Perth Lindy Exchange and the D700

Last weekend, the Perth Swing Dance Society held its annual Lindyhop Exchange – called Hullabaloo!  It’s a fantastic long weekend of swing dancing, classes and social get togethers.  People from all over Australia come to Perth to socialise and dance!

Unfortunately, wifey and I don’t do many of the events or classes anymore – in the last few years we’ve just turned up for one social dance night only.   I guess we’re getting “over” it a bit.  Plus it’s hard to find babysitting.  Yes – I thought it would get easier when the kids got older, but they just end up with more extra-curricular activities!

We did get out to the Saturday night dance – it was the Hullabaloo Hop in the wonderfully character North Perth Town Hall.   The Hullabaloo Hop is the traditional night when they hold the Jack and Jill competition – basically a social dancing fun competition where entrants get paired up with some other random entrant, and you are judged on how much fun and connection you have with each other.   Entrants wear a number on their back to identify them.   We also had an extra special treat – the local Oz Big Band swung the house with many Basie and other swinging charts!

I took the opportunity to take my new Nikon D700 out for a spin.  Armed with my 50mm f/1.8 and 85mm f/1.8 lenses, and looking forward to using 3200 to 6400 ISOs, I had a ball!  The D700 performed better than I expected – photos even at 6400 ISO were usable with not as much noise as an 1600 ISO image from my old D80.   And there’s something about the D700 sensor – the colours just seem so much nicer.

Here’s a selection of some of the photos from the night!

Jazz and Lindyhop at Hale photos

A few weeks ago, I attended a jazz evening at a Perth school.  It was a really fun night, showcasing many of the school’s own talented jazz ensembles.   To help get the parents on the floor, Shane and Ruth from Swing It came to give a short introductory class of lindyhop. I was surprised and happy to see the dance floor totally crowded with enthusiastic parents, trying to do rock step triple steps 🙂

After the class, Shane and Ruth did a lindyhop performance for all.  I took quite a few shots – but it’s surprisingly hard to get a good dynamic lindyhop shot where the dancers and their faces are visible, whilst capturing the energy and motion of the dance.    

 

I took along my Nikon 85mm 1.8 and did not regret it at all – it takes such amazing shots in low light.

 

To end the night, the school’s soul band took to the stage.  I snuck right up in between the stage and the dancers and tried to capture the raw energy of the crowd.

A bad dance

Have you had a bad dance?  You know, one of those ones that just don’t work.

At the DJ Battle on last weekend, I got knocked out early so took the opportunity have a few dances. 

And so the DJ put on a song, one I’ve never heard or danced to before.  The rhythm was a bit uncomfortable – it “sounded” slow, but it was not.   I think it was because it had more of a half time feel to it.

I asked a follow to dance – an advanced dancer.  Like many dances, I first like to get “in tune” with my follow – almost like “calibrating” myself to them, as every follow is different.  We did a few rocks to the music.

And then a few swingouts.

And then crap.

Nothing seemed to work at all!  Not that we didn’t “dance”.  But our dance forms and frame was totally not connecting. I wasn’t able to play and connect with the music and give us both room to improvise with each other and the music.  

And being the lead, it’s really all my fault.  Aargghhh!!!  I tried to get back to basics, but I was probably so frustrated by then, it just didn’t work.  Maybe I started thinking too hard…

We continued dancing to the end of the song, and I said a big “sorry” afterwards when leading her off the floor.  We’ve had better dances before, and I had some really good dances that night, but this particular combination of song, partner and my frame of mind and (bad :)) technique just didn’t gel this time.

I felt embarrassed.  I felt disappointed. 

How can I make sure this doesn’t happen again?

Body Hurt

My body still hurts…

On the weekend, Wifey and I decided to tackle the Aerials class held by SwingIt.    It was fun and physically challenging – trying to co-ordinate with each other to flip Wifey around.   Shane and Ruth had obviously been doing these for a while and practising because they did them nice and clean.

Aerials are weird..  it’s not all strength.  It’s a lot of timing between each other, and also the mental “I can do it” attitude…  which for some unknown reason I was lacking a little.  Not good!   No accidents, but I think our aerials could’ve been smoother and more successful.

Whoa are we feeling it now!  For the past 2 days, we’ve been hurting all over…

Just so I don’t forget what they look like! (we didn’t take any class review video) –

Hourglass

Hip flip

Backpack

Similarish to this but entry from side by side charleston

Flip from guy lying down (what is the name for this?)

24 seconds into this:

RIP Frankie Manning

A sad day for Lindy Hoppers around the world.

Frankie Manning, the “founder” and “ambassador” of Lindyhop, has passed away.  Frankie was about to turn 95, and had still been dancing up until last year.  Yep, in his nineties and STILL dancing…

Lindyhop is a type of jazz partner street dance, that grew in the U.S. in the 1930s.  Lindyhop now doesn’t really refer just to the dance moves, but encompasses the whole culture around the dance in that period – the swing music, the clothing, the reasons behind the dancing itself.

Frankie was a huge element of the lindyhop, credited for creating many of the moves, especially the first aerial/air step.   Frankie gave lindyhop the exciting, energetic, frenetic and acrobatic style.  Lindyhop had a resurgence in the 1980s and has since grown into a worldwide dancing scene, mostly for the 18-30 year old population.   Dancers dress up in “vintage” style, guys wear baggy high pants with a waistcoat and cap, put on two tone shoes that have been sueded, girls wear vintage dresses with vintage hair dos.

