Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
As an older dancer, the loss of flexibility, strength, and stamina compared to my younger years looms larger and larger. It’s not fun to feel your own limits. BUT… there’s a lot I can still do to bring energy to the scene. I ‘ve been thinking this morning about the role of the hype man…
Yesterday was International Dance Day! And it’s been about 10 months since I started quad skating! I decided to try and capture some of the stuff I’ve been working on with my jam skating— that niche sub-genre of dance skating, often confused for rhythm skating. Jam skating is basically breaking / b-boying but on skates….
Yesterday at the amazing “Rollin Deep” event put on by the Bay Area Roller Group, I got to experience all those life-giving feelings that dancing gives to me that I had almost forgotten: Seeing another dancer going off, locking eyes, and just vibing with them for a moment, a phrase, or whole song. Seeing your…
Excited to unlock this move last week!
As a newbie quad skater, I love capturing video of my progress as I learn new moves and tricks. And I’m not alone. A lot of the resurgence of interest in quad skating has come from the thousands of skaters posting videos of themselves on Tik-Tok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. So one big issue with…
I’ve started casually teaching folks how to do some basic dance moves on skates. It just happened organically. I spend so much time on my own working on different tricks and steps, and then talking to other people about what they are working on. Soon two or three us are practicing Crazy Legs or spins…
I’ve seen articles that have said roller skating was irrelevant since the ’70s. OK, so what have I been doing for the last 20 years? No, it hasn’t been irrelevant. Roller skating has continued to survive because of the African-American community and our ability to open up the culture to others who want to learn…
This weekend I got together with a few friends to see if we could skate at the new Chase Center in Mission Bay, San Francisco. Turns out its the most incredible space, and totally empty due to the lockdown. So we basically had the run of the plaza for a couple of glorious hours. Here’s…
Happy 2021! On the last day of the year, I did a little video exploring the connections I’ve found between rhythm skating and house dance. As a dancer who has dabbled in many different forms, I’ve been interested in how to incorporate my other styles into skating. House dance, which I’ve been practicing for the…
It was 2011 that my all time favorite holiday dance video — and one of my favorite dance videos PERIOD — came out: “A Miracle on 42nd Street.” Performed by the Yas Initiative, aka Alex Karigan and Zac Hammer, this very Broadway, very campy dance piece is just joy encapsulated for me. Fast forward to…