Happy 4th!

Not a lot of dances on the fourth of July, apparently. I couldn't find any vintage dance postcards for this holiday. Too busy blowing up fireworks, I guess. However...remember the blue and red beribboned cats I posted for Memorial Day? I found another one:



Let's go with the dancing kitty theme:



And how about Omaha, the cat dancer? oolala. Happy Fourth of July!!!!

The Heart of Dance

For Q. Love, K

Cha cha cha

In an earlier post I talked about the cha cha, and how Gary and I eventually wanted to learn the Puerto Rican/Cuban style. (They both claim this style, rather like salsa.) Anyway, we were going to wait awhile but our Latin teacher, Shayne, will be off soon with a new baby, so we thought we’d better get some lessons in before that.

We love it. The timing is the same as ballroom in that there is a (start) two, three chachacha, but that is the only thing the two styles have in common. Ballroom cha cha is more sideways…you do go back and forth some, but the basic is sideways. PR cha cha basic is back and forth, but also either moves in a small circle or “chases.” The man holds either the woman’s wrist, or the woman’s palm with his thumb and forefinger. So pretty.

We learned a few turns last night and are now besotted. I posted one video before, but in honor of a new found dance here is another. WOW.

BLING!

And this time I mean actual bling, not dance step bling. Oh…warning: girly post.

Remember the Bedazzler? For those of you too young to remember, the Bedazzler was (and they may still sell them), a way to encrusts one’s garments with stones, ala the 1980s. Most of the stones were, um, rather cheap looking. But they looked just fine with the huge bejeweled dresses and tops of that era.

I kinda liked the 80s. And even if over the top bling is not presently stylish, on the dance floor bring it ON. Go to any women’s bathroom in a dance venue and you will see sequins, rhinestones, and glitter all over the floor, the flotsam and jetsam of the world of dance.

And so I dug out my old Bedazzler, intent on glaming up my dresses and jeans. But those stones…ugh. They just didn’t match today’s crystals. Can you say Swarovski?

Why yes you can.

Because joy of joys, I discovered Swarovski makes crystals that can be affixed to clothing without the cumbersome Bedazzler or messy glue. You do need the Hotfix applicator. I got mine on ebay for 14 bucks. It’s like a curling iron except tiny, you press it against the stone and it melts the glue on the back… voilà! Make sure you put something hard (like a cutting board) between the cloth and the other side to keep from sticking both sides together, unless something heavy like denim.

The stones to get say Hotfix. Make sure they say this. I’m embarrassed to say I stood over my capris holding the Hotfix applicator waiting…and waiting for an unglued stone to stick.

The stones come in a myriad of colors and sizes. Sigh. I love it. Maybe too much. Gary said he’s afraid to go to sleep…

Maxwell Demille's Cicada Club

For the longest time I've been looking for Maxwell Demille's Cicada Club. It's the kind of place Rick Blane ran in Casablanca, the sort of place you'd go to see Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The only problem is, it's located in Hollywood and I'm in the Midwest. A fellow can dream, I guess.


The Cicada Club is located in Oviatt Building, a 1928 structure that housed a men's department store in a bygone era. Clark Gable and John Barrymore were outfitted by James Oviatt (the store's owner). The building is done in Art Deco. Rene Lalique personally designed over 30 tons of decorative glass in the building's lobby. Oviatt's penthouse even had a pool with a strand of imported sand from France, his private Riviera in LA.

Now, add to that musical acts like Ian Whitcomb and his Bungalow Boys (playing at the time of writing) along with a standing house swing orchestra and 'in character' performers such as elevator boys and crotchety bartenders and toss in the 'early to mid-century dress code with ties and jackets required' and you've got a time machine. Transport me back to the days when the Casa Loma Band still played at the Casa Loma Ballroom in St. Louis and every city of any size had a half-dozen ballrooms and dancehalls that supported touring groups as well as local favorites. I'll buy the suit today; I've already got the hat and the frail.

Anyway, if you're lucky enough to live on the West Coast and you're in range of the Cicada Club won't you pay it a visit for me? Any establishment that's put this much effort into preserving a time gone by and is preserving the spirit of a historic building deserves your patronage.

Kneecapped

If you've read our blog for long, you're aware that Tuesday is lesson night and from Kelly's entries you might even be aware that we're hard at work learning a few Rockabilly aerials. Progress has been – a little slow. Aerials are, at their heart acrobatic – ever notice that you don't see many middle-aged acrobats? There's a reason for that: old knees and elbows. As a result of practicing one of our maneuvers I'm suffering with a bit of a knee injury – an indiscriminant pain associated with deep knee bends or putting pressure on my kneecap. It's a hassle and a painful reminder that the old man ain't what he used to be.


