Late last year the coordinators for Enter the Blues announced that this year there would be not one, but TWO Enter The Blues(es). Numero Uno would focus on dances and mini-classes with an emphasis on setting up your own private lesson, while Numero Dos would be the full on, blow out weekend. I shan’t speculate too hard on whether the February date just crept up on them too quickly, so they knew they needed to throw something together fast to appease their fans.
Anywho, as usual my body wasn’t willing to dance 7 hours a night on top of classes, so I skipped classes and just stuck to dancing. My knees and back behaved better than they have… basically ever, since all my aches and pains started. I’m getting stronger, hooray! The weekend itself was a bit of a blur – I housed 9 people, including Seattle Josh and Patrick & Beth from Macon. It was fantastic, and lots of excellent conversation occurred in addition to the dancing.
The other notable lead for the weekend (outside of the obvious choices of Patrick and Josh) was Chris from Florida, who I originally met at Blues and Soul 2. Gods, such a blues crush do I have on him. We probably danced 6 dances Saturday night; we just move so incredibly well together. Heavenly.
I have a few dancing things I was working on over the weekend.
• About a month ago at Northside I started a dance with John and his light flowy frame made me realize that I’ve been getting really tight and heavy the last few months. This is mostly due to dancing with Bert – we dance amazingly together, but the thing that allows us to do Cool Stuff ™ is a connection largely based on counter-balance. I realized that over the months my frame has gotten tighter and tighter to accommodate that… even when I’m not dancing with Bert nor asking for counterbalance. I corrected the problem right away – so abruptly that after the dance John remarked that it was the most relaxed he’s ever felt me. It was like flipping a switch… and I spent a lot of the weekend making sure that flip stayed switched.
• In addition to keeping my frame lighter, I’ve started focusing on lead matching again. So hard. So worth it.
• Dancing with Patrick at Statesboro Blues made me realize I’ve been playing grabby-hands, often coming back into a close closed position when I haven’t been asked. I’m not sure what cause that habit to develop, but I imagine it has something to do with trying to stay clear of drunks at Northside. I manage not to do it if I’m paying attention, but it will take a few weeks to really break the habit.
• The bit of Westie I’ve been dancing has made me realize a few things about turning. First of all – I basically always pirouette, and maybe ¾ of the time I style by crossing my feet. I almost never step through my turns, and when I do I always travel. I haven’t been taking the opportunity to do doubles when they’re offered. That’s a big pile of stuff to work through. For now I’m just trying to pay attention when I turn so I don’t always default to crossed-pirouette, and also to take doubles more often on free turns when I have the momentum. Patrick was very obliging on the latter item, occasionally refusing to take me back until I had turned twice. Bastard.
I had planned to list a few things that I want to start working on going forward, but that’s kind of a big pile already. Maybe I won’t add branches to an already blazing fire… I’ll just keep working these things. I’ll have lots of opportunity this weekend at Sweet Molasses Blues in Boston!
Showing posts with label exchanges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exchanges. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Statesboro Blues 2010
After taking most of January off to let my back recover and settle down, I kicked off the 2010 blues event calendar with a trip down to Statesboro. The Swing Cat Society affiliated with Georgia Southern University put together a 2 day event – Friday night dances, 5 hours of classes on Saturday, and Saturday evening dances. The classes were specifically geared towards blues beginners, taught by Evin and Huy.
Originally I was dithering about whether to go down. Though I love Evin dearly, I’ve done beginning blues with her a few times now and wasn’t really interested in a long drive for another repeat class. Eventually Bert convinced me to go, since he was DJing and it sounded like a few ATL folks would make it. I set about pestering a few non-dancer friends about going, and managed to sucker both RJ and Ross to accompany me. Seeing as how I’ve been trying to get basically any of my non-dancer friends to get into blues for a while, this was a big win.
I could ramble on, but the short of it is that I had a blast. The level of dancing was a little on the low side (surprise, surprise, beginner workshop!) but there were plenty of more advanced leads to keep things interesting. Many of the beginning dancers were also very fun to dance with – a lot of folks had lindy background and strong fundamentals, and therefore took to blues like fishees to water.
Notable leads:
• Steve from Florida made it up, and he’s always fabulous to dance with. He makes me move in ways that I didn’t actually know I could move – sometimes I’ll be dancing with him and all of the sudden be dipped in a direction I’ve never dipped before. Never had a dance with him that wasn’t excellent. I repaid him for his awesomeness by clocking him in the face during a dance where he and Bert were trading me off… but it serves them right for using me so cruelly.
• Cole was probably the best “beginner” blues dancer I met. His drag blues were fucking incredible, even though he swore it was his first time doing any blues at all. I felt like we moved around the floor like one person – it was wonderful.
• Patrick from Macon was my other pleasant surprise of the weekend. It sounds like we’ve been to a few of the same events but never managed to intersect until this time around. He’s been trying to put together a monthly blues dance in his hometown, and after meeting him this weekend I’ll definitely be trying to make it as often as possible. Not only is he a super-fun guy whose tastes parallel mine (blues varietals, scotch, women…) but we also have great dance-chemistry. I can’t really point to one single thing that make our dances together awesome, but as a whole we just “click.”
• So I don’t forget again: Charlie is Megan’s husband who I met a Christabel for the first time. Very very impressed by how fast he’s coming along, and he’s a nice guy to boot.
So much for not rambling! Phew! Anyway, the weekend was phenomenal. My knees and back behaved fairly well, though I kept myself dosed with advil most of the time. Megan & Emily did a stellar job putting it together the event, and everything went smoothly. Hooray first blues event of the year!
Originally I was dithering about whether to go down. Though I love Evin dearly, I’ve done beginning blues with her a few times now and wasn’t really interested in a long drive for another repeat class. Eventually Bert convinced me to go, since he was DJing and it sounded like a few ATL folks would make it. I set about pestering a few non-dancer friends about going, and managed to sucker both RJ and Ross to accompany me. Seeing as how I’ve been trying to get basically any of my non-dancer friends to get into blues for a while, this was a big win.
I could ramble on, but the short of it is that I had a blast. The level of dancing was a little on the low side (surprise, surprise, beginner workshop!) but there were plenty of more advanced leads to keep things interesting. Many of the beginning dancers were also very fun to dance with – a lot of folks had lindy background and strong fundamentals, and therefore took to blues like fishees to water.
