Swing Dancing

It was Halloween at Lindy Groove, and pretty much everyone comes in a costume, if not their PJs. Partially because entrance fee is less if you have a costume.

I came in a full on Ninja outfit, and though very hot, was great. Most people had to stare at me very closely and could figure it out by my eyes. I came with a Bokken (a wooden sword) and a rubber shurikan (ninja star). When I got into the advanced class, Debbie, our instructor, came up to me and peered at me in the eyes and was like “ahh! It’s you! Just needed to make sure you were in the class.” So much fun.

Also, before the advanced class, they taught Michael Jackson’s thriller routine (part of it), he only had 45 minutes to teach an entire class full or people. We performed it when we were done, and unfortunately did a very poor job of it. Mainly because we were facing a different direction and were expecting to only perform it later. When we performed later we were very much more prepared and did a great job and got the entirety of Lindy Groove cheering. So much fun.

Other than that, it was a pretty much normal night, COMPLETELY packed. Very hard to dance with the amount of room, but still fun.

Last thing to mention is some of the great costumes we had in the group. We had a Trinity, Dead Princess (very scary), a Monster energy drink, a Nurse, Roger and Jessica Rabbit, and many more. Some of the costumes there were incredible, very realistic looking Marx Brothers, Spiderman, Neo, Iron Man, Predator, Dracula, Bender, etc.

It was incredible.

My DSB anniversary! Halloween night, how perfect!

As I was watching the time tick by to DSB, I was trying to think of a costume. My main costume had yet to arrive. I finally decided I would just bring PJs. So, I slowly prepared to leave, when I had an idea to be a vampire. The only problem is I sweat a good deal, so I wasn’t sure how well makeup would stay on me.

I called a friend of mine who has done a good deal, and she told me she had a powder and fake blood that would help it stay on longer. I quickly ran out of my house to get to a nearby Party City before it closed.

I arrived 7 minutes before it closed, bought some fake teeth and some white makeup.

I then went directly to DSB, and my friend met me and put on makeup. She was also a vampire, and we happened to have nearly identical cloaks, it was amazing. So, we walked in as “brother and sister” vampires, and she had done my makeup so well that my dance partner actually couldn’t look at me in the dim light of the dance floor. It was kind of unfortunate, but kind of cool. I didn’t plan on wearing the makeup the whole night.

I danced with a good many of people and I could feel my makeup start to smear with my sweat. Nothing could touch my face without leaving a white mark. I had two dances that made the whole makeup worth it.

A friend of mine, who had talked with my dance partner, disagreed, “I don’t think he’s [me] that scary looking”, danced with me. While dancing she said, “wow, you do look scary!” So, I dipped her and in a demonic voice said “LOOK INTO MY EYES!” She semi screamed and freaked out, which was really funny.

Another time I asked someone I hadn’t yet met to dance. Midst the dance she commented, “you know, it was really freaky when you asked me to dance.” So, It was definitely worth it.

I rubbed the makeup off my face, which meant I got to dance with my partner again. Yay!

One of my favorite Blues Dancers, who won last year’s Lindy Groove costume contest, came as Iron Man. Not in the full costume, but just with the glowing center in his chest, and it was really on/in his chest, and showed through his shirt. It was absolutely amazing.

My partner was a Succubus, and did an incredible job.

Other than that, the blues went well, nothing spectacular.

Oh, one more point to note. The birthday jam was TERRIBLE. No one cut in for the first 2 minutes or so (to MOST of the dancers), they just watched. When they did cut in, they stayed there, and no one else did. People are supposed to switch like every 15-30 seconds!

That was it!

Another week at Lindy Groove, and it was another birthday. Future reminder for next year, October has a lot of birthdays.

We had a week without the advanced class, but now we were back. We went away from the basic form a little bit into styles, which was really fun. We learned the Slip Slop and the Eagle Slide, which formed a nice combination of moves. While dancing I tried a couple of the styles on the floor and got a positive response, so apparently they are decent.

I was only going to have a partial night at Lindy Groove as I had a couple friends from out of a town hosting a party at another place. So, I went around and danced with as many people as I could up until the birthday dance. Again, I danced with the same Birthday Boy as on Monday, and again he did two aerials. I flew about 5 feet in the air, and then I did a helicopter and flew over his head, which was so much fun.

Wow, behind again!

It was another night at memories as it was another friend’s birthday.

I picked up a friend, drove to another house, and we were both picked up, picked up another friend then arrived at Memories a little past 9PM.

