Category: Dancing / Music

Check this amazing video of Dinah Washington singing "All of Me" at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.  From the incredible documentary "Jazz on a Summer’s Day."

   Here’s a brief teaser video I did for the Yehoodi Talk Show special edition from the Herrang Dance Camp. I chat with Italian lindy hop instructors Vincenzo and Isabella. Isabella recounts a painful / hilarious story about how she broke her nose while social dancing.  Head to http://www.yehoodi.com/talk if you’d like watch the entire…

So Spuds, the co-host of the Yehoodi Talk Show, has finished the herculean job of editing down the hours of footage we took at the Herrang Dance Camp into a 50 minute video podcast.  The show features everything from interviews with Herrang campers to a walk-through of notable Herrang sites to explicit blues dancing footage. …

As this season’s "So You Think You Can Dance" winds down to its conclusion, I’ve been thinking about how cool it is that I have a cohort of dancer friends from around the country who are watching it with me and commenting along on the discussion boards of Yehoodi, the swing dance website I help…

I love Billie Holiday, I love electronic music.  I should love, "Billie Holiday: Re-mixed and Re-imagined," right?  Well, not exactly. I met some lindy hop friends at the South Street Seaport last night to catch a performance by some of the DJs and musicians featured on the new Billie Holiday album.  It was a pretty…

Back in States now, getting ready to go back to "real life" after my adventures at the Herrang Dance Camp. It’s hard to sum up the experience of being crammed together with 800 crazy lindy hoppers for nine days in a tiny town in Sweden. On my last morning in Herrang, I strolled through the…

The final evening of dance camp is always a costume party with some kind of theme. This being the 25th anniversary of the camp, the theme was simply to dress in outlandish fashion, which lots of dancers gladly did. I loved how several dancers were dressed as different lindy hop moves, from the Texas Tommy to…

I’m spending a couple of days in Stockholm with my friend Tomo, recovering from Herrang. Here are some pointers from me that might help your Herrang experience be more enjoyable and stress-free: Be Flexible: I’m not talking about your body (although it’s important to stretch out before and after dancing.) I mean, the dance camp…

The Herrang book signing for Frankie Manning’s autobiography Ambassador of Lindy Hop finished at around 3:30PM, only an hour after it was scheduled to complete today.  Reportedly, the Herrang camp sold more than 700 books, with several campers buying more than one copy to take back home with them.  Frankie, ever the gentleman, would not…

Not surprisingly, I’ve gotten a bit sick here at Herrang Dance Camp.  Really it’s a perfect breeding ground for airborne and skinborne viruses, since we spend a lot of time in close quarters, dance holding hands with tens of strangers, and get no sleep.  It doesn’t help that people who are sick selfishly go out…