Keith Shapiro

I was preparing a post on DJ’ing when I heard the sad news that Austin DJ and event promoter Keith Shapiro passed away last night. I only met Keith very briefly many years ago, but he touched many lives through his work in our community. He was also host of the Blues podcast Confessing The Blues.

You can offer condolences and support to his memorial Facebook page. A number of his friends are also paying tribute to him online.

My condolences to his friends and family especially to his wife Summer and his two daughters Anna and Ella.

Zen and the Art of Event Planning

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I’m an arrogant jerk. Anytime I go to an event, not just a Lindy Hop event, I tend to look around, check things out, and think to myself: I can do this better. This includes my own events. However, that’s not to say that I’ve actually done better.

The interesting thing in event planning and management is that the better you do your job the less people will notice. Human nature being what it is, when people talk about how an event was run they will almost always focus on what went wrong or what was out of place. So your goal as an event planner is to avoid that.

ILHC 2010 Preview

I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write, so I might as well talk about what’s been keeping me busy. The last few weeks before an event are usually the busiest times for event organizers and now there are just three weeks before this year’s International Lindy Hop Championships. So instead of nitpicking another dance video, I’ve been spending my spare time trading hundreds of emails doing the bidding of my ILHC overlords: Tena Morales, Nina Gilkenson, and Sylvia Sykes.

Retro Re-Post: Focus on the Follows

As I've noted previously, talking about music isn't as useful as listening to it when you want to convey certain concepts. The same applies to dancing. In fact I think one of the reasons that the so called "style wars" broke out on various Lindy Hop discussion boards was because people couldn't understand what everyone else was trying say, and what was said was usually worded very poorly. One of the reasons why people come into conflict is because of poor or a complete lack of communication.

If dance is a form of communication, then I think one of the least understood concepts, at least in the realm of Lindy Hop, is that of "clarity of communication" or simply the ability to be articulate. Beginners (and some veterans) tend to get caught up in the need to learn a variety of moves or patterns. I sometimes teach at a small dance studio, and I once overheard a great line from a hip hop teacher at the end of one of his classes while talking to one of his students. The kid was badgering him about learning new moves, and the teacher simply replied, "You don't need more moves, you need more movement!"

Weekly Video Highlights: The Herrang Blues

It's the middle of July when most of the Lindy world comes to a grinding halt unless you happen to be in a very small and secluded town in the Swedish countryside. If Camp Jitterbug is the most important event in the Western Hemisphere, then Herrang Dance Camp is the epicenter of the Lindy-verse. But despite having the largest concentration of Lindy Hoppers for the longest period of time all year, the event doesn't generate much in the way of videos unless you count the numerous class recaps by students or yet another one of Chester Whitmore's adventures . However, a good number of blues inspired performances have come out of the camp over the years.

WCS Futureshock

Tatiana Mollman and Jordan Frisbee unveiled their new routine at the USA Grand Nationals over Memorial Day weekend, and now their performance from the Liberty Swing Dance Championships a few weeks ago has been circulating the webs. I swear, given their popularity, I think they could build a whole dance event just around that and make a killing. It would be like Lebron’s “Decision” except with more integrity.

Flashback with Ramona Staffeld: Partnering with Finian Makepeace at ALHC 2000

This is the third installment of a special feature that I’m doing with Ramona Staffeld. We’re looking at some very old school clips of her past performances and getting her reactions. The first one was from the 1998 American Lindy Hop Championships and the last was of Ramona dancing with Frankie Manning at Midsummer’s Night Swing at Lincoln Center in 1999. This one is of her competing in the Junior division at ALHC 2000. Everything after the video below is written by her with a few hopefully helpful edits from me.

Big Big Benefit Thanks

On behalf of Laurie and Nina I’d like to thank everyone who came out for the Big Big Benefit this weekend. It was great to so many people out along with so many different groups working together to help one of their own. In particular I’d like to thank the following people: At the top of the list is the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture for all their support. People who work for the park were some of the first to come to Laurie’s side when she was first admitted into the hospital, and they were super helpful all weekend. Donna Barker especially worked very hard to facilitate everything and even poured in a lot of time to put together the the puppetry performance CD’s.

The Line

I was at an event a few years ago chatting with another dancer during the last dance of the weekend. We were watching a particular follow, and I’ll admit we were not paying attention to her connection or style; we were just straight up checking her out, and her considerable . . . talents. But oddly enough, the more we watched her, the less attractive she became. It just came down to the fact that we just didn’t like her dancing. This was a significant moment to me because up until that point it was fairly easy to identify what I didn’t like in a person’s dancing based mostly on their technical deficiencies. We were (an still are to a certain extent) collectively learning how to connect and how the dance generally worked. I’m talking about a time when people thought that Hollywood and Savoy were two entirely different dances and stopped dancing when they couldn’t find enough people to agree with them. But here was an advanced dancer with no such issues. I just couldn’t get into any of the creative or stylistic choices she was making.

Album Review: Sam Cooke Live at The Harlem Square Club

I’ve been on a live soul music kick lately and I finally picked up “Sam Cooke Live at The Harlem Square Club” after I heard Peter Strom spin “Having a Party” from this it at ILHC last year. I had such a great dance to that song that it’s part of my personal Lindy highlights from last year. I don’t know why it took me so long to get it since it’s honestly one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. From any music genre. It’s that good.

From start to finish, Sam Cooke bleeds out energy and passion into the microphone. If you didn’t already believe that this smooth crooner was the man who created Soul music, then there's no way to deny it after hearing these recordings.