alain’s dance blog

One of my favorite moments at ALHC this past weekend was the SwingOutDayton team performance. They created a routine based on OK Go’s Youtube winner “Here It Goes Again”. We’ll have to wait for the official video release, but here is version one that they performed at the Battle of the Swing Cities in Detroit. If I remember correctly, the ALHC performance had four couples instead of three, and the routine was polished.

In a division full of serious swing routines (and that includes ours), SwingOutDayton totally blew everyone away - I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. Awesome job, Dayton! Too bad I couldn’t tell them in person how much I appreciated their performance.

EDIT - Joanna posted a link to the ALHC video in the comments.

ALHC this past weekend was a blast. Watch Carl and Joanna bust it out in the Strictly Lindy. They totally deserved their second place finish.

My most memorable moment at this year’s Canadian Swing Championships was Francys Sauvageau and Christina Rooney - both invaluable members of the Cat’s Corner community - dancing in the Pro/Am division. Shorty George and Big Bea, anyone?

When I first looked into buying music to practice to, Dan Amores recommended that I go through the discount jazz section at music stores. At the time, my only reference in picking CDs was the song listings, and so I chose albums that had songs that I recognized. In other words, I looked for jazz standards.

Haydn posted on swingdjs about a great resource for researching the history of these standards: the Jazz Standards website. It gives a history of the standard, as well as a musical and lyrical analysis.

Look up famous songs that we dance to, like Honeysuckle Rose, Oh Lady Be Good, Sweet Georgia Brown.

I’d like to highlight the Swing and Soul event that is coming up December 7-9 in Georgia, Atlanta. Here’s what it’s about:

-Classes in:
* Classic 60’s dance moves
* Old school party dances
* Line dances, old and new
* Partner dancing, with a focus on soul music
- Amazing soulful music played by DJ’s from the Lindy world and beyond
- Late night soul food buffets (with vegetarian stuff too, honest!)

This is going to be an amazing weekend organized by Manu Smith, Tena Morales, Steven Mitchell and Peter Strom. Check out this article by Peter on Swing Dance Magazine.

And to put you into the soul flavour, here’s Jackie Wilson singing and dancing to “Baby Workout”.