teachers and researchers of traditional jazz dance
| 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
| 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
Finally, we got around to sprucing up our video section. While we have wanted to update the formats and sizes of our clips and add a few more, we just didn’t have the time. Luckily, Apple came out with iMovie ‘08, which made it substantially easier to pull together the raw footage and output to a larger format but manageable file size. So, the first step was re-publishing the videos. The second step is adding some new clips to the mix. First up, we’ve got the jam from AMC Swings: Live with the Cherry Poppin’ Daddiesan hour long concert with dancing that aired in April 1999.
Posted on October 12th, 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
When you see the white-haired man in the blue jacket, you know the New York Times is on the prowl. That man in blue is Bill Cunningham, the noted Times photographer. We spotted him at last year’s Hot Jazz Lawn Party on Governor’s Island. The next week, we saw a host of photos make the Times’ Style section. This year, Mr. Cunningham struck again. The Sunday Styles section of the New York Times, June 17, has a great spread that captures the spirit, passion, and wide-legged dancing abandon of the Hot Jazz Lawn Party. We are proudly among the revelers pictured (see low-res version from NY Times site). Unfortunately, the event only happens once a year. Don’t know when next year’s event will be, but don’t miss it. Now, if only I could convince the island to do a whole themed weekend……hmmm that would be cool.
Posted on June 17th, 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.