Notable leads:
• Steve from Florida made it up, and he’s always fabulous to dance with. He makes me move in ways that I didn’t actually know I could move – sometimes I’ll be dancing with him and all of the sudden be dipped in a direction I’ve never dipped before. Never had a dance with him that wasn’t excellent. I repaid him for his awesomeness by clocking him in the face during a dance where he and Bert were trading me off… but it serves them right for using me so cruelly.
• Cole was probably the best “beginner” blues dancer I met. His drag blues were fucking incredible, even though he swore it was his first time doing any blues at all. I felt like we moved around the floor like one person – it was wonderful.
• Patrick from Macon was my other pleasant surprise of the weekend. It sounds like we’ve been to a few of the same events but never managed to intersect until this time around. He’s been trying to put together a monthly blues dance in his hometown, and after meeting him this weekend I’ll definitely be trying to make it as often as possible. Not only is he a super-fun guy whose tastes parallel mine (blues varietals, scotch, women…) but we also have great dance-chemistry. I can’t really point to one single thing that make our dances together awesome, but as a whole we just “click.”
• So I don’t forget again: Charlie is Megan’s husband who I met a Christabel for the first time. Very very impressed by how fast he’s coming along, and he’s a nice guy to boot.
So much for not rambling! Phew! Anyway, the weekend was phenomenal. My knees and back behaved fairly well, though I kept myself dosed with advil most of the time. Megan & Emily did a stellar job putting it together the event, and everything went smoothly. Hooray first blues event of the year!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Blues N Soul 2 - June 19th-21st 2009
I very nearly didn't make it down for Blues N Soul in Orlando, FL. After paying way too much money for a shiny StarFire sword at the Renaissance Festival, I was thinking I might take it easy on my bank account for a while. Luckily, a combination of awesome dancing with the organizer, Steve (who I met at CHEX) and the fact that Blues N Soul fell on my birthday weekend convinced me that I should say "fuck it!" and spring for the trip.
Bert went down with me so that I'd have some company, and we arrived Friday night in time to get changed, locate booze, and head to the first dance at UCF, less than a mile from the hotel I booked. Verra nice.
I don't feel the urge to go into all of the dances, so I'll hit the themes and highlights of the weekend.
The exchange was small, only 40 people pre-registered, though I'd estimate that the evening dances had close to 100 people, and the late nights 50 or 60. The Orlando scene was very friendly and inviting to the few out-of-towners, though I was glad that I hosted Sheila and Austin during ATLX so that I knew a few people. Elizabeth, an awesome chick I met at Bluesalicious also came down, as well as Jonathan and Stefanie from Macon, so between those people, Steve, and Bert I never really ran low on company.
The dancing was good, and I found it was generally of a high level. Notable dancers included Chris (massively skinny, gangly, adorable boy) who I had a bit of trouble getting connected with at first, but once we hit the right spot we really were on, and Jim who danced with me quite a lot throughout the weekend and is one of the few dancers who is much shorter than me but still fun to dance with. Austin was wonderful and light and bouncy as always - his connection is such a dream! I didn't get to dance quite as many with Steve as I would have liked, since he spent a lot of time running around organizing and I spent a lot of time taking pictures.
Other highlights: my birthday jam, which was way too lindy and way too nerve-wracking. Center of attention at dancing (which I stopped for 4 years specifically because I -didn't- want to be the center of attention) equals equals bad. Luckily I made it through without too much anxiety. The other amusing time involved me trying to leave the Saturday night late-night… I quite literally had my keys in hand, and every time I grabbed a boy to hug them goodbye, they wouldn't let me go until we had danced a song. One-handed blues isn't so hard after all.
The only bad thing I have to say about the event is that they needed some goddamn signage. Bert and I got turned around going to every single venue - UCF and The Zebra room each took us 30+ minutes to find. The person checking us in also didn't give us the exchange brochure, so we didn't have an physical copy of schedule and locations, which was sucked.
Also, not the exchange's fault, but fuck florida and all of it's toll roads!
Bottom line: I had a great time! Next year Steve plans to hold the exchange in the fall so that we won't be swimming in sweat at the less-well-air-conditioned venues - I approve! I'll definitely look to make a return trip next year!
Bert went down with me so that I'd have some company, and we arrived Friday night in time to get changed, locate booze, and head to the first dance at UCF, less than a mile from the hotel I booked. Verra nice.
I don't feel the urge to go into all of the dances, so I'll hit the themes and highlights of the weekend.
The exchange was small, only 40 people pre-registered, though I'd estimate that the evening dances had close to 100 people, and the late nights 50 or 60. The Orlando scene was very friendly and inviting to the few out-of-towners, though I was glad that I hosted Sheila and Austin during ATLX so that I knew a few people. Elizabeth, an awesome chick I met at Bluesalicious also came down, as well as Jonathan and Stefanie from Macon, so between those people, Steve, and Bert I never really ran low on company.
The dancing was good, and I found it was generally of a high level. Notable dancers included Chris (massively skinny, gangly, adorable boy) who I had a bit of trouble getting connected with at first, but once we hit the right spot we really were on, and Jim who danced with me quite a lot throughout the weekend and is one of the few dancers who is much shorter than me but still fun to dance with. Austin was wonderful and light and bouncy as always - his connection is such a dream! I didn't get to dance quite as many with Steve as I would have liked, since he spent a lot of time running around organizing and I spent a lot of time taking pictures.
Other highlights: my birthday jam, which was way too lindy and way too nerve-wracking. Center of attention at dancing (which I stopped for 4 years specifically because I -didn't- want to be the center of attention) equals equals bad. Luckily I made it through without too much anxiety. The other amusing time involved me trying to leave the Saturday night late-night… I quite literally had my keys in hand, and every time I grabbed a boy to hug them goodbye, they wouldn't let me go until we had danced a song. One-handed blues isn't so hard after all.
The only bad thing I have to say about the event is that they needed some goddamn signage. Bert and I got turned around going to every single venue - UCF and The Zebra room each took us 30+ minutes to find. The person checking us in also didn't give us the exchange brochure, so we didn't have an physical copy of schedule and locations, which was sucked.
