Education, technology, and dance blog
This entry on Screenhead, the online review of “funny shit” accords New York swing dancers Natalie and Yuval new geekly fame by linking directly to a clip of their “Swing Me Brother Swing” routine at the World Swing Dance Invitational. I wonder if they are wondering exactly what hit their server a day or so ago. Dig those aerials.
I’ve been doing some reading about labyrinthitis and all the advice I’ve seen tells me that I should now be getting back on my feet and moving.
For example, the Vestibular Disorders Association website:
If treated promptly, many inner ear infections cause no permanent damage. In some cases, however, permanent loss of hearing, ranging from barely detectable to total, can result. Your doctor will be able to advise you about the usefulness of hearing aids in your individual case. Permanent damage to the vestibular system can also result. Fortunately, the brain can adapt to damage to the vestibular system, particularly when the damage is partial and/or confined to one side. This adaptation may take days to months, depending on how severe the damage is and how quickly the body is able to recover from the infection. Symptoms of dizziness, difficulty with vision, and imbalance may persist as long as the adaptation is incomplete. This adaptation can only occur if the patient makes an effort to keep moving around despite the symptoms of dizziness and imbalance. Sitting or lying with the head still, while more comfortable, can prolong or even prevent the adaptation process, and should be avoided if at all possible once the worst of the infection is over.
I take this as my permission to dance. I’ll have a rest night tonight, but tomorrow I’ll be teaching again. Unfortunately I am still experiencing the dizziness today and it can be quite offputting, but it sounds like it’s not a good idea to just stop alltogether. Suits me. I find it boring to sit at home anyway. And I feel absolutely fine apart from the nausea and dizziness.
I’ve been thinking a lot about a 20s – early 30s themed dance night at MLX this year. The main reason of course is the continuing evidence that Peter Milley’s 10 piece Cairo Club Orchestra is one of the most engaging and talented swing era bands playing in Melbourne. On top of that, we have never actually heard CCO play at MLX, and there is an increasing interest in big band music from an earlier era — particularly that of the early 1930s. The downsides of such an idea are few, but one of them is that many dancers find the tempos of the hotter stomps and charlestons to be too difficult, and the durges are too slow for some people. So it’s this feeling that the night could be frustrating for some dancers.
My first thoughts are to try to talk to Milley about the idea of tailoring a song list for Lindy Hoppers. We usually do that anyway when hiring a band for MLX. But then I got to thinking about the idea of asking if he would consider looking for arrangements of particular tunes that I know the dancers would go for. The trick is that the line up CCO uses is very consistent and almost always includes a banjo, giving the band that very particular Charleston/dixie feel that only a banjo can. I know that they use a guitar sometimes though. And maybe their banjo player can also play guitar, or they can use another guitarist on certain arrangements.
Anyway in my fantasy world they would transcribe or find arrangements for the Fletcher Henderson classics like Big John’s Special, Christopher Columbus, Wrappin It Up (The Lindy Glide), The Sugarfoot Stomp, The Henderson Stomp, and The Moten Stomp. These are all particular favourites of mine. I’d also be interested in talking to him about some Chick Webb and Jimmie Lunceford stuff of course, but I don’t know if they would go for it. Webb’s Strictly Life, Go Harlem and (oh my) Harlem Congo, and Lunceford’s Four or Five Times, Lunceford Special, Tain’t What You Do, Harlem Shout and For Dancers Only would all be great. Food for thought.
Tonight was the premiere of the SwingCity DVD. The band was the Cairo Club Orchestra, and we’ve just arrived home tired and aching and covered in sweat. Cairo Club is an authentic 20s dance band, and there really is nothing quite like it in Melbourne. They play charts you won’t hear anywhere else, like ‘My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes’ and a really beautiful version of ‘The Mooch’, which remains one of my favourite songs. The quality of the band is such that every soloist is compelling without dominating the arrangments. I also absolutely love the trumpets in this band, of which the bandleader Peter Milley is the lead. They always amaze me with their precision, and they make a lot of use of mutes, which I always love.
The DVD went down very well, and we finally have our first batch of re-authored DVDs (i.e. without the sound glitch in the first run). It’s satisfying to see it on the big screen and hear people laughing and joking in the audience. Naturally we talked all night about what we were planning for this year’s event. We’re officially excited again. It always takes a long while.
One of the true delights of being an organiser of a lindy hop event is getting to know people. Not just people in your own lindy hop scene — that’s a delight in itself, but just about anyone should be able to do that if they are persistent. Getting to know people from all over the world who share the same passion that you do. My next trip to Herrang will by my 5th, which means I have probably been there more times than any other Australian I guess. The main reason I go is definitely because of MLX. It’s a way to tell people about our exchange, and it’s also a way to speak to those particular people you want to invite. It was at Herrang last year that I finally got to catch up with Lorenz and Ursi, and I think they wouldn’t have made it down for SwingCity if I hadn’t been able to see them in person that second time.
So now Ursi is back in Melbourne visiting her newfound friends (and one in particular). She’s even planning to come back on a semi-permanent basis next year. Lotte and I had lunch with her in Lygon Street today and just talked about swing organising the whole time. Apart from being an amazing dancer Ursi is just one of the nicest (and cutest) people I’ve ever met. She’s teaching workshops on May the 21sts and 22nd, by the way, so if you’re a lindy hopper in Melbourne I highly recommend that you get there. She’s truly a world class dancer.
