Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
I finally got around to reading Norma Miller’s Swingin’ at the Savoy: The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer (1996). I don’t know why it took me so long to get to this book. I should have read it years and years ago. Norma recounts her incredible life as a dancer and an entertainer, from first…
“When the band would see real fine dancers, the musicians would try to become a part of what they were doing. Really, the dancers inspired the musicians and vice versa. If the musicians did something exceptional, it inspired the dancers to do something exceptional, and then the dancers would inspire the musicians to do even…
I’m so delighted to have had the opportunity to interview Shanghai-based jazz singer Jasmine Chen for “SwingNation” the other day. An innovative musician who fuses traditional Chinese folk traditions with jazz inflections, Jasmine rose to international attention recently when her music was featured on the “Crazy Rich Asians” soundtrack and she appeared in two scenes…
When strangers ask me about learning lindy hop, they often say that it must be hard to “throw my partner around” or “dance so fast.” I think the popular impression of lindy hop is that it’s full of crazy airsteps and really fast dancing. The classic clips that we often send around of Whitey’s Lindy…
The Switch Workshop I took at the end of July has got me thinking more deeply about what switching brings to lindy hop. I realize now that lead/ follow switching adds a whole new level of possibilities for musicality, collaboration, and instant communication. As an example, check out this instance of switching that Irina Amzashvili and Matt Richey shared…
The dance scene from Hellzapoppin’ (1941) is arguably the most iconic lindy hop clip in history. Certainly millions of viewers have been inspired by this routine, that is still unmatched in dynamism, exuberance, and athleticism. Go ahead and watch it again here. But how much do you know about this scene? Here are seven remarkable…
I’ve lost a lot of dance competitions. But my all time favorite loss was on a warm summer’s evening in New York. A few years ago, my friend and I entered a lindy hop dance contest at a popular music festival, along with several other dancers in our scene. It was held in a large…
This Saturday night, my friend Sing Lim and I were scheduled to give a presentation at the World Lindy Hop Day event in Singapore on “Frankie Manning and the Black Roots of Lindy Hop”. There were about 75 dancers and musicians there from all across Asia. A few minutes before we were to speak, Sing and…
Here’s a long take of my friend Brian and I dancing lindy hop together, where we switch roles several times during the dance. Learning how to follow in lindy hop and experiencing both roles has been a shot in the arm to my dancing over the past year. I had no idea how fun it…
Hanging with swing friends back in the day. The “Khakis Swing” Gap Ad is twenty years old. Woah. I’ve been reminiscing about what it was like to dance in the midst of the “neo-swing” era. I started lindy hopping around 1997 in New York City. I remember taking my first class with my friend Denise…