This past weekend in Newton, Massachusetts was the Boston Tea party. The Penn State crew, including myself made the seven hour trek from State College, Pennsylvania to there and were rewarded with a great time!

This was my second year attending the event and I am happy to say I enjoyed it even more then my first time, albeit I had a much different experience.

More Social, Less Class

This year instead of attempting to take every class possible, I took it easy and only took three classes the first day, one the second and none on the third (My right hip wasn’t feeling well possibly due to too much tabby the cat/swivels as a follow).

It was an interesting change because I got a lot more social dancing in and I noticed usually a higher quality of dancers were hanging around the 2-4 AM range. I also felt I digested mentally the material from the classes I took a lot better since I wasn’t getting overwhelmed with information like I usually do at most workshops.

One class that was particularly fun and noteworthy was Andrew Thigpen and Karen Turman’s making the 90’s cool again class. We took moves like the butterfly taps/washer/space-invaders (I find it hilarious how many different names this partner back tap move has), drapes, and the dreaded pretzel. Except modified them so they were less sucky/creepy and actually had technique behind them.  If I could sum up that class in two words, it would be pretzel swingout.

I also want to give a shout out to Naomi Uyama who did one of the classiest things I have ever witnessed. Even though I am an extrovert and I am usually not intimated by people, for some reason she seemed to bring out my closet shyness and feelings of “I’m nowhere near her level, I am going to bore her to death” fears that I thought were long dormant. So to deal with it I asked her half way through a song to dance, she responded by asking if we could wait until the next song so she could get a full song with me.  It was a genuine act of kindness that garnered a great amount of respect from me.

Competitions

I did a bunch of competitions this weekend; novice J&J (follow), intermediate J&J (lead), and the open strictly with an awesome follow from Baltimore. Had no luck in terms of making finals, but had a lot of fun and learned a lot in the process.

One couple really stood out this weekend though, Maéva Truntzer and William Mauvais. They competed in the open strictly lindy and drew each other in the advanced J&J. One word can describe their dancing, “badass”.

If you can’t tell what is happening in that photo taken by Lynn Redmile,  William dive bombed in between her legs into a tumble. This is only a small sampling of some of the crazy stunts and shannagins these two pulled out in the competitions they were in. Stunts aside what I really enjoyed about both of their dancing was the fact that they brought a lot of energy to the floor and danced with a lot of personality.

Also fun to watch was the invitational cross-over jack and jill, if you are unfamiliar with the competition they take all the Lindy Hop instructors along with all the West Coast Swing instructors and put them in one competition. This means its either a Westie follow drawing a Lindy Hopper lead or vice versa. I wish I had pictures of some of the costumes, they were priceless. However though I think Marty Klempner won this year costume wise by wearing only an open vest  as a shirt with his upper torso covered in spray on body tan.

Highlights of the Weekend

• Maéva’s headband falling off in the Advanced J&J finals, William didn’t miss a beat and picked it up. Then preceded to let Maéva lead while he followed.
  
• Peter Strom noticing the Penn State student section and giving us a shout out.
• Michael Seguin leading Laura Glaess into switches right in front of the judges while staring them all down.
• All the ridiculous Westie parody outfits the Lindy Hopper Instructors wore in the cross-over J&J.
• One ridiculously amazing dance with Ramona Staffeld. (Darn you lucky Australians!)
• Meeting Rik and Spuds who run help run yehoodi.com and the yehoodi talk show!

Other Attendees’ Blog Posts

To get some cool viedos and a quick blurb about the event check out Rik’s post!

What the Heel?

So lately a topic that has been all the chatter over the swing dance online community is a post by Sarah Breck on women wearing heels while dancing on the website Dax and herself share at DaxandSarah.com and a response why not to wear heels by Fenn at her blog shortgirlphoto.blogspot (Edit: Apparently Fenn decided to delete her blog post, but google cache has a version she edited before deleting the post. Link).

Even yehoodi has seemed to take notice in the topics To Heel or Not to Heel and Sarah Breck on Why Women Should Wear Heels.

Logical Fallacies

Just as a background, for my major Computer Science I do an upsetting amount of proofs. Also just when I think I am done with them… they come up again. In my algorithms class, my discrete mathematics class, and now again my automata and finite states class.

When I read or listen to people debate I usually don’t care about the emotional content of their arguments (which gets me into trouble a lot) but the facts they lay out.

What bothered me about the blogged response to Sarah’s post is this issue, Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Ridicule.

Fenn writes,

Today, I found this post in my facebook newsfeed. I was confused, because I thought I had read the title wrong. Surely, a dancer couldn’t be ENCOURAGING women to wear heels. I went over and read it, and my confusion was cleared…to anger. The writer says that women should wear heels because it’ll improve their dance skills.

THIS. IS. TOTAL. BULLSHIT.