Via circular route I'm back at an observation that I've made from time to time. When you're out dancing as often as we are you get to see the characters that populate the floor and you find they fall into a few categories. There's the youth who are filled with the vim, vigor, and not to mention a bit of vitamin A. Usually their youthful exuberance vastly outweighs their manners and I still maintain that they ought to be equipped with those beepers that tell you a truck's about to back over your foot unless you get out of the way. There are the pros, they're on display and can't be bothered to have the floor manners you know they were taught before their 'career' became dance and dancing became secondary. There's the great, soft middle, out to have a good time like dancing always should be and not too worried if they know this step or that. And then there are the silver bullets, seventy-something but pretending to be seventeen they're gifted with the knowledge of all the moves the kids are doing and all the reflexes of an octogenarian. To paraphrase the Ghost of Christmas Present, of all these I urge you to beware the later the most for ignorance is written on his brow.

Problem is, I'm left wondering about myself and that ladder case now. I mean should I be worrying about learning jumps, tricks, and aerials? Am I beyond the age where having less than two feet on the floor at any time is a risky proposal? Will the foundation give if I tax it too much? To be honest, I hope not. I'd hate to have me sitting on the sidelines whispering to my partner, "…get a load of that joker…"

For the question of whether I should do an aerial, the answer is clear enough. There's an old, standby rule that always gives the answers to any dance question regardless of if it pertains to doing aerials or the foxtrot. This golden rule is stated as follows:

If you're in somebody's way, you shouldn't be doing it.

So, if I'm so bad at the foxtrot that people are having to go around me all the time and there's nowhere on the floor I can avoid creating a traffic jam – I shouldn't be dancing the foxtrot that night. If I'm trying to do my prize winning double hepplewhite headstand that the cool high school kids dig, but I'm at risk of kicking somebody in the ear – I shouldn't be doing aerials. And if I might face-plant my partner 'cause my knee won't hold – well, you get the picture.

I know I can obey the golden rule. I do it every night I'm out dancing, regardless of how many people don't. Whether or not my knee will hold up is a matter of conjecture and exercise. Hopefully, once I've conditioned myself and let the damage I've already done heal a bit I'll be able to figure the move out and add it to our repertoire but that's a question that time will have to answer. Until then it's practicing timing and pretending to do the big lift.

Bear Necessities

Yes, this blog is about dancing. No, I guess this isn't technically a dance-related picture. Then again it is a dancing bear. Well, it is isn't it? Isn't it?

I'm trying to imagine the discussion that preceded the brief, off-Broadway life of this pair.

"I am telling you, Ivan, they would not know bear if bit them in seat of cassock! I make you A1, quality bear suit, look just like real thing. You see, when I done you will not recognize own self from ravenous ursine forest beast!"


"But head is made of papier-mâché and old eye glasses."


"You must inhabit character, Ivan. Think bear, be bear!"


"But bear skin made of union suit, have seat flap."


"Ivan, your attitude is bringing me down. Drink vodka, think of money we make!"

Later that day they were stoned by a crowd of eight year olds.

Can you imagine the ad on Monster.com?

Wanted: Dancing bear-man. Must have no pride or sense of shame. Experience roaring a plus. Former BP executives and Wall Street mortgage bankers need not apply due to the job's requirement to work closely with children.

The Bop - Part 6

Two things strike me as I progress through the instructions for the bop. Firstly, as the moves become more complicated, I find that they more and more closely resemble Rockabilly Swing movements. In part 5 I remarked on the similarities and the further I read the more convinced I am that the bop is just a local version of rockabilly that's dropped the 'billy' nomenclature to appeal to a more urban crowd. The trend continues this time around.


Part II - Passes essentially describes the underarm turn for rockabilly without the flat-hand push or Statue of Liberty kickoff. Essentially, the move's been homogenized and the annoying flavor has been removed for a more white-bread audience. Ironic since the other two 'moves' on this page essentially describe styling that can be added to spice up the bop. They still look silly, though. I imagine the flea hop kind of looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man bumbling across the dance floor. Conversely, the crossover is a standard 'bling' move in Puerto Rican salsa, one of the few I can do without screwing up!

Secondly, I'm painfully aware of how hard it is to write good instructions. There is an actual career path called instructional design which teaches people how to (drum roll) write instructions. I wish everyone who contemplated writing directions would at least take some basic instructional design courses. It'd sure make it easier to actually understand what you're supposed to do. Case in point, the pass section starts out with this handy tidbit:

"Passes are not so much steps as new figures in which you pass or approach your partner, sometimes going under his or her arm, sometimes not."

