Mile High Blues 2011, Denver

Something Mike Falsek said when we were in Seattle for Roots: "If you're not making strange noises in your head while you do it, you're doin' it wrong." 

We went to Denver for Mile High Blues, and once again I found that missing the parts of the exchange that I wanted to miss made the parts I attended much more worthwhile. I missed the Friday night dance (due to getting up a 4:30am EST to fly to MST), one of the Saturday afternoon lessons (to read The Neverending Story and eat a red velvet cookie), and Sunday's classes (to soak in the Denver sunshine - of which there was much).  And in return, I didn't find myself wishing I wasn't in class, everytime I was around people I enjoyed being with people, I had two fabulous nights of dancing, and I learned a new game, courtesy of David, Clyde, and Ruth, all of whom were convinced I could be converted.

The lesson learned: be who you are.  If you are an extrovert who recharges by constantly being with others, or a type-A who wants to "do the whole program," or the sort of dancer who gains energy from dancing (even at 4:00 in the morning) -- then do so.  I am none of those things.  I need to take time for myself, break the schedule, and rest when I need to rest. And I have a richer experience when I do so.

Moving on from what I didn't do to what I did do, I'll go over the highlights.

We stayed in Golden, CO, a small, pedestrian-friendly town in the foothills, about 20 minutes west of Denver.  To the west was Lookout Mountain, and to the northeast and southeast, respectively, were North Table Mountain and South Table Mountain.  Saturday afternoon our hostess, Steph, drove us up Lookout Mt. so that we could see the surrounding area.

 

The event was entirely blues (YES!  It had been since BamBLOOZled in December and I was a little lindy hopped-out.)  To start with they did level testing for the two top levels - masters and advanced.  For the very first time, I placed into the advanced.  The green wristband indicates my superiority over all creatures and superb wonderfulness. 

The classes (that I attended) were well taught.  I was particularly pleased to have a good experience with Joe and Nelle's class.  They are very widely liked in the dance community, but through a series of unfortunate events, until MHB I had not had a good experience with them.  I took classes from them when I attended an event that was very poorly organized and another at which I severely lacked sleep and generally had a not good experience, and while I thought the problem wasn't them, it was very good this weekend to have evidence in their favor.  I also attended classes by Dexter & Michelle and Chris & Campbell.

The dances were excellent. I had a surprisingly high number of dances with other women. It's a fun way for same-sex friends to spend some time together at a dance, since most of the night is spent with the opposite sex in the traditionally-gendered lead-follow roles. I am finding that the more time I spend in this community, the more I realize that these are fabulous people with whom I want to be friends. And while dancing is great by way of introduction, talking and doing something that is non-dancing (a meal, a game, coffee) helps to grow the friendship.

Which brings me to the final note of the trip - an excellent lunch spent at Jelly - with David, Clyde, and Ruth.  The four of us ate really wonderful food, talked, and played a game called Dixit, which I will forevermore love. Many, many thanks to the three of you!

These are some of the cards - aren't you just dying to play?

Photo Credit:  I actually took some pictures for this trip, but as I wrote this, Doug Sutton posted the pictures he took of the weekend, and they are so much better than mine (very nice Nikon SLR vs. camera phone), that I have to use his.

Roots 2011, Seattle

Roots: A Solo Movement Workshop was, in fact, a workshop for solo movement, particularly swing and blues solo movement.  The idea behind the workshop title is that swing and blues came from the African American community, with roots in African dance.  So we took classes from African dance instructors in the morning, had a class designed to bridge African and swing/Charleston/blues together after lunch, and then swing solo or blues solo classes in the afternoon. Social dances in the evenings were not scheduled by the workshop organizers because the focus of the weekend was on the classes, and we needed to get a reasonable amount of sleep.  However, there were plenty of events going on in the city over the weekend, and we attended dance events both Saturday and Sunday evenings.

The classes were really interesting and well taught.  Of the African classes, I think my favorite was the second (and slower) class taught by Sarah Lee.  At the end of each class during the weekend, the instructor did a demonstration that we could video.  Here's the video from the end of Sarah Lee's class.  No, no one but her looked this good.  But we tried.