This could have been written simply as, “Today I found this post in my facebook newsfeed. I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that the author was encouraging women to wear heels which I think does not improve ones dancing at all and in fact can be detrimental to their health. ”

Same effect, but does not come off as horribly condescending and hostile.

Points

I don’t have a background in podiatry nor have I spent long periods of time wearing heels so I am not going to comment on the validity if one should not wear heels or not. However what I argue against is the way Fenn presents them. Sarah’s main point her article or (the premise being argued against) of why she wears heels is,

“Because they help keep me in check. I feel like I become a better and stronger dancer when I wear them”

Fenn’s counter-points are:

1. Shoes don’t improve your feet’s ability to do anything.
2. Heels will damage your body over time.
3. They are not necessary for any dances.
4. Swing dancers don’t spend enough time strengthening their feet like other classically trained dancers do.

I would like to note that Sarah does not write anywhere heels are required for dance. Automatically points 3 and 4 do nothing to argue against the premise that Fenn is attempting to counter.

Point 1 I have a strong issue with because it disregards the fact of something we know and love known as physics.

There is this thing known as friction: the resistance encountered when one body is moved in contact with another.

Can I do slides without shoes? Yes. Will I get much more distance with a pair of slick shoes then barefoot? Yes.

Since Fenn seems so eager to bring up Balboa, here is a move from it known as the Maxie Slide. Named after the late Maxie Dorf.

With the exception of someone who does not have a good sense of balance, I can promise nearly every lead can get more distance with that slide with a pair of slick leather soles/suede then their bare feet.

In addition, some dance venues are not the safest places to go barefoot. As someone who has danced barefoot for an international dance troupe for almost 2 years (Penn State International Dance Ensemble) I know how much it can hurt when someone leaves stuff on our practice space. Imagine the possibilities of foot damage at half the venues across the United States.

Point 2 is the only valid argument I see in the whole response to Sarah’s article. However there is no references cited and I am left to rely on Fenn’s personal credibility, which is greatly reduced in my eyes in the extremely condescending manner that the arguments are presented and the extraneous irrelevant points that are raised.

In short, I agree with arguecat that…

I remember awhile back I was writing one of Bobby White’s posts on Swungover titled “The Old Timer (Part 2: A Release of Energy)” and got a smirk on my face reading this quote,

I think it’s one reason why so many So-Cal dancers handle competitions well–the one-upness attitude and showing-off confidence has been an important part of their scene ever since the neo-swing craze and before.

I’ll fully admit, as a So-Cal dancer myself I am proud to the point of vanity about my local scene. You can dance every night of the week, we have an amazing hometown band: Jonathan Stout and His Campus Five, and a plethora of badass dancers.

The 90’s

If you aren’t familar with the neo-swing craze/swing revival, go read this wikipedia article.  Then watch this clip from the film Swingers (1996):

Two reasons its important:

1. It features The Derby, a legendary venue of Southern California.
2. It presents the idea that swing dancing could be for anybody.

Erin Stevens, wrote in an interview from the now defunct website laswinginfo.com,

The Derby certainly deserves credit for getting the word out to the general masses. The GAP Commercial and the movie Swing Kids certainly had an effect [on the popularity of swing].

[…] There were so many people who wanted to swing dance that it was almost out of control. That was when we realized that we needed to be careful what we wished for. All of a sudden, we went from having 100 people in a class to having 400 people in a class. We soon had a different problem. We had to police our classes more, and make sure we could see the back of the room, all while still trying to get the material out there. We couldn’t teach everything we wanted, because much of the class became about just trying to move the people around.”

A quote from Peter Loggins on an article about Collegiate Shag has a few interesting things to note,

In the late 1990’s we had Shag Contest all around Southern California which was real fun, but it didn’t seem to last long, as most dancers were interested more in Lindy Hop, Swing, Charleston and Balboa.However, there were those countless nights in the back room of the Derby in Hollywood of all of us Shag dancers going off and Jamming! Imagine that on a regular night out….those were the days!

So before I lose you, here are the key points from the revival.

• 1. Public media through movies (The Mask, Swingers, Swing Kids) and the Gap commercial made swing dance something accessible to the general public.
• 2. Southern California during the 90’s swing dance had an overwhelming popularity, to the point that classes were full, competitions became very frequent, and venues like the Derby became avenues to learn and show off.

L.A. Old School

So below I am going to post these videos ranging from promotional clips, social dancing to competitions that I think show off this So-Cal flair from its 1998-2002 days. I’ll let you be the judge if we have this “one-upness attitude and showing-off confidence”.

The Hollywood Jitterbugs 1998

Santa Monica Mall Contest 1999

Swing Pit Opening Night 2001

Link: http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/18650186

The LA/OC Lindy Exchange  2001

Apparently we had some out of towners for this event.

Just as an FYI, So Cal also had some of the best advertisement campaigns ever:

Lindy Binge 2001: House Party

Jam at Camp Hollywood 2002

Jam at Paladino’s 2002