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: