Filed under: Events, Updates | Tags: Hot Club, News, Swing Dance, Weekly Dance
It’s about time for our second weekly Hot Club swing dance! Last week we named our own Chris Wells and Laura Windley the “Fastest Feet in the Triangle.” Who will challenge the champs? You’d better get to Hot Club and start practicing.
This week we will be giving away two $50 gift certificates to Lindy Focus! Come before 9 to get your name in the drawing! Entry into the drawing is free, and the pool will be small, so you have a really good chance to win.
More about Lindy Focus
http://lindyfocus.com
What: Hot Club of Durham Swing Dance
When: Tuesday, November 3
7pm- 11pm
Where: Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (ERUUF)
4709 Garrett Rd
Durham, NC
Continue reading
And Why YOU Need to Dance in Other Scenes
To break it down, the Triangle has a “dance scene” (lindy hop-wise), one of many in the state, region, nation, and world. The local dance style in a scene is homogeneous to a certain extent, depending on the number and level of dance teachers in the area, styles taught, and the amount of mixing our dancers do with the wide world of lindy hop.
By mixing with other dance scenes, the following can happen:
(a) You have hella lotta fun;
(b) Your dancing improves;
(c) You bring excitement and new ideas back to your home scene;
(d) Your enthusiasm is catching. Dancers everywhere rejoice.
On the national spectrum, I’d peg the Triangle as a beginner/intermediate level scene on average. There are some advanced dancers here, but put bluntly, we are not a destination of choice for lindy hoppers from other cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, or DC. On the other hand, these are all cities I’ve traveled to in the past year.
A Personal Story
I began swing dancing locally one dreary January and quickly became interested in lindy hop. Watching people in the front left corner of the Durham Armory fascinated me. After many months of lindy hop classes, Continue reading
It’s time for a very special hot club that we like to call:
The Penultimate Hot Club Lindy Hop Throwdown!
PuHCLHT for short.
Before I get into anything else I have one big, huge, gigantic, enormous announcement:
Hot Club is going weekly!
Yes, you read that right. From now on your Tuesday nights are belong to us. So tell all your friends that you can’t hang out with them on Tuesdays anymore unless they come to the dance with you.
We are all gearing up for this year’s EBC and this is the perfect chance to get some practice. We will likely have some new faces from out of town, so we are going to be throwing one of the most exciting Hot Club dances ever! We are going to have a “Fastest Feet” competition, and two brand new DJs. You can’t miss it. No, really, attendance is mandatory and will be strictly enforced by aircraft. So, we’d better see you there.
Penultimate Location– Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Penultimate Street address – 4907 Garrett Rd, Durham NC
Our Throwdown Beginner lesson-
Balboa- Taught by “Crazy Legs” Cliff Dyer, this Balboa lesson is you last chance to learn the basics and/or get a refresher before EBC.
Our Throwdown DJ Line-up (Music starts at 8)-
Chris Wells- Chris is also know as the mad scientist of swing dance. He’s been meticulously studying swing dance and music in Sweden and the UNC musicology department. He’s spent years of his life and gone deeply into debt, all to bring you the perfect DJ set this Tuesday. Come see what the mad scientist has concocted for his first Hot Club appearance. Muah-ha-ha-ha.
Rebecca Brightly- This young upstart is dedicated to doing things right the first time. To that end, she’s been slowly building her music collection. If you wondered why you haven’t yet seen her bathed in the glow of a laptop screen at a dance yet, you will find out on Tuesday. When Rebecca throws down, you stay down!
“Toeless” Joe Jackson- Will be house DJ for the night.
http://hotclubofdurham.com
info@durhamswingdance.org
919-627-8678
ULHS Winners and Losers
Joe Jackson’s “humble” opinion
To me, the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown can be viewed, for comic effect, as a series of much smaller Ultimate Showdowns. Here I will outline the winners and losers of these showdowns.
The Ultimate Airplane Hop Showdown
For some unknown reason flights were packed all day Thursday and
Friday. I just assumed that they were all headed for ULHS–man this was going to be BIG. But something wasn’t quite right. These people were all wearing prison-jumpsuit-orange clothing and waving their hands wildly and chanting. It was obvious to me that this was some voodoo cult having their annual meeting in their natural home base, New Orleans.
Well the upshot here is that flights were overbooked all day so Air-tran was offering free flights to those with “flexible travel plans.”
Winner: Me. I got a free round-trip flight for waiting a couple extra hours.
Loser: All those suckers who were stuck on the sweltering, sardine can of a riverboat while I was eating in style thanks to my meal voucher.
The Ultimate Foodie Hop Showdown
Apparently, New Orleans is famous for its food. While the food was good enough, I think New Orleans garners most of it’s food fame from what I like to call the “Wannabe Food Snob Effect.” This is the observed effect that the more your food costs, all other things being equal, the more likely you are to proclaim how wonderful it is. This effect is completely independent of the actual quality of the food. So I would say that the food in New Orleans is so damned expensive that it must be good, right? Yum, this soup balances the flavor of frozen seafood so well with the well seasoned pieces of my arm and leg.
Winner: The restaurant owners of the French Quarter.
Loser: My poor anemic wallet.
The Ultimate Butt-Bumpy Hop Showdown
Well dressed, upright, and hair gelled Balboa dancers everywhere will
rejoice. The theory of the creation of Balboa has been independently verified by 300 dancers in New Orleans. It reminds me of a joke that I just made up:
“What do you get when 300 Lindy Hoppers try to dance in my 2 Bedroom duplex?”
“Balboa”
Winner: Only the fittest survived in-tact.
Loser: All the weaklings. (The upside is that we’ve bred a tougher species of Lindy Hopper, with natural butt bumping ability)
The Ultimate Music Hop Showdown
All I have to say is, Wow! Watch the video:
These guys are amazing. They played in various combinations all weekend.
Winner: The Loose Marbles, and others. Lindy Hoppers all over the world.
Losers: Anyone who hasn’t danced to these guys yet.
Overall
Well, ULHS was a mixed bag this year, much like the City of New Orleans itself. There are some incredibly bright spots, and some not-so bright ones. From the roves of Gator Fans, to the expensive food, to the strip clubs on Bourbon St. it all comes together to make one amazing, complex whole that defies qualitative description.
Overall Winners:
These guys! Both the City and these amazing musicians were the real winners of ULHS this year.
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ULHS Hits and Misses
Rebecca Brightly’s “humbler” opinion
This will be no surprise to anyone who’s already asked, but I had a fantastic time at Showdown this year (my second). I went first in 2006 when the whole thing took place in one ballroom and all this amazing competition and dancing was happening (e.g. this video, the ’06 fast dancing comp, now famous amongst lindy hoppers). This year, the event was spread out all over the French Quarter of New Orleans, giving us dancers a chance to really soak in the surrounding culture in all its authenticity. First the misses, because there weren’t many…
Misses
Did I get enough powdered sugar with my beignets?
- The beignets at Cafe du Monde. Sorry, but the beignets at Rue Cler in downtown Durham are superb by comparison!
- The fact that I missed Saturday afternoon to do clothing shopping with Joe. It needed to happen, but I missed a lot of THIS. Bad!!
- Hm. Floor was strangely slick Saturday night at the WWII Museum.
- I did NOT buy any music from the bands. What the heck was I thinking?
- And finally, the burlesque show actually had too much nudity for my tastes. Hard to believe, right??
Hits
- The music was pretty much the best ever, anywhere. Ever. The Loose Marbles essentially made my weekend.
- Dancing and listening to the bands on the street. I want them on the streets of Durham. Now.
- The Creole Queen riverboat–we searched for a while to actually find it, gathering up other confused lindy hoppers along the way. It was super HOT inside when the dancing got going, and balancing on a moving boat was certainly a challenge for my vertigo-inclined body. But hell, we were on a paddleboat on the Mississippi, listening to New Orleans style jazz! Besides, we could get some air simply by going upstairs and hanging over the railing.
- Browsing the Wax Museum on Friday at the dance, and the WWII Museum Saturday. Huge model planes hung over the dance floor.
- The House of Blues on Sunday was another unique venue I really enjoyed. The dance floor was lower than the surrounding floor, and I loved that it wasn’t all shiny and new. Like most of the French Quarter, much of the original architecture is apparently intact.
- Preservation Hall. The band plays, people cycle in and out. And it’s amazing. If you visit and have to miss something, don’t miss Preservation Hall.
- Taking a couple sips of an energy drink on Saturday and Sunday. I’d normally crash without the chemical enhancement, but I was able to stay up till 6am both days for dancing and other mayhem.
- Dancing in random bars on Frenchmen and meeting lots of new friends.
- Soaking up the culture of the place; walking around to check out restaurants, galleries, and shops.
- Fritzel’s late-night dances. So, the place was definitely not large enough to host the 350 dancers that attended ULHS. But I thought the atmosphere was pretty incredible. Perhaps two floors of small dance spaces crowded with sweaty people doesn’t sound that great to you, but if those sweaty people are great dancers, and the band is tearing it up, and you can walk out onto the balcony for fresh air and to watch people walk by until 4am, you might change your mind.
- Sharing a hotel room with Joe, Carolyn, and Naomi (now from Seattle). Searching for Steve, Joyce, and Sarah (not with much luck, but I had fun trying to pick other Durham dancers out of the crowd).
- Cafe Bamboo, a 100% vegetarian spot on Esplanade. This was the day I overstuffed myself and couldn’t eat for 7 hours.
Late night dancing at Fritzel's.
Let’s leave this list at 12. I didn’t take many pictures; I wanted to experience rather than document it. Mission accomplished. I’ll be going next year for sure, and quite likely I’ll drag you along. So prepare yourself–you’ve got one year.
Believe or not, we blues dance too! Hot Club of Durham instructors Rebecca Brightly and Joe Jackson will be showing their stuff at this Saturday’s, October 24th, Night of the Living Djs. Our demo will be at 11:15. Register now, this thing gets packed.
Joe and Rebecca are often found wondering why their friends talk about blues as though it’s a different dance than Lindy Hop. To them good Blues is, or should be, based on the solid connection and body movement of swing dance. To paraphrase Dawn Hampton, I don’t know why people call this blues dance, it’s just slow dance!
So come out and see our interpretation of this popular dance style. We think you will see and hear something new.
What does blues dance mean to you?
Would you like to see a blues themed night at Hot Club while Dance Blues Friday is on hiatus?
Please comment below, we want to hear from you.
Because we’re stronger together than we are apart, Must Dance Swing will be under the wing of the Hot Club of Durham starting in November. You may have seen our new oversized postcards with numerous pictures of Hot Club & MDS events in the community. With this merger, we endeavor to create and support a stronger, more vibrant community of swing dancers in Durham and surrounding areas. The values of each organization are mirrored in the other, namely:
- A commitment to the social well-being of the individual and extended group of dancers (this means fun),
- Support for continuing study of dancing and opportunities for performance (this means passion),
- Encouraging dancers to travel outside their comfort zone–literally–by attending regional and national swing dance events (this means challenge and connection to the larger community).
Hot Club of Durham, now with classes AND dances!
What will change? Information on the Must Dance Swing website will be moved to the Hot Club website. Soon you’ll be able to register and pay online for your classes. If you pay by check, you’ll make it out to “Durham Swing Dance LLC” instead of Rebecca Brightly.
What will stay the same? Same awesome teachers, same sweet classes, same studio location.
What’s next? A LOT of changes are in store for Hot Club. You’ll want to stay tuned in very closely to see what we do next
Who is MDS? Rebecca Brightly has been the sole owner of Must Dance Swing for nearly two years, and has enlisted the help of both Cliff Dyer and Joe Jackson as co-teachers during that time.
Who is Hot Club? Rebecca, Joe, and Nicole Deinert are the owners of Durham Swing Dance, LLC, which runs Hot Club events. Cliff also participates strongly, especially in web affairs.
Hot Blog of Durham 