Also, not the exchange's fault, but fuck florida and all of it's toll roads!
Bottom line: I had a great time! Next year Steve plans to hold the exchange in the fall so that we won't be swimming in sweat at the less-well-air-conditioned venues - I approve! I'll definitely look to make a return trip next year!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Bluesalicious 09
I’ve been a very bad girl about updating after my big dancey events lately – I let both the Hop Shop and Enter The Blues passed unremarked, though I had quite a lot of bad to say about the former and quite a lot of good to say about the latter. So. This is me being good and writing about Bluesalicious immediately, before it has a chance to flee my sieve-like brain.
For Bluesalicious, I had the option of either taking some time off Friday and making it to Memphis in time for the Friday night festivities, or taking off Monday and being able to stick around town for the pub-crawl on Beale Street Sunday night. The choice was fairly obvious – I’ve been lusting after dance opportunities every time my coworkers and I go drinking on Beale Street, so I arranged my flight for a Saturday-Monday trip. I opted to get a hotel near Beale Street and rent a car so that I could keep my own hours and schedule (read: get fucktons of sleep in hopes that my legs would hold up and I wouldn’t get sick). It turned out to be a good choice on both counts – though I had some gripes about the hotel, being able to go places when I wanted to meant I was able to get plenty of rest and take it easy for the big events.
Saturday I made it to the hotel around 3ish and go settled in before taking a nice long nap. When I woke up I got in touch with the other Atlanta folks and met up with them for some good old Memphis BBQ at Rendezvous – which turned out to be adjacent to my hotel. How convenient. Once pumped full of meat I strolled back up to my room and dosed up on pain killer, and also iced my knees. These precautions did a lot to make my night less painful, I think.
At 9 I headed over to the Friday night venue. People were pretty slow both arriving and setting up, but I was happy to sit around with my feet propped up and appreciate the atmosphere. The Premiere Palace has a lot of character, though it’s got a few rough edges. Dancing finally got going around 10ish… gods how amazing is it to have a hundred blues leads to choose from? Don’t get me wrong, I love my locals, but there are only 8 or 10 of us who do blues with any level of seriousness. Having an entire room full of leads to choose from was just heavenly. It took me no time at all to get relaxed and into a groove – it seems like every single dance I had that night was amazingly connected, fun, and relaxed. The quality of dancers was super high, and I feel like I learned a lot and gained a ton of experience just social dancing. There were a few times when I felt like I might be missing really “simple” basic blues concepts, owing to the fact that I haven’t really taken any blues classes and mostly just have social-dancing experience. I need to get me to a workshop to smooth out the gaps in my knowledge, I think. It didn’t really have a negative impact on my dancing, but I did notice a couple of moves being lead that just didn’t quite make sense, but seemed omni-present.
Notable leads for the night were Erin from San Francisco, who was the first dance of the night that I really relaxed ad clicked with, Clint from Austin who lead me in the most effortless body rolls ever known to man, Z from Russia who asked me to dance twice in a row after we had an extremely fun and playful first dance, and Kyle (whose location I missed, and who I didn’t get to catch up with on Sunday). Kyle is the first short guy who I’ve had a really effortless dance with – in spite of being a head shorter than me our (3 or so) dances were completely in sync, and we both had time to be playful and expressive.
Dancing with Bert and Ben was great, as always, and it was interesting to feel how my dancing with them changed after we’d all had some variety in partners. Ben’s leads opened up a lot and he lead some moves that I’ve never seen him do, and he did a better job not taking me off my center in his dips. Bert and I both loosened up a lot in our connection, and I could really feel him starting to get down into the floor and have a more distinct pulse. I hope we can all maintain that improvement and variety and take it back to Atlanta.
Oh, did I mention how spectacular the band was Saturday night? The first couple of hours were DJed, but then a really excellent blues band took over - Ms. Nickki with Jesse Frank & the Blues Bandits. I was a little skeptical as they were setting up since they kept blasting the speakers with really nasty feedback, but they were second to none once they were actually playing.
The bottom line on Saturday night is that I was just Spot. Fucking. On. I wish I could dance like that all the time.
I headed back to the hotel around 2:30 or 3 – my legs were starting to get a little sore and I could feel my thighs shaking when I did dips, so I wanted to quit before I overdid it (unlike ETB). I got 9 glorious hours of sleep but woke up feeling a little woozy Sunday morning. Blaming dehydration I chugged water all day, which seemed to help.
One of my greatest joys in visiting new cities is finding excellent places for Bunch on the weekend. Since there was no dancing slated until mid afternoon, I decided to strike out and explore the area around my hotel and the Peabody a bit. I ended up in a pretty famous restaurant called The Majestic. And by “in” I mean “in front of” – it was a gorgeous day and they had a number of patio tables set up. I parked myself with my book for going on 2 hours and enjoyed a delicious brunch of bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits, coffee, and ridiculously good $3 mimosas. This place will definitely be on my list any time I’m back in Memphis on a weekend.
After brunch I toodled around downtown a bit more, stopping to do a bit of shopping. After not too long I ended up back at the hotel for a nice nap. I woke up about half way through the afternoon dance at Ernestine & Hazels, so I decided to stop by and check it out, though I wanted to save most of my leg strength for the night dance. I’m really glad I went – the venue is a old Bordello that has been converted into a restaurant/bar/party space. The upstairs rooms and halls were packed with dancers going at it house-party-style; it was worth the trip just to experience that sort of atmosphere. I danced a couple of songs, but I was still tired from the night before, so I had a hard time relaxing. On guy, Matthew, wanted to dance reeeeeal close and was kind of giving me some guidance about relaxing and not amplifying his leads, as well as not getting ahead of him. I appreciated the coaching, but his tone came off a little cheesy (“I want to feel like I’m one with you” – really, dude?) so I had a hard time staying focused. I ended up bugging out after just a few dances to go back to the hotel and rest up for the evening dance.
