Eventually a comparison of recent contests came up, and some people mentioned that people who do well in Blues contests at Lindy events wouldn’t do well in Blues contests at Blues events.

I want to talk about this more in depth, but I’m still putting together some thoughts and discussing it with some people. Until I can post something coherent, I thought I would pose this little thought experiment.

I very haphazardly edited two videos together of the winning performances from the Strictly Slow Blues competition at bluesSHOUT 2011 with Ruby Red & John Joven (first couple) and the Strictly Blues contest at the Lone Star Championships 2012 ( a mostly Lindy Hop event) with Evita Arce & Jeramie Anderson.

I just want to pose this simple question: Would Evita & Jeramie’s performance be that out of place at a Blues event? Discuss, and I’ll be back next week with a post comparing the Blues and Lindy sub-cultures, and the role of competitions.

Peter Strom & Naomi Uyama International Lindy Hop Championships 2011

She now lives in Minneapolis, MN along with the guy in this next video which I’ve probably watched more than any others this year.

Midwest Lindyfest 2011 – Invitational Jack and Jill – Niki Amundson & Peter Strom

In a lot of ways, this video embodies a lot of the things I mentioned in my 2011 year in review. It’s a fun dance with someone that he’s known for over 10 years. In fact, I think it’s the dance you can only have with someone you’ve known for a long time. For awhile, Niki was one of those young dancers that appeared in and won a lot of competitions. She doesn’t travel very much these days, but she represents a lot of dancers who have moved on in their lives, but can still throw it down and inspire the rest of us from time to time. The beginning of that dance is interesting to me because of the way guitarist Robert Bell puts down some funky beats because he’s also known Peter for some time and knows his predilection for Soul and R&B music.

I think the latest highpoint in dancer-musician relations happened at DCLX 2011 where two big bands led by Glenn Crytzer and Jonathan Stout showed the world that classic jazz for dancing can still cause 500+ young people to stomp their feet, clap their hands, and yell their voices hoarse after playing for three and a half hours straight. Everyone who was there remembers “DIXIELAND BAND?!?,” or the trumpet/drummer exchanges between Bria Skonberg & Mike Daugherty or Brett Lemley & Paul Lines. But my favorite part came towards the end with the back to back clarinet solo’s from Seattle’s Craig Flory and Russ Reinberg from California. At the end of Russ’s solo, Glenn asked Craig to take another, but he humbly demurred. This night wasn’t really about battling.

DCLX 2011 Battle of The Bands-The Jonathan Stout Orchestra & Crytzer’s Blue Rhythm Band

Music is what brings us all together, on the dance floor and even on this blog. Earlier this year I posted to the Wandering & Pondering Facebook Page my favorite Ella Fitzgerald song, a live version of “St. Louis Blues” recorded in the Savoy Ballroom with Chick Webb’s band not long after he passed away. I lamented that the radio announcer crashes the ending, and doesn’t allow the song a proper ending. I thought that it would disqualify it from ever being performed for a routine. Apparently, the people down in Austin decided to take up the challenge, and put together my favorite team performance from this year which succinctly and subtly solved the problem of the ending.

ILHC 2011 – Team – Lindy Hoppers Dozen

Peter & Nikki’s dance is probably my favorite social dance to watch, but Skye Humphries & Frida Segerdahl’s dance in the Champions Invitational Strictly at the European Swing Dance Championships is damn near perfect. What I love about this dance is how simple and elegant it is. Watch the other spotlights from that competition, and you’ll notice how most everyone tries to be entertaining and do some crazy fun stuff. Skye & Frida don’t even bother because they just like dancing and they say what they mean and mean what they say.

ESDC 2011 – INVITATIONAL STRICTLY LINDY HOP Finals (Skye & Frida)

My favorite part occurs before they even start. Frida sarcastically spins him for his introduction, slightly mocking more formal competitions and the way leads traditionally present their follows. His spin is ironic, but still skillfully elegant. She responds by whimsically leaping to meet him. Physical inside jokes.

Then they start. They swingout. Then they do it again. And again until they come to close with the end of the phrase. Then it’s side by side charleston four times, which is about 3 three more times than most advanced dancers are comfortable doing with the rest of the world watching.

This isn’t an exhibition of mind boggling tricks or aerials. This is Lindy Hop 101.

Not that there isn’t any skill involved. The old song goes “T’aint what you do, it’s the way that you do it.” At 1:09 of that video, he comes out of back to back charleston with a stop on the dime spin so wickedly quick and precise that half of the leads sitting behind him would have to spend several months to come close to duplicating it.

Why are we infatuated with it? Why are beginners in awe of it? Why do their peers admire it? Why do old timers nod knowingly?

It’s because Skye & Frida embody the very thing we look for when we come to this dance. What Skye & Frida represent in their mastery of skill and uninhibitedness in the face of numerous and often times unreasonable expectation is Freedom. Capital F intended.

Here’s the thing, Skye & Frida know that you’re watching. They know that you expect them to do something amazing every other eight counts, but they’re over that. They’re going to swingout and Charleston and perfectly match the phrasing and feeling of the music with moves and their movements, and they’re going to do it not to impress you or to win first place. The reason why they look so relaxed and are having fun is because they are. They’re not hamming it up for the judges or even each other. They just enjoy each others’ company and express that best through dance.

Most people may not realize it, but this is what you’re looking for when you take all those lessons and try to figure out how to become a “good” dancer. Face it, not all of us are ever going to win a competition. No matter how many or how few people are in a given contest, there’s only going to be one winner. But you put all the time into it, so you can you can to turn to your partner and say, “Right here, in this moment, we are going to have the time of our lives.” And then be able say that with every damn dance you have with a straight face.

