Swing Dancing

The count down had come to a close. The night had arrived. My favorite night of the month was now beginning.

Blues dancing is a completely different atmosphere and different feeling than Swing Dancing. Yet, they greatly complement each other. To explain blues dancing is one of the hardest things I have tried to do. Everyone has a different way of explaining it… partially because it is a completely improvisational dance. You listen to the music and every action is based on the music. There isn’t a count to the steps. You could watch 5 different people “blues dance” to the same song, even if some of them used the same partner, and yet they would be completely different.

You can see my discovery and explanation of it on the history page. For now, all I will say it’s a very sensual dance. The lights are dimmed with a very low ambience type of lighting with traditional blues vibrating throughout you.

So, I arrived at little after 10 (the dancing is from 10-2:30PM). The only sad thing about the night was that my partner, Emily, wasn’t going to be there. She had a wedding to attend, and this was also her favorite night. I decided to make the best of it and dance with as many people as I could.

There were three dancers there that I knew I had to have at least one dance with.

Chandrea. She was the first person I ever blues danced with, nearly a year ago. She helped me get started and learn the basics, she was the only one I was comfortable dancing with. Little did I know, at the time, that she’s a professional dancer, choreographer, and so on. She had left a few months back, but had come back for two days.

Erin. She’s been my favorite blues dancer to watch since I started. Her movements are amazing, and I love dancing with her. We don’t dance often, but we almost always have a good one.

Chirstine. She is one of Erin’s good friends and is an absolutely incredible dancer. As once I said, she’ll make any lead look great. You could literally just hold her hand and you would look awesome. When you actually lead her… it just adds that much to it.

I consider them all some of the best dancers there, and I used to be very shy about asking any of them to dance. But through my dancing with Emily, my confidence had boosted and I was happy to ask them to dance.

So, I started dancing. I danced with friends and with people I didn’t know. I was just listening to the music and enjoying it. I wasn’t doing anything special, and I wanted to warm up a bit before I asked any of the three mentioned above to dance.

I finally was looking for Christine, and she asked me to dance. It was a good song, and such a good dance. She easily followed everything I did, moved completely to the music, and had a great time.

So, I moved on. Danced with a few others, it was around 11:30, and I wandered outside. I wanted to see if there was anyone I’d be interested in dancing with, and I found a friend who said:

“You know she’s here?”

“What?”

“Emily, she’s here.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah! She just walked in!”

I immediately disappeared around the corner and moved back inside. I scanned the first room, not there. I went into the dancing room, nope, not there either. I started moving towards the last room and she walked out. How could this night get any better?

I immediately asked her to dance. We know each other’s dancing very well,  which enables us to be very creative. This was our dance, and this was our night. Needless to say, we had many great dances. I think my favorite dance for the night was with Emily, when I just decided to forget about the “normal” dancing and just to act goofy, do whatever we wanted. So much fun.

I did have my dances with Erin and Chandrea, and both were great. It’s great to see your follow smile when you’re a lead. If they’re not smiling the whole dance, and only at specific moments, that usually means that whatever you just did was something new, unexpected, and they liked it. When you can reproduce this effect many times throughout a dance, it’s a good feeling.

All and all, it was a great night. My partner had surprised near everyone and showed up. I got to dance with three other really good dancers. What more could I ask for?

Wow, already backlogged with dances!

This was the first night of my advanced class, so it was going to be interesting. As I was putting on my dance shoes before the class, Jessie came in. She immediately started saying how nervous she was. She was nervous to the point that she brought chocolate to calm her down.

I thought about it, and I wasn’t nervous in the least. I was nervous beyond belief at asking Debbie for the audition in the first place, while Jessie was not at all. The roles had reversed.

So, we went in the class, and thank god they started at the basics.  Debbie’s partner had arrived, Patrick.  They gave many corrections, though I was glad to know it wasn’t only me:

“Remember to be on your toes, with your butt out. Your left hand needs to be relaxed, don’t have it tight. Your right hand needs to be solid on their back with no fingers. Remember to whip around your had on 5. Drop your left hand on 3 and pick it up on 6.” So on and so forth.

It was so much fun! It was very intense but I could immediately feel improvements in my abillity to lead people. I could tell when I was doing something wrong and I could fix it fast. They also moved at a much faster pace, telling you to do something, and then you do it. No preliminary steps. One girl got overwhelmed at the fast pace and started saying it was really hard to concentrate on so many things.