She brought drummers with her. They were awesome.  Actually, that may have been the most interesting part of the lesson -- Sarah Lee talked about how the drummers signal when she moves on to a different part of the dance; it's an interaction between dancers and drummers. And she never just started dancing; she always waited until the music indicated she should begin.  It was really hard for us to pick out the break indicated by the drumming, even though they played it for us several times.

The African instructor on Saturday, Etienne, is from Benin, and taught by showing, rather than telling. While it was definitely a different way for most of us to learn, it was interesting because it's how blues and swing used to be taught/learned (according to Mike Falsek, our Saturday afternoon swing solo movement instructor.)

Mike's classes were well taught and interesting.  The first class broke down different movements: boogie back, boogie forward, Charleston, Susie Qs, falling off the log, etc.  The second class was a vintage solo routine that incorporated some of those moves and some additional moves (and transitions).  

There was also a raffle for charity that had some serious prizes (tickets to upcoming events) and some fun prizes (a shimmy from Joy, a "sexy dance" from John).  David was the winner of several of these, including tickets to an event in December and Miles juggling five balls.  Another girl won a shoulder ride from Miles.

I seriously regret to say that I cannot post the video of John doing his sexy dance as I promised him that I would not.  Once I figure out how to send it to him, I will try to obtain his permission to post it.

I also am unable to post Joy's shimmy (David won this, too, and was beet red throughout), because I mis-filmed it and only captured the applause at the end.

We did also manage to see a number of the sights in Seattle while we were there.  David and I visited the Seattle Space Needle on Friday evening, where, in addition to taking some neat photos (see the opening photo of the Needle), I bought Ted for David - a posable, break-dancing fusion robot.

 

And John, David, and I visited Pike Place Market and the first Starbucks.

 

Sparx 2011, Cleveland

Sparx is hosted by Case Western Reserve University's swing club.  This year's event included some excellent instructors for classes during the day, two evening dances, a late night, and a Sunday afternoon farewell dance.  

This was my first time getting to host people for a dance event.  And, boy, did we host -- we had fourteen people, including our two selves, in our two bedroom, one bathroom apartment.  Seven folks crashed on air mattresses and the couch in the living room, five people slept on air mattresses in the den, and David and I, of course, were in our room.  Fortunately we are all regular dance event attendees, so everyone did just fine with the crowded quarters.  We had a sign-up sheet for shower-time, and we car-pooled to minimize parking problems. 

The best part of the weekend was breakfast. David and I arranged breakfast for everyone both days.  Saturday was a light breakfast: monkey bread fresh from the local bakery (picked up by the amazing, morning-tastic David), toast, assorted juices, and a tropical dried-fruit salad.  Sunday was the big breakfast: sausage, bacon, rosemary-potato quiche, English muffins, sweet potato homefries with a light dusting of cinnamon, and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Flapjacks.  The pancakes - in 8 flavors - were David's brainchild.  We had cinnamon, vanilla, peppermint, lemon, cranberry, chipotle chile, double chocolate, and bacon. The bacon pancakes were made with homemade bacon extract and didn't come out precisely the way we hoped, but they were fun to make and try.  

Also, we did a lot of dancing that weekend.  The floor in Adelbert gym was full all weekend long. Saturday night the Sparx committee brought in Baby Soda from New York to play for us. The energy on the floor started out a little slow, but soon enough it picked up and everyone had a swingin' night.  

I also made a point of enjoying my time off the dance floor chatting with follows.  Any dancer will tell you that follows have trouble meeting follows and leads have trouble meeting leads, because follows dance with leads and vice versa.  But while guys are nice and all, it's definitely good to have girl friends, too.  So I decided at the beginning of the weekend that any time I wasn't dancing could be put to good use socializing.  It was a fabulous decision, because I had just as wonderful a time chatting with other follows as I had dancing.  I spent some time with good friends, but I also got to know some acquaintances better.  A side effect which I hadn't anticipated (but which made perfect sense) was that chatting during dance breaks kept my energy and engagement up while I wasn't dancing.

Photo credits go to Nathaniel Allen and Sara Franklin

Boston Adventures, January 2011 - Part 3

Boston Fusion Exchange, January 7-9, 2011

I was sick for a large portion of BFX, so I missed some of this.  But this is what BFX was.

