What are some of the “core moves” of the Lindy Hop?
The basic of the Lindy Hop is the Swing Out: a circular step done in eight beats in which the partners come together and then move apart. I have never seen anything so perfectly put together, there is no more versatile or meaningful basic in any dance I’ve seen.
Just a few more thoughts on the ULHS footage that's currently online. I don’t have much to add to my initial reactions to the Choreography Showcase, Solo Jazz, and Jack n Jill.
But I should mention how impressed I was with the Ultimate Lindy Hop Combo and the job they did for the Choreography Showcase. They played the diversity of material they were asked to do incredibly well given the time constraints.
I’m also glad that the New Mexico team, Groove Juice Special, won the Showcase. They had a great energy to their performance that still comes across pretty well over video.
All contests music by Uncle Jack's New Orleans Dance Orchestra. Solo Jazz
Preliminary Round
Final
Dancers in order of appearance
Heat 2
Winners: Vincenzo Fesi & Alice Mei
The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown Choreography Showcase Live music for all performance provided by a special band put together for ULHS, appropriately known as the Ultimate Lindy Hop Combo.
All performers had to submit a sample of their music and a video of their performance about a month before the event to give the musicians time to create and rehearse a complimentary arrangement. All performers were given time to rehearse with the musicians on Thursday and Friday of the event.
Winners: Groove Juice Special
Cats In The Corner
Laura Glaess & Mike Roberts
Sister Kate
Alain Wong & Marie N'diaye
Philly Bloomers
How were you introduced to dancing in general? Were you a trained dancer before going into swing? If swing was your first exposure to dance, what drew you to it/ made you want to become a dancer.
I always had an interest in movement- though not necessarily dancing.
I used to want to be a clown. I loved the old movies of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. My brothers and I would recreate slapstick scenes, walks, and a million other little motions we watched in those old movies. I loved the way those guys moved, I loved the way their specific movements felt when I watched them and later when I tried them myself.
Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown: A Lindy Hop Battle This year The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown lived up to its name by adopting a tournament style format, whittling down couples until there was only one left.
I wandered through the National Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial on my way to Chinatown last night. I do that often enough that it didn’t take me very long to notice how unusually bright it was. I noticed them replacing many of the light fixtures around the memorial not long ago. Apparently it’s been a long time coming, because not only was everything brighter, but light was coming from little niches that I didn’t even know were supposed have them. As I popped out of the other side, I noticed that F St. by the Verizon Center was blocked off. Judging from the police and tents, I thought that it was some sort of emergency preparedness drill until I spotted skate boarders casually rolling past the tents.
Flashback to about a year ago, doing the same walk and finding the same scene. Not nearly as pleasant as it was last night. Raining lightly, but heavy enough to warrant an umbrella. The sounds of Fats Waller’s band playing the moody “Dark Eyes” on my ipod.
As I approached the tents, I smelled them before I noticed them moving. Horses. Lots of them. A sign for the Washington International Horse Show hung on the fence separating the passerby's from the makeshift corrals.
I stopped for a moment under a street lamp and got a better view of those handsome creatures. I made eye contact with one of them and I forgot where I was going for a moment, wondering what I was looking at. Fatigue? Sadness?
Back to last night. I'm greeted by the same scene. Horses at rest. Humans at work. Stalking the stalls, shuffling hay, checking out the competition.
No ipod for me , but I still hear music as I approach the metro. Less Russian inspired Harlem jazz, but instead more like early 80’s r & b.
“Toniiiiiight I celebrate my lovvvve for you . . .”
There’s something off. It's not a recording. Someone is singing. And not very well.
I round the corner into the metro entrance to find a guy playing a keyboard on the sidewalk. A Middle-aged Asian man. He’s singing a duet with a much older black gentleman whose reading words from over the piano players shoulder. A similarly older Asian woman tries to get me to stop. She doesn’t need to waste energy since the sheer surrealness of it all keeps me from ignoring them. Its only when she tries to convince me to sing the next song that I snap out of it to peel myself away and hit the escalator down.
“What I want most to doooooo Is to get close to yoooooou
Toniiiiiiiight . . .”
Still no official results posted on the ULHS website, but Breanna Perry was kind enough to post what she could remember in the comments of my previous post.
Still no word on official ULHS results. Some more videos are making it online. I'll post the better quality ones together later this week or next. While we're waiting on that stuff, apparently not all the action was in New Orleans this past weekend. Here's a quick round up of performance videos from Provence Swing Festival in France.
Wonders of modern technology. I can comment about ULHS so soon after it ended, and I wasn’t even there. First up was the Street dance contest. Seems to be a straight up coupled contest. People dance until they’re tapped out, leaving three couples to dance off jam style. Dancing on the actual street just might be a little too hardcore for me as my knees hurt just from watching them dance on the concrete.