I was very glad I was not the only one getting corrections. By the end of the class, I found it remarkably easier to lead people, and I never had much trouble before. All this for $5? Amazing, simply amazing.

So I went out on the floor in a great mood and just started dancing, applying everything I learned. It was so much fun, and I could tell I was working different muscle groups and it felt great. I realized, and they commented in the class, that I needed to start dancing with the better dancers. It would help me get better a lot faster.

Me and several others got into Lindy Groove for free that night because Jeff Antoine had put us on his birthday list, so we wanted to make sure he had a great birthday circle. I think he got a lot more than he expected. Our friend Shawn lifted him on his shoulders as we loudly sang happy birthday and whistled. It’s such a fun experience to be in the circle, even if you are embarrassed like I was on my first birthday dance.

While the dancing was good at Lindy Groove, most of my fun came later at IHOP, where we listened to random music in the early hours (we left at 5:30AM) and some comedy bits. It’s good to know that things get funnier the later it gets.

We arrived late as we had spent the day going up and down 3rd Street Promenade, which was loads of fun. Unfortunately for us, the band played about five songs before they finished their set. It was only 10:30 PM. Usually the band ends at 11-11:30 PM. We really wanted to dance.

First, we took more pictures (I will probably edit this post later and post a few of them here or in the Gallery), which were absolutely amazing. If you haven’t been to the Cicada Club, you should. It is the most high class, gorgeous venue I’ve been to.

After we were done with pictures, we decided to go up to the mezzanine lounge where they still had the bar open and some dancing. Unfortunately, the music was not the greatest. In fact, it was very, very boring. Had a couple more dances, and that was it.

We ended up chatting a little bit, then we decided to take off. This night was definitely not the best, but look forward to the pictures!

I arrived late, probably around 11:10. Fortunately for me, Third Saturday Swing has a unique method of handling entrance fees, and after 11:00 the price drops from $8 to $3. To top it off, they have food. Pizza, fresh fruit, candy, chips, and so on, covered with that price.

Jake was the only other Clientele member coming that night, and I had seen his car, Herbie, sitting out front of the venue so I knew he was inside. After I found him, he let me know he hadn’t danced in the 10 minutes or so he was there, which surprised me at the time, but I found out why.

The room was quite sparse; there were very few people there in comparison to TSS’s “normal”. Also, the people there were some of the better dancers, which can be a bit daunting. So, I immediately started snacking on the food and looking around for who I would dance with.

I had seen many of the follows there, but all the very good leads were either dancing with them or watching them dance, and I was not in the mood to be watched. So, I meandered here and there, enjoyed the music, and had a few good dances.

At about 12 they did the last raffle of the night, and one of the items they were raffling off was entrance to Do Something Blue, usually $8. I thought to myself “I would really like that”. I knew there were very few people in the room so I had a good shot. He raffled one number, no one had it. He raffled another number, and it was mine. I reread my ticket a few times, and it definitely was mine. AWESOME!

After that, Jake noticed a couple girls and was thinking about asking them to dance. I said why don’t we ask one each, so we did. The girl he danced with was in Debbie’s Advanced Class at Lindy Groove, and we ended up chatting quite a bit with her the rest of the night. We will probably be hearing more from her in the future.

Jake and I also worked on the C-Hop. We took some of the new variations the Clientele had come up at SFLX (San Francisco Lindy Exchange) last weekend and make it have good 8 counts and incorporate everyone’s move. It is expanding! People we don’t know join us while we do it.

The last thing that made the night was the music in the last half an hour was amazing. They played good songs one after each other, for about 10 songs. Even though I didn’t dance to any of them, as most of the follows were taken and I was more in the mood to dance with someone I knew, they were great fun to listen to. Also, Ben and Sheri, the people who put on Third Saturday Swing, did an amazing dance which was so much fun to watch.

And that was the night!

Welcome to my swing dancing blog, this is my first post. I’ll later have a page on the history of how I got to this point, but for now, I’m just going to be posting the various swing dancing events and venues I go to, starting with last night’s Lindy Groove.

