teachers and researchers of traditional jazz dance
Announcements of upcoming dances and other special events.
| September 19, 2008 | to | September 21, 2008 |
Oh Canada! I’ll be flying north soon to Toronto for a weekend of Peabody, Charleston and Lindy Hop workshops. Easily one of our favorite places to dance (and perhaps the coldest locale we’ve ever taught in—New Year’s weekend a few years back), Toronto is diverse, has a lot of good dancers, and is home to Tim Hudson (as in Timothy’s donuts and coffee).
For full details about the workshops, visit OddSocks.org.
Posted on September 15th, 2008 by chad
| June 6, 2008 | to | June 8, 2008 |
Jam Cellar has invited us back to Washington, D.C. for their Big, Big Event (BBE) to teach a little Peabody. We are absolutely thrilled, particularly because the dance is in June. When we traveled there to teach in March, last year, we drove in near blizzard conditions (4.5 hour drive=11 hour drive). It’s unlikely, though with global warming you never know, that we will have to deal with these conditions. (But now that I’ve opened my mouth, we’ll probably have a tropical storm, instead.) If you haven’t been to DC for dancing, then you are missing out. It is truly one of the top places in the country with a great community and one of the world’s best venues (Glen Echo). We were sad that we missed last year’s BBE, but we were already traveling in June to celebrate Indy’s 1st birthday. For us, personally, this year’s event will be a big, big event. It will likely mark Midori’s return to dancing following much needed bunion surgery in November. They say it’s 6-weeks to recover, but they mean bear weight on your foot. It’s really like 6 months to return to dancing. Yikes! She has recovered as well as we could have possibly hoped and now has a nice incentive on her calendar. I’ll post more details about the BBE when I have them.
Posted on February 10th, 2008 by chad
| February 21, 2008 9:00 pm | to | February 22, 2008 1:00 am |
| April 17, 2008 9:00 pm | to | April 18, 2008 1:00 am |
Looking to get your groove on? Join me for some swinging good and hot jazz music and more at Yehoodi’s Frim Fram. Thanks to the good folks at New York’s venerable swing dance webiste (David Jacoby in particular), I’ll be DJing on February 21! I’ll have a little something for everyone from Lindy of all tempos, Bal, Shag, even maybe a Peabody or two. So save the date and me a dance.
Posted on February 6th, 2008 by chad
| January 29, 2008 | ||
| 8:00 pm | to | 11:00 pm |
Thanks to the lovely Cara, I’ve found a great place in Brooklyn to screen rare dance film clips from old Hollywood movies, newsreels, and Vitaphone shorts spanning the Jazz Age through the Rock n’ Roll era. The place is Monkeytown. It’s located in Williamsburg. I plan on showing rare footage of Vernon and Irene Castle (the original stars of ballroom), the Harvest Moon Ball (the Madison Square Garden contest that captivated New York), Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers (the Savoy Ballroom troupe that brought big air to dancing), the 1939 World’s Fair, the Varsity Drag, and much more. The clips will cover our America’s dancing past, including the Lindy Hop, Charleston, Peabody, Balboa, Shag, Rock n’ Roll, as well as a few dancing oddities. Following the screening, I’ll be spinning swing tunes for social dancing.
Please pass the word.
Posted on December 31st, 2007 by chad
| October 25, 2007 | to | October 28, 2007 |
Hard to believe that American Lindy Hop Championships (ALHC) will celebrate a decade of great dancing this year. Then again, it’s hard to believe our son Indy is 15 months old. That’s a lot of 5-6-7-8s. Anyway, we are thrilled to be back at ALHC this year and are excited to teach a Peabody workshop on Saturday from 5:45pm to 7:00pm. While we’ve got miles to go in our effort to introducing people to the fleet-footed bliss that is dancing Peabody, we are also amazed at how many people have gotten to know the dance over the past four years. Being invited to teach Peabody at ALHC represents a kind of milestone for us. We can’t wait!
Posted on October 4th, 2007 by chad
We perform and teach popular and historical social dances of the Jazz Age and Swing Era and have appeared on stage, independent film, and local and national television. Known for our performance and our research of social dancing, we also consult and choreograph for period productions, particularly those set in the Roaring Twenties. Though we do not regularly compete, we have placed in a number of competitions, including 1st in the 2004 American Lindy Hop Championships Fast Dance division.