Dachelle just pointed me in the direction of a batch of video clips available by FTP from the Basie Centennial event in New York last year. These are fantastic clips and include some terrific footage from the Hellzapoppin’ contest there. See for yourself (but make sure you have broadband). ftp://dans.poy.no/events/y6a/
Life is good today. I had been feeling a little sorry for myself this week after having suffered for at least 10 days with the effects of the Hullabaloo ‘flu (a cold, really). It’s not one of those debilitating colds — just one that’s hard to shake. Anyway yesterday and today I have been feeling decidedly more upbeat, and I put it down to the receding effects of the virus. Last night we invited Ursi from Switzerland to join our troupe training. It was an excellent decision as she inspired us all. Watching a professional dancer of her calibre is intimidating to be sure, but it challenges us, and we are often struggling to find new ways to bring our dancing to a new level. She showed us a very short routine to a slow jazz track from a Starbucks compilation CD. I’m having trouble tracking down the track name, unfortunately. Anyway the routine focussed strong, slow movements combined with fast ones, and it was incredibly difficult to infuse with quite the same feeling as Ursi.
I think I was able to do it all the way through on the correct time, but I was struggling with pretty much all the nuances of movement. For one thing, body rolls are something I just don’t seem to be able to do with my computer-stiff back and neck. I fantasise sometimes about the idea of dancing all day every day, and wonder how my body would be transformed. It would be really interesting to find out just how much flexibility and strength someone like me could get with the kind of daily regimen that someone like Ursi uses. She told us on the way home that she has trained 2 hours a day while she’s been here, and she has felt like she has been slacking off dramatically. I’m sure that if I trained for an hour a day for one week I would imagine that I was an elite athlete. It’s all relative I suppose.
Well, planning for MLX 2005 has officially begun. I started work on the website for this year by doing a fresh installation of Drupal. I had been putting off doing much on it until the video was out of the way. Today the test DVD arrived from Dream Engine. I’ve given them the go ahead to duplicate after a small correction to the menu, so I hope we’ll have the finished DVDs in our hot little hands by Friday.
Hullabaloo was excellent. I returned late last night with Lotte, with very sore muscles and a dose of the traditional exchange virus. We skipped the morning workshops on both days but still had plenty to challenge us. 3 hrs of classes per day really is enough when you’re social dancing as well, but that might just be us. We are probably beyond the phase in our learning where we are excited enough to get up in time for an 11am class after having danced til 4am. For me the physical challenge was clearly enough as well.
The workshops were overall extremely valuable, which is something I found last year as well. There were some things that were are a disappointment of course. I was a bit frustrated by being invited to DJ and then being given a 30 minute spot in a non-preferred time. On top of that, invited DJs were expected to pay full price and were not paid. I thought that was pretty poor. Also the only live band I got to see was the Fremantle Jazz Orchestra at the Ball, and it was a really good line up with a fairly poorly chosen set list for the occasion. They played what I would expect to hear at any big band gig at a local fete — not what I would expect for a bunch of hardcore swingers wishing to relive the swing era. They played what you would call “progressive jazz music” rather than big band swing. All young faces (which is fantastic) using new arrangements, sometimes of tunes that would best be classified as bop or trad jazz rather than swing. They performed a couple of Basie numbers, but only the one they did as an encore had any real Kansas feel about it. The other was a showtune done with a distinctly Sinatra-Basie style (I can’t quite remember the number right now).
These things are certainly a matter of taste, and taste is personal. However I noticed that a lot of people were sitting down for a lot of the night, so I started to feel that I wasn’t Robinson Crusoe. The rhythm just didn’t have that swingin’ drive, and there were no themes you could play with. It makes it tough on dancers.
Enough of my minor nitpicks, though. On the positive side of the ledger the Perthies have got to be just about the most welcoming and generous group of swing dancers in the country. Their passion is unsurpassed. This always gives me a great feeling, and it comes through in their events. The weekend opened for me with a riverboat cruise down the Swan. That was really a lot of fun. The boat itself was larger than I had imagined and had two floors where you could dance. There wasn’t a lot of room to swing out because everyone tended to congregate on the upper deck floor, but that gave it a really terrific atmosphere. Lotte and I concluded that “enough space” was not an important factor for good atmosphere, and in fact can often detract. The riverboat cruise was probably my favourite event actually, even though it wasn’t a full on dance night.
The Saturday night dance was also really good. CRR member Brian Renehan ended up winning the Jack & Jill with Sarah Farrelley, which was a buzz for all the CRR crew because we had been working on competition stuff the previous week. They danced really well and deserved it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Brian look as relaxed while competing.
CRR performed the Big Apple that night too. That was also a huge buzz because it seemed to go over very well. I personally felt good about my performance, although I was struggling a bit at the beginning with a sore hamstring/groin from the classes. It was funny because I just decided to dance all out anyway and started yelling “RAAAAAAAAHH!” at the top of my voice at various stages to get myself hyped past the pain barrier. It worked. Got to remember that.
Another highlight was our host Wes, who did nothing but wait on us hand and foot all weekend. The best part was when Lotte complained that the only thing they could do to improve the service at “this hotel” was to make up the beds every day. For a nanosecond Wes looked troubled. It was very funny. We thanked him buy making him a breakfast of Dutch pancakes and hid a gift for him in his room.
Well, I only need to wait one more night before I head over to Hullabaloo for the weekend. There’s only one more thing left to do: find someone to feed my cat. That shouldn’t be too hard.
It’s boring waiting to go. Today was a very busy day though, with 4 project meetings and a couple of other casual intra-office meetings in between. Everyone is trying to get things sorted out before the long weekend. It’s strange how the effect of just one day off compresses time. The smart thing to do is leave earlier. Wish I’d thought of it.
Tomorrow I’ll work on my research project and then head to the airport. I get into Perth just in time to make it to the jetty where a riverboat will take us on a cruise down Swan river. I’m worried that something will go wrong and I’ll miss the boat. That would really suck, because the cruise goes for 4 and a half hours and sounds like fun.