I just received a call from a friend a few minutes ago asking if Austin Grill was still on tonight. Since the last thing I wrote said there were no more CCS dances at AG, I figured my blog needed to be updated.

The dances never actually stopped. Lots of people sent emails and as of right now there will be no changes with Austin Grill. Meaning, if you want to dance and want to show your support, come out with us sometime this or next week. Up to date information can be found weekly on Charm City Swing’s mailing list, located here.

This past weekend, I travelled to Danvers, MA for Boston Tea Party 2008. When I first started dancing, BTP was the event everyone at Charm City Swing suggested I go to. I’ve been for the past three years now and have enjoyed each.

This year, in addition to taking classes and competing in a Jack & Jill contest, I chose to compete in a Strictly Lindy contest with Emily. We had a lot of fun doing that and I threw in our jumprope aerial because we knew we wouldn’t make it to the finals. Adam caught a quick 30 second video of us right as we did it.

On Saturday, Emily and I both competed in the Intermediate Lindy Hop Jack & Jill competition. I ended up making it to finals and competed again on Sunday with a final placing of 6th with a very nice partner named Zia Mareck-Loftus (who in googling I think might rock climb!) I’m completely thrilled with placing 6th! From what I’ve been told, the competitors in my division were very good. I went from thinking I’d simply be happy if I made it to finals to then thinking my goal was placing in the top 10.

My friend Elaina Hirsch won the Novice Lindy Hop Jack & Jill with her partner, Adam Dau. To say the least, I was thrilled. That means a Charm City Swing dancer has won the competition two years in a row. AWESOME!

In a change up from previous years, we flew into Boston and stayed directly in the hotel where the event was taking place. It was wonderful being able to dance very late into the night and then go directly to bed. I did miss having a fridge and being able to go to the grocery store and stock up on cheap foods. Staying in the hotel didn’t leave much room for cheap and quick food. Because of that, this year ended up being quite a bit more expensive than previous ones. If you’re going, drive yourself, and tight on money, then staying in a hotel that gives you a kitchen is always a nice thing.

In total, Charm City Swing had 30 people come to Boston Tea Party this year. We had three tables! Many of us competed, many for the first time. Shannon Young made it into Novice Jack & Jill finals and Colleen made it into the West Coast Newcomer Jack & Jill finals (but didn’t stay to compete… we all know she would have won).

A list of highlights:

1. Elaina winning the Novice Jack & Jill competition.
2. Placing 6th in Intermediate Lindy Hop Jack & Jill.
3. Emily and I performing in a strictly together.
4. Emily and I joining in on a jam Friday night and ending a song with our jumprope aerial.
5. Having a front row center seat to all competitions, courtesy of the three tables Charm City Swing purchased at BTP.

This past weekend Charm City Swing invited Kevin St. Laurent and Emily Hoffberg, Davis Thurber and Elizabeth Miller, Naomi Uyama, Marc-Andre Vachon and Cassie Wicken to teach a weekend chock full of swing dancing and workshops.

It was amazing!

I’ve been going to the Boston Tea Party for the past couple years because spending the weekend with superstars is always inspiring. Unfortunately, few events out there actually have the appeal that Tea Party has, but I’ll tell you this for sure: Baltimore’s scene is not to be overlooked.

Everyone was inspired. The instructors brought it. We had awesome bands: The Boilermakers and Sac au Lait. It all just meshed together into this perfect event. Even the hiccups (which any event will have) were small!

I have a few “favorite moments” that happened over the weekend:

1. Kevin leading everyone during the solo blues jam circle Saturday night with Sac au Lait. He called it, we did it. I think he could have said, “stand on your head” and the crowd still would have gone ape-shit.

2. Crab wars. I intend to practice. Next year Dorry and I will take Kevin down.

3. Learning a new arial: The Fly. Emily’s and my first try resulted in Emily doing a perfect back flip and sticking the landing. Maybe not what we were supposed to do, but freaking sweet.