Sunday night was the event that I was most excited about – the Beale Street pub crawl. I’d been looking forward to dancing on Beale street for months, ever since the first time my coworkers and I went drinking there while on project in Memphis. Unfortunately the night got off to kind of a “blah” start… I should have taken the 7:00 start time with a grain of salt, knowing how late the afternoon dance ran. I wandered down to Beale Street around 7:15, and there pretty much weren’t any dancers in evidence. A small group of us gathered over the next two hours, but we had a hard time getting settled anywhere – the bands kept taking long breaks as soon as we’d walk up, or there wouldn’t be enough space. It was pretty frustrating.
The situation got better once more dancers showed up around 9, and a group of us ensconced ourselves upstairs and Rum Boogie café. I had a few decent dances, though I just wasn’t as “on” as the previous night. I did get to re-meet RJ the Flight Attendant, who I met at KLX last fall – he was probably my best dance of night. The band at rum boogie cracked me up – at one point the lead singer and guitarist had a girl sitting on stage, had his guitar in her lap, and was playing it with his tongue. I shit you not. It was pretty entertaining.
Oh, I also figured out one of the reasons I have such a hard time dancing with girls – when I follow, I tend to look at the guy’s chest for cues about where his weight is and where he’s going next. With girls if I try to do that… well, you can imagine. I danced with two ladies who were lovely leads, but as usual I stumbled my way through the dances like a blushing 14-year-old boy. Ah well.
Rum Boogie was a good time, but the band stopped playing by 11, which was disappointing. They told us we could head next door for more live music, but after 20 minutes of waiting for the band to go on I gave up an headed back to Superior, where the official Bluesalicious DJ was set up. I spent the rest of the night dancing there. I had an ok time, but I wasn’t rivaling the quality of dancing from the night before. I knew my level of dancing would be a little lower since my legs were so achy, but it was like my creativity had leaked away, as well. I had fun, but it wasn’t spectacular.
Finally around 2 I headed back to the hotel to pass out. For some reason I did the same thing that I did after KLX where I woke up ever. Single. Goddamn. Hour. Quite frustrating. I finally gave up on sleep around 10:30, achy and coming down with a cold. My knees are pretty much demolished, and I’m fairly displeased that I didn’t manage the trip without getting sick, in spite of being so very good about sleep and hand-sanitizing. Rawr!
So, there it is, my stream-of-conscious, not at all edited or reviewed, from the brain to the fingers summary of Bluesalicious. I had a really great time, though I’m a bit displeased with my knees and immune system. I’ll definitely be taking my body’s reaction into account as I choose which workshops and exchanges to go to for the rest of the year.
For Bluesalicious, I had the option of either taking some time off Friday and making it to Memphis in time for the Friday night festivities, or taking off Monday and being able to stick around town for the pub-crawl on Beale Street Sunday night. The choice was fairly obvious – I’ve been lusting after dance opportunities every time my coworkers and I go drinking on Beale Street, so I arranged my flight for a Saturday-Monday trip. I opted to get a hotel near Beale Street and rent a car so that I could keep my own hours and schedule (read: get fucktons of sleep in hopes that my legs would hold up and I wouldn’t get sick). It turned out to be a good choice on both counts – though I had some gripes about the hotel, being able to go places when I wanted to meant I was able to get plenty of rest and take it easy for the big events.
Saturday I made it to the hotel around 3ish and go settled in before taking a nice long nap. When I woke up I got in touch with the other Atlanta folks and met up with them for some good old Memphis BBQ at Rendezvous – which turned out to be adjacent to my hotel. How convenient. Once pumped full of meat I strolled back up to my room and dosed up on pain killer, and also iced my knees. These precautions did a lot to make my night less painful, I think.
At 9 I headed over to the Friday night venue. People were pretty slow both arriving and setting up, but I was happy to sit around with my feet propped up and appreciate the atmosphere. The Premiere Palace has a lot of character, though it’s got a few rough edges. Dancing finally got going around 10ish… gods how amazing is it to have a hundred blues leads to choose from? Don’t get me wrong, I love my locals, but there are only 8 or 10 of us who do blues with any level of seriousness. Having an entire room full of leads to choose from was just heavenly. It took me no time at all to get relaxed and into a groove – it seems like every single dance I had that night was amazingly connected, fun, and relaxed. The quality of dancers was super high, and I feel like I learned a lot and gained a ton of experience just social dancing. There were a few times when I felt like I might be missing really “simple” basic blues concepts, owing to the fact that I haven’t really taken any blues classes and mostly just have social-dancing experience. I need to get me to a workshop to smooth out the gaps in my knowledge, I think. It didn’t really have a negative impact on my dancing, but I did notice a couple of moves being lead that just didn’t quite make sense, but seemed omni-present.
Notable leads for the night were Erin from San Francisco, who was the first dance of the night that I really relaxed ad clicked with, Clint from Austin who lead me in the most effortless body rolls ever known to man, Z from Russia who asked me to dance twice in a row after we had an extremely fun and playful first dance, and Kyle (whose location I missed, and who I didn’t get to catch up with on Sunday). Kyle is the first short guy who I’ve had a really effortless dance with – in spite of being a head shorter than me our (3 or so) dances were completely in sync, and we both had time to be playful and expressive.
Dancing with Bert and Ben was great, as always, and it was interesting to feel how my dancing with them changed after we’d all had some variety in partners. Ben’s leads opened up a lot and he lead some moves that I’ve never seen him do, and he did a better job not taking me off my center in his dips. Bert and I both loosened up a lot in our connection, and I could really feel him starting to get down into the floor and have a more distinct pulse. I hope we can all maintain that improvement and variety and take it back to Atlanta.
Oh, did I mention how spectacular the band was Saturday night? The first couple of hours were DJed, but then a really excellent blues band took over - Ms. Nickki with Jesse Frank & the Blues Bandits. I was a little skeptical as they were setting up since they kept blasting the speakers with really nasty feedback, but they were second to none once they were actually playing.
The bottom line on Saturday night is that I was just Spot. Fucking. On. I wish I could dance like that all the time.
I headed back to the hotel around 2:30 or 3 – my legs were starting to get a little sore and I could feel my thighs shaking when I did dips, so I wanted to quit before I overdid it (unlike ETB). I got 9 glorious hours of sleep but woke up feeling a little woozy Sunday morning. Blaming dehydration I chugged water all day, which seemed to help.