Iconic Movement: Class demo

Mario Robau and Debra Szekely: Performance at Saturday Late Night

Barry Douglas: On the dance floor

Orville Zharoff and Kelly Howard: End of class demonstration

BFX Attendees: In the airport

Boston Adventures, January 2011 - Part 2

Brenda and Barry's Intensive Dance Workshop, January 3-6, 2011

With brilliance and creativity that knows no bounds, I call this: The Orange Room. The Orange Room is also known as the medium studio at Springstep, a dance studio in Medford (Boston), MA, with an unusual design and excellent facilities.  David and I joined nine other students and two instructors - Brenda Russell and Barry Douglas - in The Orange Room for four days of workshops that looked beyond the "what" of dance into the "how" and "why".

Brenda's website describes the workshop: 

We cover many subjects, such as: body awareness, posture and alignment, strength and flexibility training, base movements for blues, African dance, African-American Jazz, isolations, turns, rhythms, advanced movement drills, choreography, dips and tricks, competition, performance, teaching, community building, integrity and leadership.

For me, the focus of the classes was on using body awareness, posture and alignment, and movement from the core to achieve all the other things she lists. I liked that the class was so focused on such basic things; to me you have to have your your basics right before anything else will improve, and when you fix your basics, the rest follows.  (I am also convinced that this is generally true for most things in life.)

Lessons were scheduled at the dance studio during the day, 9:30am to 6:00pm, but often we covered additional optional material in the evenings back at the hotel.  We also tried to get in some social time at the hotel where we were all staying.  

In the hotel lobby Wednesday night, we were hanging out by the bar and Barry showed the group a trick for remembering a particular move.  (I am off to the left of the picture, still at the bar, deep in conversation with a tango instructor.) That was a particularly fun night. We danced in the lobby of the hotel to the music on a nearby laptop, we talked and all had a couple of drinks, and as the evening continued instructors began arriving for the weekend, so our group grew in size. 

BamBLOOZled 2010, D.C.

The first weekend of December we trekked on down to D.C. (by way of Columbus AND Cleveland - which, by-the-way, is a really backwards way of getting to D.C.).  And we had a fabulous time!  Actually, I had the best exchange I've had in months.  The secret?  I got enough sleep. 

I had to miss the Friday night dance and leave Saturday night early, but I got enough sleep all three nights. And as a result I enjoyed myself more and I danced better than I have in ages, especially Saturday evening.  Of course, it also didn't hurt that some seriously awesome people attended the event, and I got to dance with many of them.  I was very impressed with the caliber of dancer at BamBLOOZled. 

Here's a clip of Jeff and Megan from the Jack and Jill competition:

Most of the event was held at the fabulous Glen Echo Park.  They have an incredible ballroom, named the Spanish Ballroom because of it's Spanish villa-themed decor, as well as a back room which was also used for lessons and the Sunday late night.  The other late nights were held at a dance studio a few minutes away in Bethesda - conveniently located right next to an all-night diner aptly named The Tastee Diner.





*At some point I will remember to take my own pictures.  In the meantime, check out this lovely photographer's blog to see who took the stunning photo of the Glen Echo sign



Emerald City Blues Festival 2010: Seattle

First, a quick shout-out to Elizabeth - she's one of my closest friends, and back in October she had the most beautiful wedding I've ever attended. Now (finally) she's blogging about it, and if you know her (or if you want to see pictures of and read about an incredible wedding) check out her blog: That Cardboard Box.

On to the business at hand, I flew to Seattle on Thursday, November 11, for a five day visit and the Emerald City Blues Festival. The event included three days of workshops and four nights of dancing. A friend, Nick, and I flew out together and met up with David, who was already in town.

It was an excellent weekend, and I had some wonderful dances, but I'm actually going to focus on some of the really fabulous non-dancing aspects of the weekend.  David and I are considering Seattle as a potential home sometime in the next year, so we wanted to get a feel for the city beyond the dance scene.  In a good faith effort to meet and become friends with Seattle, we visited a blues bar, visited a wide variety of independent cafes, spent some time in a lovely bookstore, and saw the aquarium.

