I’m excited as all-get-out that this Saturday, June 21, is the 25th annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade! For those that don’t know, the Mermaid Parade is a raucous and community-driven celebration of Summer, where tens of thousands flock to see an eclectic and wild mix of floats, bands, dancers, hula hoopers, vintage cars, and other…
Category: Dancing / Music
Congrats to J. Walter Hawkes for winning an Emmy!
Congratulations to my buddy J. Walter Hawkes for winning an Emmy, along with this musical team, for their work on the kids show "Wonder Pets." The Emmy was for "Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition." Along with his musical composition skills, J. Walter is a fine trombonist and ukelele player. He has worked on…
Brooklyn Bombshells bringing Busby Berkeley to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade!
Check out this wonderful Busby Berkeley dance scene from the movie “Gold Diggers” (1933) featuring Ginger Rogers. The song is “We’re in the Money,” of course. I love the awesomely weird Pig Latin bit toward the middle! I’ve been brushing up on my Busby Berkeley knowledge because Yehoodi’s “Brooklyn Bombshells” dance group will be performing…
Remarkable video on the roots of hip-hop dance
"Nobody here made up nothing. All we are doing is manifesting shit at a different time." – Crazylegs My friend Snora posted to Yehoodi this awesome video created by Midus. Without commentary, the eight-minute collection of dance footage shows the parallels between modern b-boy and hip-hop dance and older dance forms — from lindy hop…
What Dawn Hampton teaches me
This Friday, a couple hundred of us lindy hoppers celebrate the 80th birthday of Ms. Dawn Hampton, a woman who has had a remarkable life as a jazz musician, singer, and dancer. I have been lucky enough to get to be around Dawn regularly at Frim Fram and other swing events in New York. I…
VIDEO: Shim Sham at the NYC Dance Parade
Here’s some fun video provide by Will Luong of me and a bunch of other lindy hoppers dancing a fast Shim Sham during the 2008 NYC Dance Parade. Yes, I messed up at least four times in the the routine. Suck it.
Happy Birthday, Dawn Hampton! Dance that bhangra!
I just got home from a wonderful dance party to celebrate the 80th birthday of Ms. Dawn Hampton, one of the elder stateswomen of lindy hop and an inspiration to me and thousands of other dancers around the world. As befitting a celebration of Ms. Hampton, the party featured two of her favorite bands, the…
VIDEO: PMT Breakdance team at Spring Showcase 08
Here, finally, is some video from the PMT Studios Spring Showcase that my fellow breakers and I performed at in April. It is interesting to contrast this performance with our much less polished but somehow more entertaining version of this routine that we did at Frim Fram a few weeks ago. I guess the kind…
Alain Wong starts bike ride to Tijuana for Microcredit
As I mentioned in March, fellow lindy hopper Alain Wong from Montreal committed to riding a bicycle from Vancouver, BC to Tijuana, Mexico for the cause of microcredit lending. I got to meet Alain and some of his friends at Boston Tea Party, which was really cool. Alain and his bike team began their ride…
Yehoodi Video Talk Show Episode 510: Kelley vs Astaire, West Coast vs Lindy vs Chicago Steppin…
After a somewhat long hiatus, Spuds and Rikomatic are back with yet another Yehoodi VIDEO Talk Show, Episode 510 (not 509 as we erroneously say on the show!). In this episode, we talk about ketchup swing, why Satcho loves cheesecake, the difference between "jitterbug" and "Chicago Bop" and what happens when Westies and Lindy Hoppers…