One of my greatest joys in visiting new cities is finding excellent places for Bunch on the weekend. Since there was no dancing slated until mid afternoon, I decided to strike out and explore the area around my hotel and the Peabody a bit. I ended up in a pretty famous restaurant called The Majestic. And by “in” I mean “in front of” – it was a gorgeous day and they had a number of patio tables set up. I parked myself with my book for going on 2 hours and enjoyed a delicious brunch of bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits, coffee, and ridiculously good $3 mimosas. This place will definitely be on my list any time I’m back in Memphis on a weekend.
After brunch I toodled around downtown a bit more, stopping to do a bit of shopping. After not too long I ended up back at the hotel for a nice nap. I woke up about half way through the afternoon dance at Ernestine & Hazels, so I decided to stop by and check it out, though I wanted to save most of my leg strength for the night dance. I’m really glad I went – the venue is a old Bordello that has been converted into a restaurant/bar/party space. The upstairs rooms and halls were packed with dancers going at it house-party-style; it was worth the trip just to experience that sort of atmosphere. I danced a couple of songs, but I was still tired from the night before, so I had a hard time relaxing. On guy, Matthew, wanted to dance reeeeeal close and was kind of giving me some guidance about relaxing and not amplifying his leads, as well as not getting ahead of him. I appreciated the coaching, but his tone came off a little cheesy (“I want to feel like I’m one with you” – really, dude?) so I had a hard time staying focused. I ended up bugging out after just a few dances to go back to the hotel and rest up for the evening dance.
Sunday night was the event that I was most excited about – the Beale Street pub crawl. I’d been looking forward to dancing on Beale street for months, ever since the first time my coworkers and I went drinking there while on project in Memphis. Unfortunately the night got off to kind of a “blah” start… I should have taken the 7:00 start time with a grain of salt, knowing how late the afternoon dance ran. I wandered down to Beale Street around 7:15, and there pretty much weren’t any dancers in evidence. A small group of us gathered over the next two hours, but we had a hard time getting settled anywhere – the bands kept taking long breaks as soon as we’d walk up, or there wouldn’t be enough space. It was pretty frustrating.
The situation got better once more dancers showed up around 9, and a group of us ensconced ourselves upstairs and Rum Boogie café. I had a few decent dances, though I just wasn’t as “on” as the previous night. I did get to re-meet RJ the Flight Attendant, who I met at KLX last fall – he was probably my best dance of night. The band at rum boogie cracked me up – at one point the lead singer and guitarist had a girl sitting on stage, had his guitar in her lap, and was playing it with his tongue. I shit you not. It was pretty entertaining.
Oh, I also figured out one of the reasons I have such a hard time dancing with girls – when I follow, I tend to look at the guy’s chest for cues about where his weight is and where he’s going next. With girls if I try to do that… well, you can imagine. I danced with two ladies who were lovely leads, but as usual I stumbled my way through the dances like a blushing 14-year-old boy. Ah well.
Rum Boogie was a good time, but the band stopped playing by 11, which was disappointing. They told us we could head next door for more live music, but after 20 minutes of waiting for the band to go on I gave up an headed back to Superior, where the official Bluesalicious DJ was set up. I spent the rest of the night dancing there. I had an ok time, but I wasn’t rivaling the quality of dancing from the night before. I knew my level of dancing would be a little lower since my legs were so achy, but it was like my creativity had leaked away, as well. I had fun, but it wasn’t spectacular.
Finally around 2 I headed back to the hotel to pass out. For some reason I did the same thing that I did after KLX where I woke up ever. Single. Goddamn. Hour. Quite frustrating. I finally gave up on sleep around 10:30, achy and coming down with a cold. My knees are pretty much demolished, and I’m fairly displeased that I didn’t manage the trip without getting sick, in spite of being so very good about sleep and hand-sanitizing. Rawr!
So, there it is, my stream-of-conscious, not at all edited or reviewed, from the brain to the fingers summary of Bluesalicious. I had a really great time, though I’m a bit displeased with my knees and immune system. I’ll definitely be taking my body’s reaction into account as I choose which workshops and exchanges to go to for the rest of the year.
Monday, November 17, 2008
KLX 08
Wow. What a fucking spectacular weekend. Incoming: longer than usual rant with a higher personal-to-dance ramble ratio than I generally put here, but I feel the need to adequately commemorate my first exchange experience. Man, can you believe that in the 7 years I've been dancing (and/or not dancing) that I've never been to a real exchange? Terror!
So, without further ado, the weekend from the top.
Thanks to being stuck at work for 12 hours on Thursday, I got to head out of the office early on Friday, putting me on the road early enough to avoid The Traffics. Amaze! This may be the first time I've ever driven out of ATL without hitting some sort of slowdown. A good portent of Weekend To Come. The drive went smoothly until I got off the interstate in Lenoir City... and my phone rings. It's my PM. They've been working on a deployment all day and shit is broken. Talk about putting a damper on my drama-free departure. Luckily I managed to talk them through the issue even though I didn't have the code in front of me - I won't get into how displeased I was that I had walked the dev in question through the EXACT SAME issue last week. Seriously, dude.
Anyway, I made it to my dad's place around 6. Sam & Cal were ridiculously hyped up to see me, and much shrieking and running around ensued. I filled myself with some dinner, hopped online to make sure that work wasn't still having issues... and promptly lost all enthusiasm for going out dancing, from some combination of tired and full. Luckily, Coworker of Awesomeness was online chatting with me, and convinced me to get off my lazy ass. I dragged myself out the door with middling enthusiasm around 8:15.
I made it to the Friday Evening dance to find a pretty decent crowd, a pretty good band... and basically no one that I knew. There were a couple of familiar faces that I recognized from Atlanta Varsity Showdown, but nobody that I was really on more than nodding/exchanging brief pleasantries with terms. It became pretty quickly apparent that I wasn't going to get much dancing done if I stood around and waited to be asked, so I started grabbing people. I have no problem asking guys to dance, but it does start to get a little discouraging after a while, especially when you know next to no one.
By 10:30 or 11 the tiredness was starting to catch up to me again, and my enthusiasm was fading fast - though I'm loathe to admit it, I started eying the door pretty hard. I decided to migrate to the other side of the floor, see if I could get one or two more good dances, then maybe call it a night. Enter two of my Notable Leads from the weekend, David and Josh. I snagged these two gentlemen in turn and danced with them back to back, and all of the sudden my enthusiasm was restored.