The blues bar, Highway 99, feels like a neat little hole-in-the-wall sort of place, but it's apparently quite well known. They host live music five nights a week, and on Thursday night the place was packed.  To get there, you have to go down from the ground level to a basement door (shouldn't all blues bars be underground?) and then pass the inspection of the doorman.  David, Nick, and I, having passed inspection, found a cozy nook with couches far enough from the band to hear the music clearly but still be able to hear one another.  The band was good, and we spent a good two hours in the bar, recovering from the flight and catching up with David.

Over the weekend, we visited several cafes - Seattle is littered with them - but the primary one we visited was Oddfellows, because it was downstairs from our workshop location and REALLY awesome.  They had a very strong independent, artsy feel: the servers were pierced and tattooed, the food was out of the ordinary and locally produced, the tables, benches, and decor were mix-matched and worn. I sampled their fare several times, partaking - over the course of three days - of a breakfast panini, coffee, an orange and currant scone, a chicken salad sandwich, and several pots of tea. All of which I would recommend.

*Both photos courtesy of Oddfellows's Facebook page

We also sampled tea, coffee, and delicious ginger molasses cookies in a book store and cafe called The Elliot Bay Book Company.  David needed to do some work and I needed a break from classes, so we played hooky for an hour and visited this book shop.  Caught momentarily without a book (!), I searched the shelves for something of interest and ended up purchasing Fearless Girls, Wise Women, & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales From Around the World by Kathleen Kagan, an anthology of folk tales featuring active female protagonists:

One of the greatest dilemmas was the definition of a heroine. The following criteria served as a guideline: The main characters are female and they are worthy of emulation.  They do not serve as the foil to the "good" character in the story, and they are not wicked queens, Mother Miserys, or nagging mothers-in-law. A second criteria was that the tale must center in and around the heroine. For example the tale "Gawain and the Lady Ragnell" was not included in this anthology because although the "lesson" of the tale is that a woman should control her own life, the action centers on the man, Gawain. Thirdly, my daughters acted as the touchstone for many of the tales. My older daughter pleaded eloquently for the exclusion of female protagonists who died at the end of the story.  - Introduction

It's a wonderful book, and I enjoy both the tales themselves and the bit of commentary Ragan gives at the end of each one. The project of the anthology began because she had trouble finding children's books featuring female protagonists to read to her two young daughters.  She began changing the gender in stories to mix it up a bit.  And then one night they read If I Ran the Zoo.  "A part of the story described hens roosting in each others' topknots. When it said "Another one roosts in the topknot of his./ And another in his, and another in HIS...," I got angry. Since when is a hen masculine?" So Ragan started counting characters. In Dr. Seuss books, she found that 90 percent of the main characters were male, and of the female 10 percent, most were a negative character. She checked libraries and anthologies, which had even lower rates of heroines, and finally she decided to compile her own.  To create her volume of 103 tales, she sifted through over 30,000 stories, and the result is a magnificent collection.

Also, I had a fun experience when I went to purchase the book. The young man behind the counter (YMBTC) asked if I had a stamp card, and I replied that I didn't:

Me: I'm from Ohio.
YMBTC: Oh! What part of Ohio?
Me: Near Columbus.
YMBTC: Neat. I went to school up north in Wooster.
Me: I went to Wooster!

Turns out we graduated a year apart, both with degrees in the humanities.  I love when that happens; when you meet someone you know or who you ought to know in a situation where you would never expect to run into said person.  And it happens so often. You can ask almost any Wooster graduate, and they'll be able to tell you of a chance Wooster-related meeting.

The final note in this entry is that if you ever find yourself in Seattle, check out their aquarium. It's a really awesome facility. In addition to the typical aquarium stuff, there's a lot of very interesting exhibits and information about Seattle's aquatic life AND they have a giant pacific octopus.

David sent this to me the last time he was in Seattle.  When
we visited, the octopus was sleeping upside down in the
corner - and he was snoring!

----

Also, just to brag a little, I have to share that I wrote this on David's new iPad.  It's such a cool device!

Blues Blaze 2010: NYC - After the fact...

The weekend in New York didn't go precisely as planned.  A few major hitches got in the way of it being a perfect weekend.  Nonetheless, we did have a wonderful time, and we made lots of good memories.

