Yesterday and today I performed with the PMT breakers at the PMT Dance Showcase, which is always a blast. This season's show was particularly appealing to me because we had a "Star Wars" theme going on with our routine. I got to be the main evil jedi, leading my troop of Dark Side b-boys against…
Category: Dancing / Music
Picture of me twittering in the NY Times Sunday Styles Section today!
Check out Bill Cunningham’s lovely photo essay about the Easter Parade on the NY Times website. I come into view at about the 0.44 second mark! I like how Bill captured Boosh and I checking our phones. I’m actually twittering at that exact moment something along the lines of “Looking pimp in the Easter Parade!…
Dancing in the Easter Parade with Michael Arenella & Friends (video)
Yesterday was a lovely sunny and brisk day for the Easter Parade in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. Thousands of locals and tourists milled about and marveled at the elegant, fanciful, opulent and sometimes ridiculous Easter outfits worn by participants. The lindy hop crowd tends toward the more vintage-y and elegant end of the spectrum, with…
My breaking solo for performance next week (video)
Here's my solo that I'm working on for the breaking performance I'm doing with my group at PMT Studios next week. Yes, the ending is still not done yet, and my swipes need a lot of work. The song is of course "Body Movin'" by the Beastie Boys (1998).
Hula + Swing = Hula Shim Sham (video)!
Here’s a late but very sweet entry in the “Global Shim Sham” project for Frankie Manning’s 95th Birthday Festival. Check out this beautiful and amazingly choreographed hula dance version of the “Shim Sham”! Here’s how the dancers described why they put these two seemingly very different dance forms together: Many traditional hula celebrate and pay…
Yehoodi Talk Show #513 available: Back and chattier than ever
The long-anticipated episode #513 of the Yehoodi Talk Show podcast is finally available. Spuds and I talk about the upcoming Frankie 95 Birthday Festival in May, the new lindy histories website IamLindyHop.com, and why you should wash your hands after every song at a dance. All that and more silliness on this installment of the Yehoodi…
Lessons from a Successful Viral Media Campaign: 128 “Global Shim Sham” videos (and counting) for Frankie Manning!
View Larger Map When the organizers of the Frankie Manning 95th Birthday Festival cooked up the idea of having lindy hop scenes from all over submit videos of themselves doing the Shim Sham line dance, we had no real expectations for how many would come in, or from where. I remember telling co-organizer Shorty Dave…
Blue Vipers + 1st Fans Meetup with Sun Kwak at Brooklyn Museum
Just got home from a fun night at the Brooklyn Museum for their free First Saturday event this month. First Saturdays is one of my favorite New York cultural events, and the Brooklyn Museum one always bring out such a neat cross-section of the city. This was the first First Saturday I went to as…
Tell your lindy hop story at IamLindyHop.com
Spuds turned me on to this super cool website started by lindy hopper Ben Yau from Pasadena called : IAmLindyHop.com. The purpose of the site is to "gather and share stories of Lindy Hop" from the dancers, musicians, instructors and DJs that keep this artform alive every day. As Ben writes, "each person has a…
The Shim Sham… now in 3D! (video)
Ok, I am sure that my non-dancer friends are sick to death of all of these bloody Shim Sham videos. This is the last one (perhaps) that I'm posting, because it's so stinkin' cool! That's right, it's the Shim Sham, rendered in 3D, by those amazing folks at the Jam Cellar in DC. Here's how…