When people started dancing with the Birthday Boy, who turned 25, started depositing quarters in his pockets while dancing. It took him a little while to realize we were doing it in regards to his age, and he ended up with a LOT of quarters that night, over $10 I believe.

The most interesting part of the night was his birthday dance. I cut in the end of the dance, and he loves to do aerials with me (do to my massive 140lbs of weight and ability to jump quite high). So, instead of a final dip he launched and held me for a second or two about 4-5 feet in the air — still waiting for the pictures!

Other than that, the night went as normal. They played a little bit of blues and hip hop in the end, which was good and a nice change after bally fast Lindy Hop all night.

Another TSS came around. I arrived late, at about 11. The only special thing about this event was that Allison had come to town for the day, and so we got to dance! She had been dying of lack of good dancers at her college, and she’s one of the best follows in our group, so it was very good.

They had some DJs from out of town in, unfortunately they only played traditional music all night. It was good for traditional music, but it didn’t get any of us moving as we hoped.

That’s all folks, tune in next time for Lindy Groove and Do Something Blue!

I arrived quite annoyed as my work forced me to arrive late. Luckily, there was no Advanced Class that week, so I was able to go straight to dancing.

I was on another Birthday List (4th week straight, I believe). It was also “Polka Dot” night (as requested by one of the birthday girls), and so I had manage to get polka dot tissue paper and put it around my head, which brought about many double takes and a smile on pretty much everyone.

A new friend, Thisbe, had also arrived that night. She learned extremely fast, one of the fastest I’ve taught, and she joined right in with the group and talked with many of them. Hopefully she’ll become a regular.

Two of our friends, Pierre and Galatea, had returned from Colorado and are back for good! Pierre has a very unique leading style, you can’t call it Lindy Hop or anything else, but is an incredibly good lead.

It was Kathy and Myra’s birthday that night, and they looked like they had a really good time! Myra put nine Harry Potter names on her birthday list, so people would come in saying they are “Lily Potter”, and so on. I personally think we should continue the the idea with other themes, Lord of the Rings, Twilight, Captain Planet…

Apart from that, this week was a little more normal than the previous weeks, but still a lot of fun.

Another week at Lindy Groove, but this was a special week. It was four people’s birthday, including my dance partner (Emily).

I arrived early for the class, which was very good. Still working on the basics, and they said the new people in the class (of which I’m included) did very well. I think I finally have an idea of what to do with Shorty George, and they worked on body part isolation.

After we got out… I was completely stunned. Emily and her dress, were absolutely amazing. Easily one of my favorite outfits I had seen her in, and perfect for the occasion. Her birthday dance was great, many people cutting in and everyone had fun. At the end, we lifted her and one of our other friends (Jake) on our shoulders, and everyone saw them. The DJ even tried to get them to have a chicken war, it was so much fun.

The next event of that evening was a surprise for Emily at IHOP. I helped urge everyone to get there before Emily did, which worked. She got there last, and was completely surprised. She had only been surprised once before in her life, and never a surprise party. IHOP was more full than it had ever been, and we danced until late into the night. She later told us it topped her 21st birthday, which was great.

All and all, it had been an absolutely incredible night. A great lesson, great dancing, and fun all around.

Memories is a nice little venue down in Whittier that plays some of the best swing music, mixed with an occasional Blues/West Coast Swing song.

This night was going to be a special night. It was a member of the Clientele’s birthday, a core member. A few others and I arrived earlier to help setup. It was Jake’s birthday, and his nickname is BabyBlue. He thought maybe two or three of us would show up, but we got ten to fifteen people. That, and a gift he wasn’t expecting, would make his night.

We had all just arrived when he walked in, and boy was he surprised. Baby Blue colored balloons, a giant happy birthday sign, friends everywhere. Whittier isn’t close to pretty much anyone, which made him even happier that everyone had gone this out of their way to come to his birthday party.

Other than that, a Lindy Hop World Champion was there that night, and he was an absolute pleasure to watch. So playful and tossing girls here and there, and had several moves in he repertoire I hadn’t seen anywhere else. He even tossed one of our members straight into a group picture midst dancing, and then pulled her out onto the dance floor — it was amazing.

Birthday Surprise – Success!

The Las Vegas Exchange, or “Vega Sex Change” as many people are calling it, was definitely an experience. We decided to leave straight after Lindy Groove and pull an all-nighter. Skip traffic and get there with the day to spend doing whatever we pleased.

Thursday Night/Friday Morning

We left at about 12:30 and headed to our friend’s house.  We shoved everything into a couple cars, grabbed food and left. By 2PM we were on the actual road!