Renata and I both flew to New York, and as it happens, both of our flights were delayed.  We arrived - very conveniently - at the airport within ten minutes of each other, collected Renata's bag, and took a taxi to the evening dance venue.  As we stepped out of our taxi, the portion of our group who drove to New York walked into view.  We flew from Ann Arbor and Columbus, and they drove from Cleveland and Erie to Pittsburgh, through State College, PA, to New York City, and we arrived at the venue in the same twenty seconds. Who could have imagined that such a thing would happen in real life?

The Friday night dances were fun, but we had to leave early because of the early morning level testing on Saturday.  Even with leaving the late night dance early, we still didn't get to sleep until 4:00am and I woke up at 7:30 because I had to shower before we rode the subway to the venue.  I danced fine during the level testing, and was placed in the intermediate level, which was not unexpected, and I enjoyed the workshops.  I do think they could have done the level testing differently.  They made a big deal about it and then they didn't seem to take it very seriously.  If I had known that in advance, I would have gotten several more hours of much-needed sleep.  As it was, I slept that evening and missed a large portion of the evening dance, and all of Kim Massie's (assuredly) amazing performance.  David was kind enough to stay with me so that I wouldn't have to travel through NYC alone at night, and I know that he was even more disappointed than I to have missed that performance.  Fortunately, we'll be seeing her again in November at the Emerald City Blues Festival in Seattle, and we won't miss a second of it. 

Before my nap, David, Jeff, Nick and I saw a bit of the city, including a visit to an enormous Toys 'R' Us.  I didn't know toy stores came that big!  The most memorable moment in that store was a round of DDR - Dance Dance Revolution - that Jeff and David played.  I have to admit that I was a tiny bit horrified at how well David performed and highly amused by the amount of fun the two of them had with it.  The store also had some incredible Lego sculptures: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and other miscellaneous really cool things. And they had a Ferris wheel (which we did not ride on) and a giant barbie house (into which the guys would not go.  I went anyway on my own.)

The Saturday late night was a lot of fun.  (And if I may say so) I had a fabulous outfit, which always improves my night.  I had dances with a fairly wide variety of folks, mostly intermediate to advanced dancers. Some were locals, some had traveled. Many of them I already knew, but some were folks I hadn't met before.  I've been trying to make more of an effort to dance with people I don't know.  For awhile when I started dancing, everyone I danced with was someone I didn't know (because I didn't know anyone), and then I gradually moved to where I was dancing almost exclusively with friends.  Now I've been trying to dance with as many new people as familiar people, because that's how you meet new people. 

We closed out the late night at 5:00am, although I crashed about an hour before that and spent that hour sleeping on the couch under David's jacket.  David came and got me for the last dance, and I put on his jacket and we had a really lovely, quiet dance. I was barefoot (my heels had tired my feet out early), and he kept the dance at a nice easy pace, both to suit the music and to suit my sleepiness.  Although I had some really extraordinary, complex, very connected dances during the evening, that last dance was my favorite.

Sunday morning, David, Renata, and I all elected to sleep in rather than attend the first two classes. I had hoped to make it to the second class, but on getting up, I quickly realized and accepted that there was no way that was going to happen. All three of us woke up and got ready very slowly, and when we finally left, we decided to find a nice, sit-down, I'm-eating-in-New-York-City-and-making-the-most-of-it kind of place.  We stopped in the Village and found a lovely French restaurant called The New French with outdoor seating and ordered coffee and tea while we looked over the menu.  I ordered savory crepes with salmon, cucumbers, and creme fraiche. It came, as well, with a salad of mixed greens and thinly sliced beets.  And it was to die for.  Renata had French toast, and David had crepes as well, with fresh fruit and nutella.  I can't tell you how their food was, because I was in raptures over mine, and no other food could penetrate my consciousness at that time. 

Classes that afternoon were fine but not extraordinary.  Admittedly, we missed a lot of the first afternoon class (the food was good, but the service was unbelievably slow), and we sat through the first half of the second afternoon class before retiring to the cafe to have coffee and conversation. It was decided to have dinner at an Asian restaurant somewhere vaguely south of where we were, and we headed off in that direction after the classes and a vigorous round of goodbyes.  En route, Renata and I started to realize that our flights were in three hours, and as we had yet to get back to Marie Emma's apartment, pack our stuff, and get to LaGuardia, we thought we ought to eat quickly. (What is truly astounding is that we did not, at this point, realize that we ought to skip dinner entirely.) So we snarfed some food (mediocre sushi), paid our bill, and ran out of the restaurant, agreeing with one another that "we really ought to take a cab." 