Um - okay, I know dance isn't logical but it's called a pass so why would you do a pass where you don't pass? Wouldn't that be something else - like maybe a walk up and stare at? I've never passed anyone without actually passing them. Or, maybe I have and I just didn't know it? It's making my head hurt.

After all of that complaining, though, I have to say I wish I knew someone who danced the bop so that I could get some lessons or see it in the wild. I'm going to cruise Youtube later today to see if I can't actually see the bop. It sounds like a fun dance.

Cha Cha Cha

Gary and I tried the cha cha a couple of years ago and didn’t like it. Nothing wrong with it. Just seemed a little stiff for our tastes.

Then, in the course of a lesson, our Latin teacher mentioned the cha cha. Puerto Rican cha cha. (Shayne’s specialty: (Organic Rhythms Studio) Latin and Puerto Rican dances.)

So off to You Tube I went. Gary and I changed our minds about the cha cha when we saw THIS. Wow. It will be awhile. We want to really master the clave and PR salsa before we engage in a new Latin dance. But the PR cha cha is in our future.

Cha cha CHA.

A Week without Dance

Over the past week I took a vacation, a chance to relax, recuperate, and focus my attentions on writing. It's been a great time and I've accomplished a lot during my break - but, through coincidence, it also happened that we didn't dance most of the week too.


The whole thing started last weekend when we were booked up with friends and relations for the whole weekend and there wasn't a dance on Friday night. Having a break is good, it give your body a chance to recover and keeps dancing from becoming routine. We took a trip to Cincinnati with a couple of good friends and celebrated my mother's birthday while listening to the Indy 500 on the radio. There was no Monday dance; I think I've said before Memorial Day doesn't much feel like a dance day anyway.

Usually Tuesday is our dance lesson day and we spend time with Melissa or Shayne getting some new steps and brushing up on the old ones. However, again by chance, this week we didn't have a lesson scheduled. Instead we decided to go to a club near our house and, since I was off for the week, we could stay later than usual to enjoy dancing. The place we selected was Smee's, and on their website they advertize Tuesday Night West Coast Swing dances for every Tuesday. Well, the advertisement wasn't exactly accurate. They do have Tuesday night WCS but the program had been halted for the month of May. So, we had dinner and went home without dancing.

The dance drought finally came to an end on Friday night when we travelled down to Nashville, IN to Mike's Dance Barn where we attended a 50's and 60's Dance. All I can say is thank you, Mike! We needed to get back on the floor again! The music was fast, the floor perfect, and we had a blast.

Moving from no dancing to Rockabilly Swing is a big leap. If you take a week off and go to a ballroom dance, you're sure to feel a little rusty. It's natural, it happens to everyone. But in a ballroom setting you can do a few slow rumbas or foxtrots to warm yourself up again. Rockabilly is all or nothing, though. The rust came off in chunks and I found myself baffled by moves we have known for a long time. By the end of the night, though, things were right again and I breathed a (tired) sigh of relief.

I think the point of this all is that there has to be some burnishing to keep the rust away. Even on an 'off week' I need to dance through a song or two. It keeps the movements fresh in my head and muscles. Some repetition is good, I guess!

Be Bop A Loo-Bop

There’s just something about a 50’s dance that is so timeless; the music is bright and bouncy, the clothing is all fluffy skirts and gelled hair, and the dancing, well, the dancing is the kind Gary and I love the most, swing, swing, swing.

We attended a 50’s dance at Mike’s Dance Barn last night and had a fabulous time. The Barn boasts one of the best floors around; big, well cared for, and nicely lighted. The food is cheap and the people are friendly.

Too bad there wasn’t a bigger crowd. So…I’m advertising here…it’s a blast! The young DJ did a great job spinning the records, although he needed a 50’s persona. I know he probably would have no idea who Wolfman Jack is, but a little more banter might have made up for the overly spacious dance floor. He has time. I think he might have been sixteen.

But anyway, a very fun evening. We danced the rockabilly jive, triple ECS, WCS, and the rumba. 50’s music is surprisingly diverse. We also did the The Stroll, although Gary and I didn't know the actual steps. We are curious now to learn it.

We also realized after some of the blistering numbers that our beloved rockabilly jive just doesn’t work with rocket speed songs. It’s syncopated and beautiful, but that bounce in the middle makes it usage only a tad faster than the triple ECS.

So we’re in the process of learning a single step rockabilly jive. It has a bounce, but the bounce is sideways instead of back and forth. We’ve also been experimenting with Collegiate Shag (not to be confused with Carolina Shag), that also uses a sideways bounce. What we’re going to do is blend the two, which should be fun.

But what shall we call it? Hummmm. The Rockabilly Shag? Heh heh. Stay tuned.