy Hop at the time. Since WCS dancers were seen as superior dancers because of that grasp of technique, it led many people to focus on that. As with many other things dancers were doing at this time, it was eventually worked on to an extreme.