Josh's most notable feature is his amazing pulse - smooth and springy without being overdone. I felt so connected to the music when I danced with him, and his lead was light and encouraging, leaving me lots of room to play. Our first dance consisted almost entirely of swingouts in which we'd each do a variation and play off the other person's styling. Massively entertaining - I love a dance where the sum total of your communication is in movement and shared giggles.
David... just damn. I would be such a great dancer if I could dance with him on a regular basis. He has a fantastic feel for the music, and his style is just so smooth and expressive. His lead and connection are both light and gentle, but he's still very clear. He's also massively tuned into his follow's position, weight, and balance - I didn't once get pulled off my center while dancing with him. As a result, I really felt like I could focus on keeping my own connection light and supple, something I've been working on since the Followers Footsteps series last month.
Wooo, tangent! Anyway, I had two great dances and that convinced me to keep at it. I left the evening dance a little early so that I would have time to procure ice for my knees and transfer over to the late night venue. I made it to the Square Dance Center with time to spare and sat with a 5lb bag of ice spread over my knees like a good little physical therapy patient. I was pretty impressed at how well they were holding up - the drive up made them pretty achy, but dancing actually seemed to help rather than hurt.
People finally started trickling in around 12:30 for the midnight breakfast. I sat down with a guy named John and his wife Tiffany, who were in town from Hawaii, where John is deployed in the Navy. My last dance at the evening venue was with John, and he was a lot of fun - very playful and well connected, if not a little flashy. He pulled the flashy off without being a bad lead, so I suppose I can't complain... any guy that inspires enough confidence in me that I'll let him really dip me within the first few dances is pretty impressive.
Eventually David joined us at the table, and then the really geekery got going. Here's an absolute first for me, ever - David worked with the consulting division of Microsoft up in Canada for a few years... and he worked with Avanade. I was completely floored - absolutely NO one has heard of my company, even people who work for Microsoft and Accenture. Cue "it's a small world" theme here. Anyway, from that point on we really hit it off, and suddenly rather than feeling a little lonely at the exchange I had several great people to chat with.
The Friday late-night is a little bit of a blur... I had a couple more good dances with various people, including David and John. Sadly the blues room upstairs was a little dead - they had half the lights off, but left 1 set of florescents on so you could see, and it kind of killed the atmosphere. David and I ruminated on the possibility of bringing some christmas lights to make it better for Saturday. Oh, and I also had a really fun dance with Megan - dancing with her is just so different from dancing with boys. I'm not quite sure how to put words on it... there was one point when we were dancing where we did something and she got all smiley and was expounding on how boys don't appreciate "the stretch" in music like girls do. That's definitely true for some leads, but there's more to it than that. I feel the same difference when I dance with Mike the Girl - one of these days I'll have to see if I can't find the words to express it.
Right, like I said, the late night was a bit of a blur. I finally got home around 3:30 and passed the hells out... only to be woken up around 7:30 when Sam & Cal woke up and started calling upstairs for me to get up. My dad & Pam are currently just living in the new extension of the house while the original half gets renovated, and the result is that there is no door between the upstairs and the downstairs. I managed to grab a few more broken chunks of rest, but by 9:30 I gave up. Spent the day socializing with the family, then hit up the KLX dinner. Ate delicious pesto, had a longer conversation than I've ever had before with Robert, then headed to the evening dance.
Did I mention that the Saturday Evening Dance was a live performance by Christabel & the Jons? Oh. Hells. Yes. I danced myself silly for the first set - I think I maybe sat out two songs at most. I also gave David fair warning that there was One Song that I was required to dance with him to, assuming Christa remembered that when she was ATL she promised me that they'd play it for the exchange.
I started to wear out a bit during the second set, but I was still having a blast dancing. Other notable dancers... Yossef (who I met at AVS), Seth (liked him a lot though he didn't give me the time I wanted to milk the music), Bennet (cute, skinny, goofy guy who's a teacher and knows Bela)... I know there are more, but I'm already forgetting. It doesn't help that I probably danced with 5 guys named John. Ah well.
A little before 11, I got pretty bummeed... Christa announced that they were going to play their last song, and then struck up a tune from the new CD, rather than the song she promised me in ATL. Luckily it was just a ruse; the song ended and then she said "So in the last few weeks I've had a few people saying we should play a blues tune..." and they struck up "You go to my Head." As promised I grabbed David and we had a really great dance - have I mentioned how goddamn much I love that song? I don't think I've ever danced it with anyone except Bert, so it was a fun experience to see how someone else interpreted it. Sooo happy.
Sadly, Christa's set ending by 11 meant that the energy level of the dance kind of plummetted. It's hard to go from Excellent Live Music to a DJ set and keep things up. I had promised David a ride to the Late Night venue, and we ended up leaving a little early on the logic that we could show up and spend some time setting up the Blues Room to be more intimate using the lights he bought the afternoon before. We drove over to the Square Dance Center.... and there was no one there. Oops. We ended up sitting in the car for a while while he played me samples of good blues off his MP3 player - he has pretty similar taste in stuff to DJ as Mike the Girl, so it was a fun experience. After a while we got bored of waiting and decided to run back to his hotel so he could pick up his laptop just in case they'd let him DJ for a while. We pulled out of the parking lot right as another carload of people pulled in - I can only imagine how it looked, what with my windows all steamed up. Scandalous!
Anyway, we found the hotel, procured laptop, then headed back to the venue and had more luck this time setting up lights and such. David pulling chairs in to make the dance space a little smaller when a couple of people showed up from downstairs and wanted to know what was up... apparently at the last minute they'd decided to make the blues room a "whatever the DJ wants" room instead. And the DJ lined up first wanted fucking Fast Charleston. Let me tell you how pleased I (and David, and Terri, and a whole slew of other people) were about that. The end result was that from 1 until 3 the upstairs and downstairs were playing functionally equivalent music - too fast and totally not appropriate for a late-night. We all groused around a lot, but I managed to get a few more good dances in on the slower songs.
