Battle of the Cities

In two days time, lindy hoppers from all over the South East will rise to the call of battle in Orlando. City scenes have been called upon to mount teams for the challenge, some cities have been super strict about who joins in the fray, other cities haven’t even required residency to the point that “Battle of the Mercenaries” has been jokingly tossed about name. A few of the most exciting dancers to watch are actually judging, but that just opens up the floor even more. All of this has me super excited for this weekend.

My only peeve with this event has been the slow release of information. Less that two weeks ago contest rules were still being finalized and venue information wasn’t up on the website until just the last couple of days. But enough of what has irked me.

I am excited about this even for many reasons. The first of which is that I will be competing. I don’t usually compete because I don’t perform well under the pressure. My fingers go numb, I forget how to lead well and get forceful, I quit trusting my follower to actually follow me and so I get even more forceful. But all that forceful leading is not accomplishing anything because I’ve complete blanked, I can barely hear the beat, let alone find inspiration in the music and so  I wind up doing little more than swingouts, basic charleston, and an occasional under-arm turn.

That segues nicely into the second reason for my excitement about this event. It is a low key and fun competition focused on team work. In other words, it’s not about how well I dance, it’s about how well we dance as a team. My fingers won’t go numb, I won’t go nervous, and I’ll have some of the best dances of my life.

That rolls perfectly with the third source of my excitement; BotC is truly a team event. I think there will be individual winners of things, but the point of the weekend is the competition between teams, not individuals. My performance will contribute to my team’s overall score, and that score determines the winners. I’ve long thought how cool it would be to have a team competition weekend that was scored like a track or swim meet. That is exactly how this weekend will work!

I will be dancing with the Tally Cats (or is kats, or maybe it’s all one word) from Tallahassee. These are great kids, an absolute pleasure to work with, and hungry about lindy hop. We were down there working with them a couple weekends ago and it was so much fun. I can’t wait to dance with them this weekend.

Which is the fourth reason for my excitement; I’m going to get to dance with all sorts of folks I don’t know. Florida seems to pretty much travel within Florida, and not throughout the rest of the South East much. Now there are exceptions to this, but the last time I was a Florida event (Swing Dance USA) I met very few non-Floridians and tons of Floridians I hadn’t seen before, or since. So this will be a cool event because it will really mingle the Floridians with the rest of the South East, similar to Gulf Regionals.

So like I said, I’m very excited for this weekend, both for the dancing and what it all represents.

technorati tags:Lindy, Lindy-Hop, Swing-Dancing, Battle-of-the-Cities, Abdel, Tallahassee, Orlando, Swing-Scene, South-East, Competition, Gulf-Regionals, Swing-Dance-USA