I Miss Swingouts
April 4, 2008 - My Life
If you know me well, you'll be aware that about five years ago I spent most of my free time dancing. Lindy Hop. It's how I met Linda. But since moving out of Connecticut, I haven't done much dancing at all. As I sit here on a Friday, listening to Count Basie, Corner Pocket, and Ernestine Anderson as I work, I find myself jonesing to dance. Bopping around in my seat, doing syncopated footwork under my desk. Unfortunately, Lindy Hop is a partner dance and I'm all alone. There's not much dancing in Southern Colorado. There's a fairly small weekly dance in Colorado Springs, but after driving an hour to get here Monday through Friday, the last thing I want to do on a Sunday night is make the drive again. There are dances in Denver too, but that's two hours north for me. When I was dancing five nights a week, I used to think nothing of deciding on a whim to drive up to Boston for a Friday night dance. I guess things have changed.
So I just pulled out a few dance pics of me from my good old days. Nothing of the crazy balance-testing freakouts to the drum solo in the middle of Junior Mance's Out South or the adrenaline-soaked swing circles to Chicken Rhythm, but some decent pictures nonetheless. My favorite action shot is probably this first one, where I'm dancing with my friend Noelle Gray. There's a YouTube video here of Noelle and Daina Schatz teaching a routine Noelle choreographed.
Next, a picture of Linda and I performing to Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love at the opening of the Rhythm Room studio in Hartford's Colt Building. I used to live on the 6th floor of the Colt Building, and this studio was on the 4th, so it was pretty easy to get there on Sunday nights for the dance. Honestly, I just like to look at Linda in this picture.
And third, this picture of me dancing with the legendary Dawn Hampton. Dawn is a really nice person, and when she starts dancing everyone else stops to watch.
The last shot isn't really technically dancing, although it is at a dance. It's this hilarious picture of Daina running in circles around me while I flap my arms as if there's something icky on me. Yeah - sometimes we got downright goofy while dancing. It was fun.
There's a lot of good Lindy Hop on YouTube, both choreographed and improvised, if you're interested in watching. I wish I could find some of my old VHS dance footage so I could throw it up on YouTube too.
I'm currently divorced and have been thinking about getting out more and dancing a bit... but I'm 43 years old and don't know about the 'dating scene' in this day and age... I'm sure if I just get out there and dance, I could have a great time!!!! I used to dance a lot... back in the day. My other brother who now lives in Maine, taught me how to do the songs/dances from the 'happy days' years... keep dancin'!!!!
Christine
Got a b'day card from your mom coupla weeks ago--first in more years than I care to remember. Think it was because I'm over sixty?
So do I. She reads her mortality in me.
I don't fence any more. Nor do I kick box, break bricks with my forehead, get into casual bar fights nor solve differential equations in my head as a parlor trick.
You're growing up--move on.