Harvest Moon Melee, Conclusions

Saturday night competitions at HMM 2007 included the Lindy Hop Jam, Social Dance (Jack and Jill) Finals, and Non Swing. The non-swing was most definitely the highlight event of the weekend. Hilarity was the m.o. and many a team brought that to the table.

The Lindy Hop Jam was the redux version of the Charleston Jam from Friday night, albeit with more appropriate music. As with the Lindy Hop, there were some very impressive moments. I fondly recall the team antics of OCD, Big George, and especially the Tiny Bunch. After Battle of the Cities I had intended to orchestrate some group play, but completely forgot until the nights of. ah well.

The Social Dance Finals were typical Jack and Jill jam style Finals, the exception being that the couple from prelims were judged and qualified for finals as a couple. The dancing was good and tight, and a who’s who of Atlanta and especially Big George. If I recall right, of 7 couples, 4 had a Big George member and there were 6 total Atlanta representatives.

I most impressed, throughout the whole weekend, with how the non-swing was accomplished. Each team randomly drew a genre of music (a la So You Think You Can Dance). The first round was preceded with 50 minutes of time to work on things, then performance. The second round music was drawn at the conclusion of the first round, and teams had approximately 5 minutes to prepare for that. Creativity was certainly the name of the game, especially for round two as there was hardly any time to put something together – it was nearly contact improv.

The scoring of the weekend went thusly. Teams were given relative placement for each event by the judges. Those placements were then grouped together for the weekend, as relative placements as if each contest had been a judge. And viola – the winners:1st  Big George Savoy Bouncers,  2nd Tiny Bunch, 3rd Swing Blade(s of Glory). We (SBG) were quite surprised and thrilled to have placed at all. We had three goals going into HMM. 1) Have fun 2) Avoid Injuries 3) Place higher than last. We accomplished 1 and 2 as well.

Harvest Moon Melee, day 1

It’s the break between classes and the evening dance, the completion of the first 24 hours of the Harvest Moon Melee in Nashville, TN.  The one thing I hate about competition centered weekends is the lack of social dance time, because even when it’s time for social dancing, many of the competitors are actually working out final details for the upcoming comps, or busy nursing the bruised egos from the previous competition.

Last night was tons of fun, apart from the not enough social dancing time (which for me is also attributable for an hour at Waffle House and then an “early” trip home from the late night).   The evening opened with the Showcase (team routine) division. There are 7 teams here: Big George Savoy Bouncers (Atlanta, GA), Knoxvillians – though they insisted on the pronunciation of Knoxvillains (Knoxville, TN), Swing Blade(s of Glory) – the location of the parentheses is paramount (Nashville, TN), Whitey’s Cindy Loppers – which I think is the best name here (Nashville, TN), Orlando City Dippers – OCD… hehehe (Orlando, FL),  Tiny Bunch (Atlanta, GA), and last but not least – Stomp House (Raleigh, NC).

I’ll get into to routines more once they are posted on YouTube, but everybody brought “IT”! They were all great and they all displayed their teams quite well. Whitey’s Cindy Loppers was by far the most fun and entertaining with their review of the 80’s.

After the Showcase was the Charleston Jam, which unfortunately didn’t really get to truly jamming tempos until near the end. The fault I really found with the tempos was not simply because the songs were slower and so really rocking out was difficult, but because there were so few round in which to dance. On our team for one, not everyone even got to dance because there just weren’t enough rotations because the songs were so slow that a half hour went by with not enough 8 counts. This is not to say that there weren’t poignant moments, there were some spectacular dances during this jam.

The final event of the evening was the Sudden Death Social Dance Competition Challenge. I really liked how the organizers pulled this one off. They did it Jack and Jill style in that partners were randomly paired. All the competitors got a number in their packet. You danced with the other person who got the same number, and each number was given a heat to dance in. Last night was only the prelims and it was 4 heats of 3 songs danced all skate (I wouldn’t want to be the judges). Finals will be tonight and will be jam style.

Classes today were great. I taught a beginning class with a helper (Kristy White) who I’d never gotten to teach with before. It was quite fun and the class went well. Then I jumped in on the performance track and was able to catch a class with Bobby and Kate who are always terrific and have great material. The last class was aerials with Jill and Kerry and that also went quite well.

Competition Weekend

Two major competition weekends are starting today. ULHS kicks off in Minniapolis and the Harvest Moon Melee (the second South East Team event this year) in Nashville. Personally, I’m attending Harvest Moon as member of team Swing Blade(s of Glory), also known secretly as (the winning) Nashville team #2.

Advanced Dancer Weekend

I have just recently begun discussing an idea for an advanced Lindy Hop weekend getaway with a few friends. Ideas continue to spring from the concept of Lindy Hop as Performance Art and I think it would make for an amazing weekend to structure a small event in that pursuit, if only for the laboratory experience of having experimented.

Ideally I want 32-40 dancers in attendance, enough to break into four groups of 4 or 5 couples each. After (early) morning sessions of yoga and pilates one group would go to contemporary/modern jazz, another to african dance, a third to hip hop, and a fourth to tumbling. Everyone would rotate through all four during the course of the weekend (2 each day). Late afternoon/evening would be occupied with choreography; two groups would focus on a lindy hop(ish) routine and the other two would do solo charleston/vernacular jazz and then switch the next night. Choreography would last for a couple hours, and then its time to perform for the other groups and then just dance with each other. Somewhere during the day would come food, and sometime after the dancing would come sleep. It would be oh so grueling and oh so fun.

So who wants to join me? Who can we get to teach?

Review: Michael Gamble

I have had the absolute pleasure of watching Michael develop as both a Lindy Hopper and an instructor over the past few years. Sugar Foot Stomp was the first weekend I’ve taken a class from just him (solo Charleston/Jazz) and it was a wonderful class.

Michael has a way of explaining things that really makes sense to me, and seemed to make sense to the rest of the class. Solo dancing in freestyle leaves me feeling very awkward, regardless of whether it is Jazz or Charleston. My so experience consists of exactly: the Shim Sham, Big Apple, the Madison, and various Steven Mitchell routines over 6 years. The result is that while I may know a ton of great stuff, I’ve been pressed beyond my skill level by Steven, and barely learned the fundamentals of solo movement from the Shim Sham etc.

My biggest complaint about my awkwardness is that I either get stuck doing the same thing over and over and can’t escape, or can’t figure out how to get from where I am into what I know can be done. Michael’s class took me some very large steps in that direction.

To relive the class in this post would make it seem too simplistic. But simplistic is why this class worked; the cookie were put on the bottom shelf for the students to eat from, BUT the cookies weren’t spoon fed. He paced the class and the topics covered were perfect for learning at your own pace, which is exactly why his class was so successful. He left room for me to ask questions of my own dancing and rather than providing the answers he really did give me the tools to go out and and find the answer I needed. I am so glad I took his class. For me, even as great as Chad and Midori were, Michael’s solo class was worth the trip to Asheville by itself.

Tags: Solo, Charleston, Jazz, Michael Gamble, Sugar Foot Stomp, Shim Sham, Big Apple, the Madison, Steven Mitchell, dance routine