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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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?