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
The smell of the air as took me back to the last time I visited the Philippines when I was in 5th or 6th grade. I was exiting Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila after a 21 hour flight a couple of nights ago. (I'm having a pretty difficult time figuring out what time or day it is now) My first and last visit was such a long time ago, but it didn't take long for things to look and feel familiar. I should have been overwhelmed by the holding area outside of the airport. They don't let anyone meet you inside after you disembark from your plane. The Phillippines' biggest export is labor. So there are huge numbers of people coming and going from the country at any one time. Even larger numbers await them when they return. In order to keep everyone from overwhelming the airport, they set aside a large outdoor waiting area. On the airport side, you set yourself up under one of many signs, which easch one corresponding with the first letter of your last name. Across the street of taxi's for those with no one to greet them, is a huge, barred holding pen filled with friends and relatives.
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.
In a previous post I said that I’d put up a few clips from a tape of Hop the Millennium but then decided that the whole thing was too good and uploaded the whole thing. The event took place over New Year’s 1999/2000 in Mexico City Ensenada, Mexico of all places. There’s a lot of dancing goodness featuring the Rhythm Hot Shots which is the team that begat The Harlem Hot Shots. Southern California represents with a piece by Rusty Frank & Peter Flahiff and another by Peter Loggins & Lisa Ferguson. Keep an eye out for a pimpin performance by the father and son team of “Moke & Poke” a.k.a. Chazz Young and Frankie Manning.
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.
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.
Last week we had videos from Korea, and now we're across he pond the other way from Hertford, England. This week’s videos brought to you by the 2010 Goodnight Sweetheart Festival. I already talked about one performance from that weekend, so I thought I'd highlight a few others from that event.
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.
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.
South Korea has got a prety big scene with several large scale events thoughout the year. The first one this year was Camp Swing It which happned a few weeks ago, Jan 22-24. Lots of great teachers and top notch performances