Cities around the world regularly host an annual lindyhop “exchange” – basically an excuse for a massive dance party, with nightly dances, live music and classes, usually attracting many out of towners.

I was lucky to meet Frankie on a few occasions.  I will never forget SEAJam, the Singapore Lindyhop Exchange where the Harlem Hotshots performed a show, and invited a 90+ year old Frankie up to the stage to dance Cottontail with them.  Amazing…   Or the lessons where he still exuded so much enthusiasm and spirit…  Or the talks he gave on life in the 30s and 40s and dancing back then…  Or the many stories he saved away in his book…  Or his big smile.

This last weekend, Perth had another of its exchanges, called the Hullabaloo.  I was DJ’ing last night at the last dance and that’s when we found out that Frankie had just passed away.

It was so sad and surreal…   the founder of the dance style that we were all doing last night passing away.  But his legacy, his dance, still living on and being done at the same time…

Instead of a minute silence, we all did the shim sham, a lindyhop line dance, to Tuxedo Junction – the dance that everyone does with Frankie when he travelled around the world to many lindyhop exchanges.  For a dance that is so happy and carefree, I have never felt so sad dancing it…

Frankie, may you Rest In Peace.  May you look upon us all on Earth with a smile on your face as you are living on each day here, through thousands of dancer’s memories, souls and feet…

More information here:

http://www.yehoodi.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=85869

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/arts/dance/28manning.html?_r=1

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/arts/2009/04/27/2009-04-27_lindy_hop_great_hospitalized.html

Too many things on in Perth!

Who says Perth is dullsville??

I was overwhelmed with the number of things on this weekend!   There was just TOO much going on at once – it was hard to decide which one to go to (let alone, afford to go to more than one of these big events/concerts)!!!   Here was the shortlist of what I wanted to go to, but in the end we just went to one:  swing dancing to June Smith as part of the SwingBlast weekend.    At first sight, June doesn’t look like she is a singer, or a jazz singer at all – but boy can she entertain, sing, swing, growl and scat with the best of them!

Human Nature with WASO

Coldplay

Future Music Festival

Hyde Park Fair

James Flynn celebrating the music of Stevie Wonder

June Smith and the Apple Band playing for the SwingBlast weekend

Dralion

The Nargun and the Stars

Perth Writers Festival at UWA

Jazz in the City

If you live in the dullesville of Perth, then get out to one of the Jazz in the City events, being presented as part of the Perth Winter Arts Festival.

It’s great how the City of Perth have an arts festival in the Winter time!  It’s also great to promote jazz and in this year’s festival, there is even an event for lindyhop, a jazz dance of the 30s and 40s.

Looking at the program here, the Hullabaloo Hoppers, who are team of enthusiastic and fun lindyhoppers, and other local lindyhop dancers will be dancing their socks off at 4pm on Saturday and at 2pm on Sunday right in the middle of the city in Forrest Place.    Dressed up in vintage gear, and dancing to big band swing music from the 30s and 40s, this should be a fun event.

I was also excited to see the Hip Mo Toast Big Band on the line up for tonight.  Unfortunately, the kids insisted on a popcorn and DVD night, so I had to give it a miss.

If you want more info on local Perth swing dancing events, visit http://www.perthswing.com/.

Amazon Order actually here!!

OMG!! This morning I started to get really anxious.. I had ordered Frankie’s book like a whole calendar month ago, and still it hadn’t turned up at work.  I started scouring the Amazon site for policies on not receiving packages and all.  Anyway, took a trip to the stores here at work, walked through the Goods Inwards log book and saw that something from Amazon did come in for me, like on the 11th of June – 2 weeks ago!!  It was my books!!! aargghghhhhh I could’ve been reading it all now!!!

Anyway, I’ll be busy reading tonight.  I had ordered Frankie Manning’s biography, as well as “Jazz Dance – The Story of American Vernacular Dance” – which may be quite useful for Su too (she’s writing a book on Musical Theatre).

Talang 2007

Woot!  The energetic and kewl Harlem Hot Shots are competing in the Swedish version of [Insert Country] Got Talent.  In Sweden it’s called Talang.

I’ve donwloaded episodes 4 and 6 where they perform.  But the HHS segments are also on YouTube.  This is great stuff – they really went off!!  Pity I don’t understand the Swedish commentary.  I think we should try and find out the time of the finals and phone votes in!!  Judging by the dates of the episodes, the first final should have been aired on Wednesday 23 May.  I’ll have to try and find a torrent for it.

It’s also a really great way to show Lindyhop to the general public – maybe a team in Australia should try this too?

More info here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talang_2007

Class last night

Well, Su and I actually got to class last night!  Haven’t been for aaagggeeeesss…  went mostly cuz it was Shane’s first class under his new dance school SwingIt!.

It was all good with the tempo being a bit nicer and faster in the second class from 8-9.  Met new follows that I hadn’t before since we haven’t been round the lindy scene much lately.  But boy I can see how unfit I am!  I was pretty sore this morning!  Well done to Shane and Mel B and also great news that Trev and Sharon will be helping out teaching too!

We wondered again whether we’ll ever be able to teach one day, but I reckon our foundation/technique is still lacking.  Plus, we don’t have the time!