Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
The New York Times has an inspired write up about Quaker activist Benjamin Lay, “You’ll Never Be as Radical as This 18th-Century Quaker Dwarf.” It really speaks to my condition, as Friends say: “Lay, a hunchback as well as a dwarf, was the world’s first revolutionary abolitionist. Against the common sense of the day, when slavery…
Spam musubi is one of my favorite guilty pleasures from the Islands. Carb-loaded, greasy, salty, and sticky, spam musubi just make me happy. I was invited to my friend Michael's annual birthday pie extravaganza, where the cost of entry is a homemade pie. It's a fantastic celebration of everything pie, with people going all out…
I won't always be dancing the way I dance now. I've been thinking about that in mostly a negative ways: My body won't let me b-boy anymore… I'm losing flexibility and power, so I have to make up for it in some other way….I won't be able to do the things I do now in ten…
Check out legendary waacker Princess Lockeroo doing a sick showcase to Ella Fitzgerald's "Air Mail Special." Love that mix of waacking and jazz movement!
For a long time, I’ve been wanting to put together a nicely produced video of me dancing, showcasing all of the fun dance styles I’ve been playing with over the past couple of years, including solo jazz, charleston, house, and waacking. Last Saturday, I finally got it together to do it, with the help of…
I am a terrible follower. And I love it. A couple of weekends ago, I got to work on learning the other side of lindy hop, the follower role, at The Switch Workshop in San Francisco. The Switch is one of the first full weekend dance workshops dedicated to focus on learning the non-traditional role…
Check out this sweet video short about b-girl Ayumi of Japan. She holds it down both as a professional hip-hop dancer and as an elementary schoolteacher in Japan. And she's an older dancer in her 30s! She's kind of my new dance hero. Here's another dope video of her at a competition from a couple…
Yesterday evening I happily kicked in a couple hundred bucks for the crowdfunding campaign "Big Band Revival: Jimmie Lunceford Transcription." Cause what else is money for except to bring beautiful things into the world, like awesome swing music? This is the second time that Michael Gamble and his crew have rallied jazz nerds and swing dance…
Today I was in the San Francisco Botanical Gardens for their wonderful "Flower Piano" festival. Pianos are placed strategically all around the beautiful gardens, and anyone can turn up and play whatever they know. I saw lots of young kids playing who reminded me of that brief time in my life when I was a pianist….
I dig this video featuring Quest Crew dancing to a live performance by electro-swing band Caravan Palace. Quest always has a great mix of styles, from b-boying to house to locking. There's even some charleston in there. Here's another older one from 2012 on SYTYCD.