Only it turns out that all the cabs on duty at 5:45pm on Sunday night are either brand new cabbies or about to go off shift, so it took us over a half hour (that we did not have to spare) to find a cab driver that would take us to Brooklyn.  Having found such a cab driver, we sat in traffic for an additional 15 minutes that we didn't have, and eventually we arrived.  The driver agreed to wait and take us to the airport and we hurried in to throw our belongings into our suitcases however they would fit most quickly and haul them down two flights of stairs to the waiting cab... which had to wait a little longer because Renata's suitcase's zipper broke.  So we tied the scarves that we were both wearing around the suitcase and hauled ass down to the cab.  I had been in contact with David and the group with which he was driving back to Ohio, and when we arrived down at the waiting cab, my flight was scheduled to take off in thirty minutes (Renata still had an hour).  The group that was driving had one spot to spare in their car, and bless them, they agreed to take me.  I shoved a twenty in Renata's hand for cab fare, wished her luck, and started walking to the subway to go and meet my group. 

Oh, and wouldn't you know, five minutes into my walk, a cab pulls up and the driver asks if he can take me anywhere? A little peeved at circumstance, and too stressed to say no, I hop in the cab, and he gets me to the evening dance venue in fifteen minutes. 

I found my group in the bar that was the evening dance venue, and we stayed for a bit, enjoying a couple of drinks and visiting with each other and the other dancers.  We were particularly tickled to spend a large portion of the evening chatting with Damon Stone, who is an incredible instructor.  Nick spent most of the evening with Damon, discussing Nick's efforts to strengthen his local scene and to improve his own dancing.  We spent a bit of time discussing Damon's swing out (a Lindy move - this is not blues, which is what we were actually in New York for). I got to be the demonstration dummy so that Nick, David, and Jeff could correctly observe what it so spiffy about Damon's swing out.  (I can't actually tell you, because I spent a good portion of that time with my eyes closed so I would react to his movement and not to what I saw.) It's always neat to spend time with "important" people - instructors, performers, "superstars" - and find that they're just people and that they're friendly and interested in sharing what they know and discussing the thing that they and you love.  (Which do you know, going into it, but knowing is not the same as finding out.)

So me missing my flight actually worked out. We all got a lot less sleep. And I had to make a really awful phone call to my boss to tell her that I missed my flight and wouldn't be in a 9:00am the next morning. (Renata, by the way, also missed her flight, but there was a flight going to Detroit at 6:00am on Monday that would allow her to make it to work.  The earliest flight to Columbus left at 9:00am.)  But the upshot of it was that we had a great evening. 

And then we drove. And drove. And drove some more.  And I got a cold.  A really bad cold with sniffles and coughs, and not-quite-being-able-to-breath-correctly-s.  We dropped Annabel off in State College, PA (can you believe that's the name of a town?  I was so confused about that for the longest time.) After we dropped her off, everyone, including (I'm sure) Annabel, felt much more comfortable, because although there were five seats in the car, it was made for four people and I was number five.  So the second half of the drive went a little more comfortably, and we got into Pittsburgh at 4:30am.  We all crashed for a bit, and then got up to head out, make some conference calls, eat some breakfast, and go home.  (Ok, so only David had to make a conference call, and it was only one call, but the rest of it we all did.) 

Oh, and let me tell you about this deli where we had breakfast.  I have no idea what it's called, but if you're in Pittsburgh, go there.  It's a Jewish deli, and they make the most amazing food.  David and I got sandwiches there once before that were completely scrumptious, and breakfast on Monday was just as wonderful.  The potato pancakes and the home fries were really, really yummy, and everything just screamed "comfort food."

And finally, at 4:00pm on Monday, we made it to Granville, where David and I both napped: me because I was dying of a cold, and David because he still had two and half hours of driving to do on really weird and insufficient amounts of sleep. David was incredible, by the way.  He went almost four hours out of his way to get me home, and I really, really appreciate it.