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.
North Side of the US Capitol in Russell Senate Park this afternoon by the reflecting pool at the end of North Capitol Street. She's in a strapless wedding dress with a long flowing train that she's holding bunched up in her hands so it doesn't touch the ground. She's flanked by three of her girlfriends casually dressed in shirts and jeans. One of them falls behind as she checks her camera.
He's in a tuxedo. White tie and white vest. He jogs up ahead of the group a few steps, jumps up onto and richochets off of a park bench into a heel click. He tries to keep walking like nothing happened, but looks and smiles back at the soon to be bride.
The friend with the camera runs to catch up with the rest of the group as she figures something out and yells something in Korean.
I came home at about 1:00 am on Monday morning from another musically brilliant DCLX weekend. Somewhere along the way I decided that it would be pointless to go to sleep since I had to be at the train station by 5:00 am to catch a ride up to New York City. Luckily(?) I was able to get about two and a half hours of sleep on the train before I got into the city a little before 9:00 am.
It took me a little while to get my bearings and head over to the direction of the Manhattan Center where most of Frankie's 95th birthday celebration will be held. That only took me about 4 minutes after leaving Penn Station, it's that convenient. The MC people wouldn't let me wander around on my own, but fortunately the planning committee was already gathering at the diner next door.
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.
Lots of people took different things out of that thread, but this is what I learned: There's a difference between doing a "swing out" and swinging out.
The thing I love about DCLX (DC Lindy Exchange) is that it’s the kind of event that attracts dancers that appreciate quality live music. So much so that musicians that leave it all on the stage get treated like rock gods. Writing about live music is very hard thing because in the end you have hear it to feel it. I can talk about the Boilermakers burning up their version of “Avalon” or Jonathan Stout & His Campus Five featuring Hilary Alexander (say that three times real fast) cranking the crowd up to a near riot with “Dark Eyes” or the Blue Vipers of Brooklyn breaking everyone’s heart with “Bringing it on Home to Me,” but that’s why events like DCLX exist; to give people a way to connect to something that they can’t otherwise experience.
DCLX 2010 was AWE-SOME! Seriously, what else do you need to know?
Fine. I'll update later this week after I get all the awesome juice off of me.
I don’t think that many people read this blog. At least not many Lindy Hop instructors do. If they did, then they would know better than to put up all of the craptacular instructor bio’s I’ve been looking at lately. One of my first posts on this blog was about dancer bios. I’m in the middle of a little project that has me checking out a ton of Lindy event and dancer websites. I’ll reveal the reason for that in the near future. But as I’m going through all these sites, it’s becoming apparent that people don’t seem to understand the reason for a bio.