There were three cars that formed a mini caravan. While one of the cars, Herbie, is great, we had to make sure it didn’t overheat so kept to about 65mph the entire trip, which slowed some things down but also lead to some interesting events.

While driving, we noticed several classic VW cars go by. When we stopped at a gas station, they happened to stop there as well. We found out they were going to a VW convention, in Vegas! We were tempted to stay with them but decided against it.

At this gas station was also the beginning of our random dancing moments. We saw a double-segmented semi truck, with flat beds, pull up and stop. We really wanted to dance on it. The two girls in our car ran up to the truck driver and asked him if we could. In short, he said yes, for a few minutes.

We quickly hopped on, played some music and danced on a truck bed, had some fun with dips and it was amazing!

Ok, back on the road. We took a stop on the side of the freeway to organize some of the trip plans. While we did, a couple of people jumped out of the car and started dancing along the side of the freeway! We have great pictures. As usual, I will try to post some of them here. They haven’t been uploaded just yet.

Again we got on the road. As we continued driving we noticed it starting to get lighter. I thought it would be a great idea to stop and dance at sunrise, which we communicated to the other drivers. They agreed.

When it became time, probably around 7:30, we pulled off the road and found a little hill. It was freezing outside. Goosebumps were popping out on people’s arms everywhere. We quickly setup music and started dancing, somewhat awkward on the rocks and dirt. That is when we spotted the junk yard.

We knew we had to do it. Quickly packing up our stuff we took our camers and headed towards the junk yard. None of us had been in one before. Rusty cans, car parts, beer cans, broken boats. It was a bona fide junk yard. We danced and took more pictures… and then was saw the sun rise above a hill.

A friend stood there, and her lines against the sun formed a near perfect silhouette. We climbed through a mountain of junk and reached the top of a mini-hill. We took more pictures and found a desert road. The reds, oranges and blues mixed in with the peaceful desert trail and cacti was simply picturesque.

Friday morning was amongst us, and we headed back in to the car for the final stretch to Aruba, the hotel where we were going to stay.

When we pulled in we quickly found that it was not the quality of hotel we expected, but the quality of motel. Three stories up, chipped stones and stairs only. No casino. Our door was jammed, no carpeting, and the bathroom door was jammed. We were disappointed, to say the least. We decided to grab breakfast, shoved the two twinbeds together and took a five hour nap.

Friday Night

We woke up starving (well, some of us were starving). It was 4PM, so we decided to wander and find a grocery store.

Easy task, right? Wrong.

We went block after block, looking both ways. No grocery stores. Finally, we tried using a GPS which got us to a “Circle K” (which it had found under grocery store listings. We didn’t know that it was actually a gas station. Fortunately, there was a mexican grocery right next to it, and they had incredible prices on produce. 5lbs of oranges for $2, it was amazing. We picked up some food there, but nothing we could eat immediately.

We decided to eat anywhere that was food and soon pulled into an Arby’s. While we sat down to eat, a man came up to us and said he would like to sing for us in exchange for a few bucks. We thought, sure, why not? He sang Seal – Kissed from a Rose. He was INCREDIBLE. We had to dance to him.

After giving him a few bucks, he sang another song. It was great fun to dance to him, despite the limited space and dodging chairs. He and his wife loved us and we soon took pictures and got their email to send it to them. It was so much fun.

We got back, got ready and headed to the dance floor. They were having DJ battles, which was a cool idea but got a little bit annoying only because they stopped every 15 minutes and took off 5-10 minutes for a crowd vote of the DJs. Dancing with people you don’t know with and seeing them smile at moves they haven’t seen is always a pleasure.

After the DJ Battles ended, they played a little more swing, but then moved into the Blues. Finally. There had been another Blues room but it was very smokey, which none of us enjoyed. It was probably about 1 to 2 in the morning now, and people were drifting away. We knew we were going to stay until the end… and so we had good dance after good dance. So many people at exchanges it’s always so much fun to find so many great leads and follows.

As more people left early into the morning it gave us the opportunity to really use floor space, and to move across and around the whole thing without bumping into anyone. Finally, they called last song at around 4. While I don’t remember the song now… it was a great last song and the dance was incredible (thanks to my partner).

After we had finished, we started joking with the DJ saying we weren’t ready to end off. So, he threatened to play a really fast song to tire us out. We took his challenge and asked for the fastest he had. I whispered to the others to do the C-Hop (Clientele Hop), a dance we had made up specifically for fast songs. We just started jumping and going around, using all remnants of energy left in our bodies to keep up to the music and made it through the whole song! We were impressed with ourselves, and apparently so were out spectators. It was a good night.

