Whew boy. So the deionized water is still out in our lab, so I'm going to take this opportunity to update the blog.
I just got back (read: on Sunday) from Hot Mess 2011 in Philly. For those of you who are either a) not swing dancers, b) not from Philly or c) both, Hot Mess is a workshop and dance weekend that focuses on fast dancing in all its aspects. It may have been one of the best and most useful events I've attended so far.
The dancing was of course, fantastic. Never have I done so many swingouts at high speeds so late into the night. You get this incredible adrenaline rush from executing pretty much any lindy move at 240 BPM, and it only gets better when you chain 30 things into a pattern of pure awesome.
The instructors (Mike Faltasek, Nina Gilkenson, Mike Seguin and Adam Boehmer) were all fantastic, but the most useful workshop wasn't really a workshop at all. It was called "How to Be a Badass" and was really more of a townhall style discussion. Adam made an incredible point of how leads have a comfort zone for their arms (roughly at neck level), and how bringing your arms higher can really bring some extra emotion to your dancing. Nina had us jazzercise and then dance around to Kellis and Rihanna. She wanted to prove the point that it's silly that we let ourselves go and dance "just for fun" on the club floor, but on the lindy floor we think we have to box ourselves into certain roles. Mike('s) gave some amusing ways of playing around in dancing, and how starting small and staying there until a solid way into the song can make a swingout seem like a giant deal.
My legs do not want to function correctly as of writing this, but you can bet your ass that I'm going to be headed to Philly for LaB (Lindy and Blues) tonight. I am still so pumped from the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment