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
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.
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