I’m so glad Dorry and Sommer were able to convince Kevin and Emily to come to Baltimore. First and foremost, they’re great dancers, but they also have an amazingly fun sense of humor and so much to share. I’d love for a repeat next year. I also loved that they blogged about the weekend at their blog.

To sum things up, here’s a video I posted of Kevin and Emily social dancing:

I’ve been making the most of my hand injury by doing a lot of dancing. Dorry and Sommer’s recent burst of inspiration has involved Emily and I with quite a few events recently:

First, Em and I took a teaching/demo’ing gig at a corporate holiday party. While the demo was really fun, the teaching part was a real bust. For those that know my personal life a bit, just imagine a bunch of my non-dancer friends at a corporate party and then try to imagine me trying to convince them to take a dance lesson. Yeah. Not happening. Neither was the party. Sometimes you get lemons though.

Second, I participated in a group of six asked to perform at the Lyric Opera House for the Chinese New Year on Sunday the 20th. We only had a couple sessions over a two week period to learn parts of The Big Apple, The California routine, and some solo jams. This was four of the six couples first ever choreographed performance, including Emily and I. Quite exciting and a little unnerving at first but I think everyone involved got really inspired and excited! We did a great job performing not only at the Lyric but at Charm City Swing on Monday night:

Third, we’ve been gearing up for two events in February. The first is a Jewish memorial thing where we’ll get to dress in vintage costume for a performance alongside of S&D. The second is the Leap Year Lindy Weekend happening from 2/29-3/2. We’re not really involved with coordinating LeapYearLindy but we’ll be participating in all of the classes and enjoying having people come to our swing scene for some cool shit. Kevin and Emily are amazing dancers and you’d be silly not to see them in action in Baltimore. I can think of a couple people who read my blog who might be interested in some more specifics or rides. I’ll be glad to help out if you want to come!

Something I’ve failed to write about recently is my love for music and more specifically, the fact that I began DJ’ing dances at Austin Grill for Charm City Swing back in June of last year.

I’ll be testing out my style on dancers at a new venue, Avalon Dance Studio, this evening. Who knows how it will go since I’m so inexperienced, but one can only hope for the best.

I have to give a lot of credit to Alan Chung for getting me started with the initial library and list of files that work and don’t and what-not, but I think I’ve strongly developed my own style in the past three months. Up until then I was simply going with what was tried and true. But style is an important thing for a DJ, otherwise you don’t have much of an identity. I don’t have a handle on the swing scene enough to know what style to classify myself as, but I know it isn’t all that typical to what you’ll hear at a dance.

Part of it has to do with spontaneity. I throw shit in my set all the time that I know is danceable but might or might not work, and it almost always works because people aren’t expecting it! “Dude, he’s fucking playing INXS!” Hell yes I am! And you know what? It may not be classic swing but you can dance your ass off to it and have fun. This isn’t an original idea of mine, I’m simply acting on what I saw Alan, Sommer, and others do, but outside of Charm City Swing I don’t see it happen very often. Or if it does, it’s hidden. A lot of DJ’s hide the new and funky stuff at the end of a set. The classics are simply the classics and you have to put something other than classic swing in order to please a larger audience. There is nothing wrong with it and I wish more people did it.

I don’t get around a lot in the swing scene (I just don’t have the time), and I’ll freely admit that fact, but I’ve been to Jam Cellar twice and both times, nothing moved me. And you know what, there are other people there that think the same thing yet they never say anything to anyone, most specifically the DJ. The same thing goes for a lot of what is played in the Lindy Living Room at Boston Tea Party, where I’ll be this weekend. I can only handle so much classics. At a certain point you’re worn out and need a bit of variety.

Reverting to communication with the DJ, it doesn’t happen often with me, but when it does I’m always grateful that someone out there has the guts to say, “Hey you know, this just doesn’t work for me.” Even if you are a “professional” DJ, I think you could learn a thing or two if there was a better method of communication with the dancers. You can’t always rely on whether or not people are dancing. You can dance to anything, but does it really move you?