Saturday Day/Night

After getting to sleep at about 4:30-5 the previous night, we woke up at 9. The girls were very excited about a burlesque class they were taking at 12 while the guys were set on food and sleep. We messed around up and through the girl’s burlesque class, which went and hour longer than expected (they got out at 2). We were now going to Dam Dancing! Upon reaching Hoover Dam, we were disappointed to know that we weren’t on a good part of the dam, but a building where you couldn’t see over the edge, or even see the river. While we stayed there for a while, my partner and I decided to walk along the Dam and take pictures of us dancing in two different time zones! Another spot we’ve danced added to the list.

On our way home we stopped at a buffet, where we also danced and finally got to fill our stomachs to our content! So relieving and sooo good. We continued home, prepared and finally got to dancing at around 9 o’clock.

They were continuing the DJ Battle, which we were getting tired of. We ended up leaving back to our room, doing random things until we finally found another room having blues dancing at 3 in the morning or so. Very relaxing, one of the DJs of the event was in the room, and DJing the music, despite that no more than one to two people could dance comfortably at a time.

An hour later we heard they finally changed DJs on the main dance floor, so we headed over there. This was the greatest part of the trip. There was around eight of us. The DJ was AWESOME. He told us he’d be there as long we were dancing and requesting music. We had joined up with another lead at this point, who I was watching to learn his style and my partner gained quite a bit of skill as well.

The guys had a few dances with each other, great dances with the follows, the girls sometimes danced with each other. Often there was only one or two people on the floor. The DJ and his girlfriend danced. We kept dancing and dancing, having no care in the world what time it was. Every dance was incredible by the fact that we were so tired yet relaxed and we were all in the moment. Finally, he called last song at 7AM. This was one of if not my favorite dance for the entire event. It’s an inexplicable feeling, but great.

Once the song finished, he called a second last song. My partner and I were dancing again… and we saw two friends of ours were going to come and try to steal us away. We whispered to each other and decided we would get away from them. I lifted her while running and ran to the other side of the room. The others followed us, and so we danced around, having an incredible dance at the same time dodging and maneuvering around and away from the other two.

That was the night. It was an incredible night. We had finished the dancing for the trip, and so we headed back towards our beds in the early morning light…

Sunday

We woke up at 11, and realized we didn’t know when our checkout time was. We all quickly got up and cleaned out the room. We found out at some point that our checkout time was 12, which we made. We were ready for the drive home. After taking some final group photos, we got in and took off.

The Las Vegas Exchange was now under our belt.

Wow! After this weekend I’m having a hard time remembering this night, but here’s my best.

The advanced class went really well, worked on more basics as well as taught a nice move. Unfortunately, unless you have a really top class follow, or someone who is in the class, it is hard to lead. I did nearly succeed with a friend of mine.

After that, it was our friend Katrina Haus’ birthday! She came and had a beautiful swing outfit, fedora and all. Her birthday dance was lots of fun, and of course included the complimentary lift at the end. We almost always have the loudest cheer crowd in Lindy Groove.

Gina, whom I have mentioned in the Swingin’ Clientele section, came dressed remarkably. Many of the girls in our group had been cutting their hair (to my dismay, though they do look incredible), so she decided she was going to “grow” her hair. She put on a bunch of fake hair and yarn and she looked SO amazing. I’ll have to see if I can find some pictures I can post. She completely stood out in the crowd of dancers, and spinning her made her “hair” flare. So much fun.

Emily, myself and Jeff had also gotten hair cuts. Emily’s made her look completely different, bangs ‘n’ all, and her hair was redyed. Everyone loved her outfit. Jeff came with an awesome fohawk, while I came with my normal short and slightly spikey hair. Ok, enough about hair!

The DJ that night was probably my favorite DJ at Lindy Groove ever. He just played great music consecutively. Take it, some of the songs were kind of long, but it was awesome. He also got a jam circle going, which I had never seen before at Lindy Groove. I do hope he comes back.

I just looked to see who he is, Daniel Newsome. He’s not only a very well reputed DJ from Denver, CO, but also an incredible swing dancer himself. If you look at the gallery from the previous link you will see what I mean. After looking at some of those pictures, I realize I had seen him in instructional videos  and I also think in videos of ULHS (Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown).

The night went well, the only regret being that he didn’t call out the last song. He either said a few more or about three more, but did not say last song. That’s just a minor detail, but it was great.

We were now headed to the Las Vegas Lindy Exchange.