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 ;)
Boston Tea Party Swings 2010
The modern Lindy Hop community used to spend a lot of time at West Coast Swing crossover events. The American Swing Dance Championships , The Virginia State Open, North Atlantic Dance Championships, Swingin’ New England, Swing Fling, Summer Hummer, Boogie By The Bay, and of course, The US Open. ASDC ended in 1998. NADC in 2004. Lindy participation in other events has been steadily on the decline to the point where some those events are eliminating Lindy from their schedule altogether; Swingtime In The Rockies being the most recent example. The lone exception has been The Boston Tea Party whose crossover aspect really took off after NADC folded. I used to love going to crossover events when I first started, but this weekend was my first Tea Party.
DCLX Interview & Boston Tea Party Results
My interview with DCLX is up. Check it out here. I'm not so sure about this whole "Wise Learned Person" deal, but I think I can be pretty amusing when the mood strikes me. The event itself is in less than two weeks. Go ahead and register. I'll DJ and you'll have fun. Trust me.
I had a great time up at Boston Tea Party. I'm working on my Boston Tea Party post, which I'll put up within the next day or so. In the meantime, you can check out their website for results from all of the competitions. Congratulations to everyone!
Boston, I will be
I apologize for the lack of updates this week. Been a short but busy week at work, since I had to cram a lot of stuff in before I head up to the Boston Tea Party. If you're lucky, I might update from there. Even if I don't I've been working on a special project that will spawn many an interesting posts. I also have a good part from Ramona to follow up her first installment of "Looking Back," so you have that to look forward to as well. I'm also sorry to say that I haven't had much of a chance to work on "Artistry in Rhythm." I have an outline of the re-write done, and although I'll be using big chunk of stuff I already wrote for it, it'll probably be some time before I finish it.
In the mean time, I'm making plans to re-post the multi-part epic that was my brain dump of Frankie95, so be on the look out for that.
As for the DCLX interview I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. There's been a delay because it's been deemed too sensitive for the family friendly DCLX website, so it had to undergo some editing. It should be up on that site within the next couple of weeks; probably before DCLX on April 9-11 I would think. An unedited version may be leaked to the public in a yet to be disclosed location . . .
Until all that fun happens, have a good weekend, and I'll leave you with your Friday moment of video zen. Watch Josh Welter's tribute to Peter Strom in this year's Savoy Swing Jam Jack & Jill finals in Seattle a couple of weekends ago. You won't have to wait very long since it happens right at the begining.
btw, he and his partner won that contest.
Weekly Video Highlights: Lindyfest 2010 with Bonus Footage
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.
Frida=Awesome and Other Performance Observations
The reason why I like watching good dancing is because there's so much room for interpretation of subtleties and details. You can watch the same thing over and over again, but still see something new. Bad dancing just just gives me a headache from the the static of unclear intentions. My friend Ann Mony (who's website is imminent according to my sources) pointed out an interesting tidbit at 2:00 in this recent performance by Frida Segerdahl and Skye Humphries at Lindyfest last weekend. At 2:00 she waves for Skye to come over and join her.
Event Promotion Amusingness
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.
Weekly Video Review: Crazy Rhythm Challenge 2010
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.
Flashback with Ramona Staffeld: Minnie's Moochers at the 1998 ALHC
This is the first of hopefully many installments of a special feature that I’m doing with Ramona Staffeld. We’re going to be looking at some very old school clips of her past performances and getting her reactions. Like a DVD director’s commentary except for Lindy Hop clips. The first one is from the 1998 American Lindy Hop Championships. Everything after the video below is written by her with a few hopefully helpful edits from me. Enjoy!
Feeling My Way Around
The idea that roosters only crow at dawn is a damn dirty lie. They pretty much crow whenever they feel like it, which seems to be any part of the day or night. It's something you notice when you're trying to sleep at any part of the day or night. It took me a little while to notice that my sleep schedule pretty much resembles what it's like when I'm at a dance weekend. I start to crash at about 7:00-8:00 pm local time which is about 6 or 7 am EST, and I wake up about 5 hours later which is roughly the early afternoon back in DC. I don't get comfortable sleeping in strange places and I'm usually attuned to getting up early for work anyway. The result is that there's a big chunk of time when I'm awake and no one else is around.