I was perusing the Herrang teacher line up just to check it out even though I don't have any plans on going. Being the center of the Lindy-verse, it's a just interesting to see who they're bringing in each year. I have no plans to do another analysis like I did last year, but I noticed a few new names including Laura Glaess & Mike Roberts, Alice Mei & Thomas Blacharz, and Sarah Breck & Dax Hock. One name that jumped out at me was Marty Lau, which is funny because I was talking about him with a few friends just this weekend. He's teaching Balboa during week three with Sylvia Sykes.
Then & Now: Jo & Nick
Hopefully I’ll talk a bit about the Lone Star Championships by next week. Until then I thought I’d point out Jo Hoffberg’s dance with Nick Williams in the Invitational Jack & Jill of that event.
How Ya Like Me Now?
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Announcing the next stage on my road to internet domination: the Wondering & Pondering official Facebook presence. Like it here.
It occurred to me that I keep amassing links and videos that I hope to post on this blog, but since I always want to do it up all fancy like, they just kinda languish in the ether.
So I'll use the Facebook page to pass along the articles and random videos of interest that I don't have time to discuss in depth here. And I'll also post links to new posts from here as well. It'll be like a secret club except everyone will know about it. Everyone.
It'll also be a good way for people to connect with me on FB. Honestly, I still feel a little weird accepting friend requests from people I've never met before. I know plenty of you read the blog, but I'd like to reserve my personal FB page for people I know directly. So if we're FB friends now, but we've never met, there's a good chance I may be cutting you loose soon. It's nothing personal, but . . . you know . . . there's just nothing personal between us. But then, you'll have this new Facebook page to Like and we can keep up that way.
I also realized that I spent an entire post describing my YouTube favoriting rationale, but forgot to link to my YouTube page.
That's this thing here: http://www.youtube.com/user/jalmon007
Feel free to subscribe. Or just hit refresh a lot, waiting for the next embarrassing old video to pop up.
Tell your friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tFFYnKxFss
Ernest Goes to School
I still don’t have a lot of time to do a longer blog, but I thought I’d share a few videos in addition to the pictures I took in Atlantic City this past weekend. I don’t make it a secret that I’m a big fan of The Boilermaker Jazz Band, and one of the many reasons is bassist Ernest McCarty. I’ve talked about him before, (there’s a lot to talk about this super interesting guy) but he’s also the main reason for these videos. He was On from the very beginning. Within a minute of their first song, he caused me to go grab my camera to capture the funk he was laying down.
Photo Essay: Dig In, Swing Out
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Here are some pictures I took this weekend at the Bally’s Swing Dance Offco-sponsored by Yehoodi.com. Another one of those times where I wish I was a better photographer. Or at least a decent one. But there are a few things I captured that I want to talk about more generally in future posts, so I thought I'd put them up especially since this particular series tells a nice story.
More Lindy Focus Highlights & Bonus Footage
It occurred to me that I said that I was going to post my other Lindy Focus video highlights and I never did. Well the long wait is over. And because this slipped my mind I included some super special sauce footage at the end of this post.
Snowballin'
There's been a lot of interesting chatter about the Lone Star Championships and Dax & Sarah's television appearance. I've been trying to put some thoughts together since Lindy Focus about some of the issues that these two recent events bring up, but I don't have anything coherent yet. That's mostly acombination of me being too busy and people saying thoughtful stuff. Until I can get something together, check out a few video highlights from The Snowball over in Stockholm Sweden which took place over the New Year holiday at the same time as Lindy Focus. My favorite has to be this bluesy hip hop improvisation done by Joyss with the Gordon Webster Septet.
Live to Suck
Sarah Breck and Dax Hock were on the television show "Live to Dance" recently. Unfortunately for them, Dax injured his back before their performance in the semi-final round. However, I think it probably was for the best because it gave the judges something to talk about other than the dance itself.
DCLX 2011: The Greatest Lindy Hop Exchange EVER
One of the best line up of swing dance musicians of our generation will be playing at the DC Lindy Exchange this year. I tried thinking of different ways of writing this up without being as hyperbolic, but this is about as plain as I can make it.
The Blue Dress Dance
Over on Swungover, Bobby ventures once more into the breach of dance analogies by busting them all out. They're all fun, but I thought I'd put this one in context.
The Spotlight On the other side, these are the dances where the leader gets an electric follower setting everything around them on fire. A smart leader just takes a back seat, becomes the dancing equivalent of a hype-man, and lets the magic happen. A few will understand exactly what I mean when I say “Nina Gilkenson Blue Dress Dance.”
He's referring to Nina dancing with Marty Klempner in the Cats' Corner Division (Champions Strictly Lindy Hop) at The 2007 American Lindy Hop Championships. And yes, they won.
I remember riding back down to DC with Naomi Uyama, which is about a 7-8 drive from Stamford, CT. Every once in awhile, no matter where we were in our conversation, we would just suddenly stop and say something like , "Damn, that Blue Dress Dance was amazing." Over and over again, the whole way down.