alain’s dance blog

This September is the marking of Cat’s Corner’s 9th year anniversary. As a present to Fred and everyone who has helped out with Cat’s Corner over the years, we are commemorating this event with a special ops code-named Cat’s Corner Facebook Day.

What can you do to celebrate CCFD?

1. You can post a picture of you dancing at Cat’s Corner.

2. Change your profile pic to the Paw. Better yet. You can download the Cat’s Corner paw (right click and save this file) and replace your picture with it for that day. Imagine everyone updating their picture to the PAW for one day. It will be a sea of paws in everyone’s news feed!

3. Change your status. Write something Cat’s Corner-related. For example, replace “Alain is __________ ” with “Alain is digging Cat’s Corner and will never go into ANY dark corner.” Of course, the more controversial, the better your status will be.

4. Change your description. Only for the totally religiously devout. Save your “About Me” facebook text somewhere safe, and then copy paste this into your About description:

I am devoted to Cat’s Corner. Cat’s Corner is my life. Long live the Cat! http://catscorner.ca

5. Post an item. Send a posting bulletin on that day to all your friends, describing how you discovered Cat’s Corner. You may have told all your friends already, but do it again, just for this special day. Tell everyone why ya love the Lindy Hop.

6. Post on your wall, on your friend’s wall, on the Cat’s Corner Facebook wall. And when you run out of Facebook walls to post on, paint graffiti on Montreal city walls. Proclaim your allegiance to Cat’s Corner loud and clear.

7. Finally, start now. You can start by writing your new About description, downloading the Paw, and drafting your bulletin.

Remember that the big impact will come if everyone “updates” their profiles, pictures, walls on the same day. So don’t forget. Tuesday September 4th is Cat’s Corner Facebook Day.

Post a comment on this page with a link to your facebook. We will send you many thanks and bless you for lovin’ the Cat.

Amen.

Last Friday, Cat’s Corner was featured in a full page article in La Presse, in the Arts and Entertainment section.

Marie-Hélène Papillon, the writer of the article, is very involved in the Montreal social dancing community, and her monthly articles are doing wonders to revive the social partner dancing scene in the city.

Thank you Marie-Hélène!

Class review for our 4th week of Intro to Swing at Cat’s Corner. The slower song is “I’ve heard that song before” by Harry James on Trumpet Blues and the second/faster song is “Viper’s Moan” by Willie Bryant.

Tonight, Gabriel - a student in our Intro to Lindy Hop class at Cat’s Corner - asked about the song we dance the Shim Sham to, so I decided to post about it.

The Shim Sham is a solo jazz routine appropriated from tap (the creator was Leonard Reed). We teach it because it’s an awesome way to introduce beginner dancers to jazz movement and rhythm.

Here’s a video of legendary Frankie Manning leading the Shim Sham to Bill Elliott’s Shim Sham Song:

The traditional song that we dance to is Tuxedo Junction, but it is danced to other songs as well. Read this thread on songs for the Shim Sham. The one I play most often is Jimmy Lunceford’s T’aint What You Do (It’s the Way that You Do It).

The Swing ConneXion team (with dancers from Cat’s Corner) doing a routine to Bugle Call Rag at the Canadian Swing Championships in May 2007. We won first place.

Dancers: Zack Richard and Maryse Lebeau, Carl Nelson and Geneviève Doyon, Eric Bertrand and Sylwia Bielec, Benoît Laforest and Ann Mony, Alain Wong and Mélanie Huot-Lavoie

You can buy the official CSC 2007 dvd at http://www.swinginmontreal.com/csc/