Last night started with a bang! I left hurriedly trying to get to Lindy Groove before 8, when I planned to audition for the advanced class. It’s nerve racking enough auditioning with one of the best follows at Lindy Groove, Debbie Gitt, but I had previously auditioned and I was told to come back in a 1 1/2  to 2 months. That was four months ago.

I arrived with just a couple of minutes before 8, and I rushed to put my dancing shoes on and find a friend with whom I could warmup with. I quickly realized that the only follow that I knew was in the intermediate class. There was no way I was going to audition without warming up first. I walked to the entrance of Lindy Groove hoping I would see a friend arriving, and there was Kathy! She is in the advanced class, and so I had her rush over and told her that I’d like to warm up, as I was about to audition.

Right about when we were going to start, we saw the class had already begun to practice The Big Apple, and so she rushed into class. It was 8:07, there was supposed to be 8 minutes before the actual class started. One thing to know about auditioning, it’s not a set schedule. You ask Debbie if you’re ready, you dance with her, and she lets you know whether you have anything to work on or whether you made it.

Sadly disappointed that I had missed the time to audition, I started wandering away from the class. I knew that the next time to audition was at the end of the class, which would be in about an hour. I started walking away, then back to the main dance floor when Jake, another friend, popped his head out of the door and asked if I would like to just watch. I figured, sure, why not? I walked in, and I saw that there was another lead who was trying to audition, who also decided to watch the class.

Debbie introduced herself to each of us, and let us know how the class works, and so on. She also said that it was lead heavy, meaning they were in need of more follows, not leads. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I decided I wanted to show my dedication and I was going to watch the whole class.

I watched the class, which was interesting. I love The Big Apple but it’s quite confusing. I took a one-hour class about a year before with the legendary Frankie Manning, but I definitely didn’t remember it that well. This was the fifth and last week they had been working on it, and it was a review class.

At the end, I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. All the people were going to get their water, bags, and so on, and move to the main dance floor, while Sam, another teacher and friend, was talking about eating. I started talking with Sam, explaining how I didn’t know if it was the best time to audition taking the fact that the class was, indeed, lead heavy. He said just go for it.

Debbie, who had been somewhat wandering, came back and asked me to do some swing outs with her. Just a little bit nerve racking, being asked to dance without warming up at all. In fact I could say my muscles were cold. And so I did, and after two swing out, she started with many corrections. I had to loosen up my arm, while use my fingers less in the back, but keep a strong connection, while keeping my back muscles together… I thought that was it, and I was going to be told to come back.

She then said “Yeah, you’re fine, you just need to bring a follow.” I was shocked. I made it? Great! But, I need to bring a follow to audition. Well, that’s fine, I’m sure I can find someone. Right when I was walking out the door, my friend Jessie walked in. She asked Debbie, “I know I’m not ready for the advanced class but I was hoping you could give me some pointers to work on so that I could prepare for it.”

I paused in the doorway, thinking this could work. She danced with Jessie, gave her many corrections, then also said she was good enough, and that we were both in. I made it!

That was most of the excitement for me that night, but I’ll also note the other significant events. I left the advanced class, found all my friends and was super excited. It was also Etana’s and Alejandro’s birthday that night, which made it an extra special event. My dance partner, Emily, was also bringing a new guy, hopefully a new potential lead.

I decided to try to be a follow and dance with Alejandro, and we were doing great, before we fell. He had decided to go into a mini aerial, and I had no idea how to do it. Boy, did we eat it! We quickly got up, and he decided he wanted to try again. I had figured out what we were supposed to do as we had fallen, so we then did it and finished the dance, a very laughable event.

I was feeling great and having a great time dancing, and using my lack of traction to the best of my ability (due to my dancing shoes). I only mention because as I was dancing with Emily, I decided to try to keep a spin going and throw it into a dip. She lifted her legs off the ground and so was completely airborne as she was spinning. She spun around from being somewhat behind me to being in front of me, and landed softly on her knees, it was awesome! It was entirely due to my shoes continuing to slide.

After Lindy Groove ended, we continued on to IHOP, our weekly tradition as it had been since I started dancing nearly two years ago. At IHOP we continue to dance, though switching now to Blues as opposed to Swing Dancing. It was about this time that I realized I had 4 hours of sleep and was VERY tired. I had several more dances with Emily, and to to blow my own horn, but this is where we do really well.

It was a good night.