Today is a perfect day to followup my last post where I had a few people ask me, “What is Lindy Hop?”

Lindy Hop formally began in 1927 using elements from jazz, tap, breakaway, and Charleston; and evolved with jazz music to become what we see in early videos like the infamous Hellzapoppin:

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My first and primary hobby is swing dancing — or more specifically, Lindy Hop. There are plenty forms of dance that end up encapsulating “swing dancing”; from West Coast to East Coast; to Jive or Jitterbug; or even things like Charleston, Peabody, Fox Trot, and Turkey Trot; finally, there’s even a style of Ballroom Swing.

I think it’s great that a term can be used so widely and encompass such a large group with love for dancing. But sometimes it really screws things up, like when corporate moguls get the idea to cover a specific form of dancing and get it completely wrong.

Dancing with the Stars just recently aired an episode where the dancers performed the “Lindy Hop.” Except that nothing anyone did even remotely resembled the Lindy Hop. The best metaphor I can give is that this episode was like eating yogurt and calling it ice cream. Yea it’s food but it ain’t even frozen!

The worst part about how wrong Dancing with the Stars portrayed the Lindy Hop is that everyone I meet who learns or knows I’m a dancer always asks me, “Oh! Do you watch Dancing with the Stars?”

Think about it. What do they think now? What do you think now?

Emily’s and my witty little line has always been, “No, we actually dance.” But from now on, I don’t think I’ll be able to restrain myself from going on a tirade about how much this show absolutely sucks. I imagine they’ve bastardized other forms of dance but until now it has never affected me. It’s downright embarrassing.

Go ahead, watch if you dare… and if you’re a “swing dancer” please know I warned you!

I came to an interesting realization today: My two passions, lindy hop and bouldering, are relatively new hobbies in mainstream media. Both were emerging and gaining popularity just as I was in high school. Things that didn’t exist in my childhood like having a local climbing gym or a local dance scene (on certain levels the dance scene did exist but not as it does today) are something that would actually be accessible and cool to someone of age 16 today. I don’t doubt there were areas around the world that picked up on these cultures sooner than others but it makes me wonder about the future of my investment in both if they are so incredibly new. And if they are just a phase, they must be leading to bigger and better passions. But what could be better? I have no freaking clue!

Last night was the last swing dance at Austin Grill. They’ve decided to discontinue swing dancing in lieu of Monday Night Football. Needless to say, I’m very disappointed.

If you’ve ever been there dancing or ever wanted to, or have been dragged along by me and enjoyed your time there, now is the time to act. Send an email to Bill Duffy. Tell him how much you loved Austin Grill. Tell him how great it was. Tell him how you see the ads for dancing at Austin Grill in the papers ALL the time. Here’s what I said:

Hi Bill,
I just wanted to tell you how disappointed I was to hear Austin Grill decided to stop hosting swing dancing on Monday nights. I’ve been at Austin Grill nearly every Monday since March 14, 2005 when it first started and honestly can’t imagine what my life would be like without it. Honestly! I met my girlfriend there the week it started. I’ve made countless friends, including much of the bar staff. It is literally THE BEST reason to live in Baltimore. It was a wonderful and unique venue, the staff there has been incredibly supportive and friendly, and your food is awesome. I speak for many of my family and friends — Austin Grill will not be the same without it and we will all terribly miss this event.

Unfortunately, the decision has been made. Unless someones mind is changed, there is no more dancing at Austin Grill. We’re looking for other venues. We want one with a big floor, a parking lot, and a safe neighborhood.

And most unfortunately, this isn’t a good time for Dorry, Sommer, Emily, or me, or anyone who might actually be able to help rescue it.

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:

This year was my second annual trip to The Boston Tea Party (BTP), a weekend of swing dancing workshops and competitions in Danvers, MA. It was awesome. I didn’t know a single teacher last year, however I was incredibly impressed with some, especially Dave & Kim and Skye & Sarah. This year I was a bit better versed on who these people were and I was really excited to be learning from people I absolutely admire and wish I could dance like.

Beyond the workshops where we learned kick-ass moves (and other stuff like technique) is the whole competition bit. Last year I competed in the novice Jack and Jill Lindy Hop competition but didn’t make it into the finals. Not the case this year. I not only got into the finals but I got first place with my partner, Joanna! (I love google, only because I didn’t know her last name until I looked it up on BTP’s website this morning and then googled her and found her blog.)

For those of you who don’t know how a Jack and Jill works, it’s called that because you go out and are paired with a random partner. Jack and Jill’s have a lot to do with teamwork, which really ends up being a luck of the draw kind of thing. There are people you dance with sometimes that fight the whole way and there are others that seem to just know what you want. I was lucky enough to have one of those that seemed to know what I want, which in turn only made me enjoy the dance more, which served to make both of us “turn down the suck,” as Dorry later told me.

Getting the award was funny, only because I thought I was too late to the award ceremony to see who won. Actually, that part wasn’t funny, I was kind of pissed because I wanted to have a moment to have that “maybe I’ll place” excitement in my head. Anyway, once they named our competition (about 20 seconds after I walked in the door from lunch with the Baltimore crew) I heard them call third, then second place… in my heart I didn’t expect first, I simply hoped maybe I’d place, but then I heard my name which was so incredibly cool!

I’m not sure what got me more siked about the whole weekend. There were the moves we learned, the late night dancing, the competition, and the award. It all just lumps together to be this awesome experience as a whole, and one I hope to gain again next year.

I only wish I had more time for exchanges like the BTP! I’ll probably end up being at Jam Cellar’s “Big Big Event” and Swing Fling since they are both close to Baltimore, but I don’t see myself going to anything other than that until BTP next year. I have to make some room to go climbing, backpacking, and biking!

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?

Emily and I drove to Boston two weekends ago for the Boston Tea Party, a huge dance convention. It was a long drive, but we had a really cool room and a few friends, including Colleen and Sommer were there. We competed in the Jack and Jill novice competition, but didn’t make it to the finals. We took a total of 12 workshops (I think) and each was informative and beneficial for our dancing. This weekend is DCLX, which means even more dancing. My hand has been hurting but you can be sure I’ll make an appearance.