Finally around 3 the DJs switched over and Jim Wheatley took over upstairs. Now that man can run a blues room. By this time I was practically ill I was so tired and sleep-depped, but I found some more reserves when Jim started spinning - he was playing a really great variety... some soul, some solid blues, some slightly more modern stuff. I think the hour and a half I danced in that blues room did more for my blues-following than all of the dancing I've done at Northside in the last 4 months. I could just feel myself listening and responding better and better as the night went on. It was pretty amazing. My biggest observation is that I need to work harder on keeping my back in my lead's hand - I could feel myself coming disconnected there from time to time.
Much as I would have liked to keep dancing, I was asleep on my feet by 4:30, so we headed out. David obliged me with crash space at his hotel so I didn't have to drive the 40 minutes back to my dads (and so I could hopefully get unmolested sleep, rather than having my sisters wake me up early again). Unfortunately I was so exhausted that I had a hard time relaxing enough to pass out, and I ended up waking up every hour or so. I finally gave up on sleeping around 10 and dragged myself out of bed to head back to my dad's for an early Thanksgiving dinner.
Sadly that's it as far as dancing, though I will ramble a little about sleep-dep... this weekend was the first time I've been sleep deprived for fun. Sure, there was that one Infamous Project at Tech where we were in the lab for 50 hours, but that was misery for the sake of grades. This weekend I danced for about 16 hours, and slept a total of about 10. And I had so much fucking fun. Granted I was almost in trouble on the drive back to ATL... my MP3 player died about an hour from home, and I was obliged to keep myself awake by singing Girl Scout Camp songs. Any time I stopped I could feel my head start to get woozy, so I'd have to dredge up another one to sing. I had no idea I remembered so many of those things....
But anyway, the bottom line is that I had an amazing time. In addition to the dancing I really connected with a couple of new friends - I hope we can keep up with each other and meet up again sometime. On top of everything, my knees even behaved themselves, which is a small miracle in itself.
Final thoughts: I need to remember to look up info on the Portland fusion-workshop that David told me about, as well as seeing what's up with Knoxville's Rhythm workshop (I think in April?). I also need to remember that next time I do an exchange, I should get a damn hotel room rather than trying to stay with family - dancing is so much more fun when I'm not dead on my feet.
Whew! I think that's it. I'm all rambled out.
So, without further ado, the weekend from the top.
Thanks to being stuck at work for 12 hours on Thursday, I got to head out of the office early on Friday, putting me on the road early enough to avoid The Traffics. Amaze! This may be the first time I've ever driven out of ATL without hitting some sort of slowdown. A good portent of Weekend To Come. The drive went smoothly until I got off the interstate in Lenoir City... and my phone rings. It's my PM. They've been working on a deployment all day and shit is broken. Talk about putting a damper on my drama-free departure. Luckily I managed to talk them through the issue even though I didn't have the code in front of me - I won't get into how displeased I was that I had walked the dev in question through the EXACT SAME issue last week. Seriously, dude.
Anyway, I made it to my dad's place around 6. Sam & Cal were ridiculously hyped up to see me, and much shrieking and running around ensued. I filled myself with some dinner, hopped online to make sure that work wasn't still having issues... and promptly lost all enthusiasm for going out dancing, from some combination of tired and full. Luckily, Coworker of Awesomeness was online chatting with me, and convinced me to get off my lazy ass. I dragged myself out the door with middling enthusiasm around 8:15.
I made it to the Friday Evening dance to find a pretty decent crowd, a pretty good band... and basically no one that I knew. There were a couple of familiar faces that I recognized from Atlanta Varsity Showdown, but nobody that I was really on more than nodding/exchanging brief pleasantries with terms. It became pretty quickly apparent that I wasn't going to get much dancing done if I stood around and waited to be asked, so I started grabbing people. I have no problem asking guys to dance, but it does start to get a little discouraging after a while, especially when you know next to no one.
By 10:30 or 11 the tiredness was starting to catch up to me again, and my enthusiasm was fading fast - though I'm loathe to admit it, I started eying the door pretty hard. I decided to migrate to the other side of the floor, see if I could get one or two more good dances, then maybe call it a night. Enter two of my Notable Leads from the weekend, David and Josh. I snagged these two gentlemen in turn and danced with them back to back, and all of the sudden my enthusiasm was restored.
Josh's most notable feature is his amazing pulse - smooth and springy without being overdone. I felt so connected to the music when I danced with him, and his lead was light and encouraging, leaving me lots of room to play. Our first dance consisted almost entirely of swingouts in which we'd each do a variation and play off the other person's styling. Massively entertaining - I love a dance where the sum total of your communication is in movement and shared giggles.
David... just damn. I would be such a great dancer if I could dance with him on a regular basis. He has a fantastic feel for the music, and his style is just so smooth and expressive. His lead and connection are both light and gentle, but he's still very clear. He's also massively tuned into his follow's position, weight, and balance - I didn't once get pulled off my center while dancing with him. As a result, I really felt like I could focus on keeping my own connection light and supple, something I've been working on since the Followers Footsteps series last month.
Wooo, tangent! Anyway, I had two great dances and that convinced me to keep at it. I left the evening dance a little early so that I would have time to procure ice for my knees and transfer over to the late night venue. I made it to the Square Dance Center with time to spare and sat with a 5lb bag of ice spread over my knees like a good little physical therapy patient. I was pretty impressed at how well they were holding up - the drive up made them pretty achy, but dancing actually seemed to help rather than hurt.
People finally started trickling in around 12:30 for the midnight breakfast. I sat down with a guy named John and his wife Tiffany, who were in town from Hawaii, where John is deployed in the Navy. My last dance at the evening venue was with John, and he was a lot of fun - very playful and well connected, if not a little flashy. He pulled the flashy off without being a bad lead, so I suppose I can't complain... any guy that inspires enough confidence in me that I'll let him really dip me within the first few dances is pretty impressive.
Eventually David joined us at the table, and then the really geekery got going. Here's an absolute first for me, ever - David worked with the consulting division of Microsoft up in Canada for a few years... and he worked with Avanade. I was completely floored - absolutely NO one has heard of my company, even people who work for Microsoft and Accenture. Cue "it's a small world" theme here. Anyway, from that point on we really hit it off, and suddenly rather than feeling a little lonely at the exchange I had several great people to chat with.
