Swing Dancing

Unfortunately, we aren’t quite as good as Gene Kelly, and we were not doing tap dancing. We did, however, make quite a show for the people watching us in addition to having a blast.

This was another blues night following the one-follow blues night. Same time, same parking structure.

Let’s back up a minute. We had been bluesing for a few hours, and had finally come to rest in the back of my friend’s truck. The music had stopped an we were all sitting around, chatting and recording some very jazzy commercials. Someone noticed that it was raining outside. We were only one level below the roof, and immediately had the thought of dancing the rain.

Suddenly everyone was moving around grabbing their coats,  grabbing iPods and music players. We all jumped in the back of the truck and screeched our way to the roof. As the rain started falling on our heads and we noticed the dramatic temperature decrease, we rushed to get songs playing. We got el Tango de Roxanne. One of my favorites.

As we danced, the the rain came down faster and stronger, increasing intensity. In that sense, it could be thought to have followed the intensity of the song. It was one of the greatest dances my dance partner and I have ever had to the song.

I’ll post the video as soon as it’s up.

So I got to class at 8:13, the latest I had been. They actually started dancing before I had my shoes on, but technically I was on time.

After a couple of minutes they had everyone pair up, and then they gave an announcement. They told us that we were going to be in a Christmas performance. In fact, the last few weeks, the semi-routine we had been learning was the beginning of it.

The actual performance was going to be in about a month — that meant about four more one-hour classes before we were going to perform! I have never performed Lindy infront of other professional Lindy Hoppers, as we were going to do. It was a little bit nerve racking, and they did give the option to bail, but this was a chance to really take a step forward.

So, they continued the routine quite a bit, and had us dance to a really fast song. It was SO much fun! Everyone picked up on it really fast, and the moves went so smoothly at a really fast speed (didn’t look nearly as good at a slow speed). It was a bit exciting.

After that, the rest of Lindy was pretty eventless. I had a girl ask me to dance who complimented quite a bit, saying I lead the best dance she had that night, which made me feel great.

Me and my dance partner showed up at 9PM, technically when it started. We started calling others to see when they’d arrive. They were late as expected.

While we were waiting I decided to try a dip I had seen in a dream state (not a dream, but half-asleep, semi merged with a previous dream), and it worked! It looks awesome and we got a picture. Some day I will post pictures with posts, but for right now it’s a bit too much work. If you want to see anything, ask me, and I can send you links. But seriously, it was a great dip.

I lately discovered it took a LOT of hamstring muscle and I acted like a cripple for a few days, but totally worth it.

Finally, friends arrived. We realized that we only had one follow – my dance partner. There were five guys and one girl. Thankfully, she never was too tired to dance, and three of the guys barely danced, so it was mainly me and a friend.

Every dance was a great dance and made to be one of the best blues sessions I had been to, with nothing but great music the entire night. Also, I probably danced more at that blues sessions than most. We took a great deal of pictures and ended up with a few moves, and she danced for about 3 hours straight, props to her!

We have plans for another blues night this week, and I can’t wait for another incredible night.