The Friday late-night is a little bit of a blur... I had a couple more good dances with various people, including David and John. Sadly the blues room upstairs was a little dead - they had half the lights off, but left 1 set of florescents on so you could see, and it kind of killed the atmosphere. David and I ruminated on the possibility of bringing some christmas lights to make it better for Saturday. Oh, and I also had a really fun dance with Megan - dancing with her is just so different from dancing with boys. I'm not quite sure how to put words on it... there was one point when we were dancing where we did something and she got all smiley and was expounding on how boys don't appreciate "the stretch" in music like girls do. That's definitely true for some leads, but there's more to it than that. I feel the same difference when I dance with Mike the Girl - one of these days I'll have to see if I can't find the words to express it.
Right, like I said, the late night was a bit of a blur. I finally got home around 3:30 and passed the hells out... only to be woken up around 7:30 when Sam & Cal woke up and started calling upstairs for me to get up. My dad & Pam are currently just living in the new extension of the house while the original half gets renovated, and the result is that there is no door between the upstairs and the downstairs. I managed to grab a few more broken chunks of rest, but by 9:30 I gave up. Spent the day socializing with the family, then hit up the KLX dinner. Ate delicious pesto, had a longer conversation than I've ever had before with Robert, then headed to the evening dance.
Did I mention that the Saturday Evening Dance was a live performance by Christabel & the Jons? Oh. Hells. Yes. I danced myself silly for the first set - I think I maybe sat out two songs at most. I also gave David fair warning that there was One Song that I was required to dance with him to, assuming Christa remembered that when she was ATL she promised me that they'd play it for the exchange.
I started to wear out a bit during the second set, but I was still having a blast dancing. Other notable dancers... Yossef (who I met at AVS), Seth (liked him a lot though he didn't give me the time I wanted to milk the music), Bennet (cute, skinny, goofy guy who's a teacher and knows Bela)... I know there are more, but I'm already forgetting. It doesn't help that I probably danced with 5 guys named John. Ah well.
A little before 11, I got pretty bummeed... Christa announced that they were going to play their last song, and then struck up a tune from the new CD, rather than the song she promised me in ATL. Luckily it was just a ruse; the song ended and then she said "So in the last few weeks I've had a few people saying we should play a blues tune..." and they struck up "You go to my Head." As promised I grabbed David and we had a really great dance - have I mentioned how goddamn much I love that song? I don't think I've ever danced it with anyone except Bert, so it was a fun experience to see how someone else interpreted it. Sooo happy.
Sadly, Christa's set ending by 11 meant that the energy level of the dance kind of plummetted. It's hard to go from Excellent Live Music to a DJ set and keep things up. I had promised David a ride to the Late Night venue, and we ended up leaving a little early on the logic that we could show up and spend some time setting up the Blues Room to be more intimate using the lights he bought the afternoon before. We drove over to the Square Dance Center.... and there was no one there. Oops. We ended up sitting in the car for a while while he played me samples of good blues off his MP3 player - he has pretty similar taste in stuff to DJ as Mike the Girl, so it was a fun experience. After a while we got bored of waiting and decided to run back to his hotel so he could pick up his laptop just in case they'd let him DJ for a while. We pulled out of the parking lot right as another carload of people pulled in - I can only imagine how it looked, what with my windows all steamed up. Scandalous!
Anyway, we found the hotel, procured laptop, then headed back to the venue and had more luck this time setting up lights and such. David pulling chairs in to make the dance space a little smaller when a couple of people showed up from downstairs and wanted to know what was up... apparently at the last minute they'd decided to make the blues room a "whatever the DJ wants" room instead. And the DJ lined up first wanted fucking Fast Charleston. Let me tell you how pleased I (and David, and Terri, and a whole slew of other people) were about that. The end result was that from 1 until 3 the upstairs and downstairs were playing functionally equivalent music - too fast and totally not appropriate for a late-night. We all groused around a lot, but I managed to get a few more good dances in on the slower songs.
Finally around 3 the DJs switched over and Jim Wheatley took over upstairs. Now that man can run a blues room. By this time I was practically ill I was so tired and sleep-depped, but I found some more reserves when Jim started spinning - he was playing a really great variety... some soul, some solid blues, some slightly more modern stuff. I think the hour and a half I danced in that blues room did more for my blues-following than all of the dancing I've done at Northside in the last 4 months. I could just feel myself listening and responding better and better as the night went on. It was pretty amazing. My biggest observation is that I need to work harder on keeping my back in my lead's hand - I could feel myself coming disconnected there from time to time.
Much as I would have liked to keep dancing, I was asleep on my feet by 4:30, so we headed out. David obliged me with crash space at his hotel so I didn't have to drive the 40 minutes back to my dads (and so I could hopefully get unmolested sleep, rather than having my sisters wake me up early again). Unfortunately I was so exhausted that I had a hard time relaxing enough to pass out, and I ended up waking up every hour or so. I finally gave up on sleeping around 10 and dragged myself out of bed to head back to my dad's for an early Thanksgiving dinner.
Sadly that's it as far as dancing, though I will ramble a little about sleep-dep... this weekend was the first time I've been sleep deprived for fun. Sure, there was that one Infamous Project at Tech where we were in the lab for 50 hours, but that was misery for the sake of grades. This weekend I danced for about 16 hours, and slept a total of about 10. And I had so much fucking fun. Granted I was almost in trouble on the drive back to ATL... my MP3 player died about an hour from home, and I was obliged to keep myself awake by singing Girl Scout Camp songs. Any time I stopped I could feel my head start to get woozy, so I'd have to dredge up another one to sing. I had no idea I remembered so many of those things....
But anyway, the bottom line is that I had an amazing time. In addition to the dancing I really connected with a couple of new friends - I hope we can keep up with each other and meet up again sometime. On top of everything, my knees even behaved themselves, which is a small miracle in itself.
Final thoughts: I need to remember to look up info on the Portland fusion-workshop that David told me about, as well as seeing what's up with Knoxville's Rhythm workshop (I think in April?). I also need to remember that next time I do an exchange, I should get a damn hotel room rather than trying to stay with family - dancing is so much more fun when I'm not dead on my feet.
Whew! I think that's it. I'm all rambled out.
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