It may be awhile before some of us get to that point, if ever. But there are those ever so brief and fleeting moments when you feel like “This is it. I got this.”

Jason Hizon & Georgia Glover Lone Star Championships 2011 Intermediate J&J Finals

At 0:37 Georgia throws in a little hip check at just the right moment. Check out Jason’s reaction to it. Listen to all the people cheer right after it happens. That’s what it’s like for that one moment when you’re master of the space time continuum.

The thing about Lindy Hop is that you can never do it by yourself. By definition, as a partner dance, you need one other person to be involved to get it done. Even if no one else gets what you’re doing, if your partner is right there with you, then that’s all that matters in that moment.

ILHC 2011 – Invitational Jack & Jill – Andy Reid & Mia Goldsmith

This whole dance is just lovely, which is not a word I’d normally associate with Andy. One moment in particular stands out like Georgia’s hip check. A series of moments actually. Andy kicks with the music at 0:50. When he does it again a second time, but Mia is right there with him. Those are the times when you know a dance is really clicking, when you and your partner are on the same wavelength.

Most of those times aren’t captured on camera in front of a lot of people. We’re incredibly lucky when they are, and other people are allowed to experience them. That was part of the message behind Karen Turman & Andrew Thigpen’s evolution routine from last year, and is a theme they subtly continued with their follow up piece.

Lindy Focus IX – Showcase – Andrew Thigpen & Karen Turman

Ok. Maybe subtle isn’t the right word, but behind the bombast, the bright purple clothes, and the video intro and epilogue, they’re expressing the feeling that got them into this dance in the first place.

Do you remember when you started out and you were pretty bad, but in your mind’s eye you were amazing? When we get better at dancing we take a bite out of the apple and grow ashamed at our ignorance. It takes a lot of work to match up our ability to where we want it to be. What gets us to that point? With this routine, Karen & Andrew remind us that its equal parts attitude as it is execution. That ineffable quality that makes a light go off in your head and go from “I can do that?” to “I can do that!”

There’s a moment where they appropriate something that Jo Hoffberg & Todd Yannacone did in the Champions Strictly Lindy Hop Finals at ILHC 2010 (at 5:30) The knee slapping and head shaking is so simple, but so catchy that you see several of the competitors start bobbing their heads with them. When Karen & Andrew repeat it several months later, you can see some of the judges up front do the same exact thing. That’s when you know you’re doing something right. It’s not just the cheers, but the fact that you’re making other people want to do it too. This is how a dance community grows and continues.

It’s not just about two people making a dance work. It’s about how we build onto that. Going from being inspired to being inspiring. And the thing is, everyone here is looking for that. Even our competitions aren’t truly competitive in the cut throat sense. They’re very collaborative actually. We want each other to do well; to give us something else to add to the vocabulary of our vernacular.

ILHC 2011 – Juniors – Kevin Tucker & Hannah Abel

I think that’s the reason why the junior division at ILHC was so emotional this year.  I think people who saw it also saw bit of themselves on that floor with those kids. You should have seen the crowd from where I was standing with everyone cheering and smiling. Even the judges. Especially the judges. Some of them, like Lennart Westurlund, Sylvia Sykes, Kenneth & Helena Norbelie have been around for a long time, and they know that if we’re going to keep the dance going, we’re going to need the kind of energy, effort, and courage that kids like Hannah and Kevin showed on that floor.

It’s a cycle. It starts with one dancer, and then transmitted to your partner, and then eventually (hopefully) involving those around you.

Jeff Camozzi & Liz Camozzi Lindy Focus IX – Showcase

I think Jeff & Liz captured this sentiment perfectly with their performance at Lindy Focus IX. It’s not a complicated or flashy routine. It’s just a simple story of two people that eventually involves so many others. It’s everyone’s story; one that starts every time we ask that next person for a dance.

Happy New Year! Make it count.

I really enjoyed all the videos that have been posted so far, but I reserved this post to highlight stuff that somehow fell through the cracks for whatever reason. A lot of them are from earlier this year, and just didn’t meet the metric standards of the earlier posts based on this blog’s Facebook Page simply because of sheer numbers. However, it’s still all quality stuff.

Couple Performances

Stompology 2011 Mike and Laura performance

• ILHC 2011 – Pro Am – Jamin Jackson & Annie Trudeau
• Mikey and Nikki Perform Georgia / Georgia at ATOMIC Ballroom Irvine
• Peter and Naomi at Leapin’ Lindy 2011 in Bern (Switzerland)
• ILHC 2011 – Classic Lindy – Nicolas Deniau & Mikaela Hellsten
• William & Maeva – Lindy au Boogie Woogie Week-End au Saguenay

I kinda wish Mike Roberts & Laura Glaess performed this routine for ILHC, because this was incredibly fun to watch. Jamin’s performance at ILHC was amazing for someone who hasn’t been Lindy Hopping for very long. Mikey Pedroza & Nikki Marvin performed several versions of this routine over the past year, and even beat the Mario Brothers with it at Camp Hollywood, but I really liked this one without the fast section. I also liked Peter Strom & Naomi Uyama’s fast routine they did over the year as well as the many iterations of Mikaela & Nicolas’s routine. And I picked this version of William Mauvais & Maeva Truntzer’s routine because the camera is in the perfect position to catch the ending.

Social Improvised Social and Competitive Dancing

CSI2011 Instructors’ Performance – Thomas & Alice

• The Rhythm Is Jumpin 2011 – Rising Star Invitational J&J – Jamin & Kristin
• Swing Crash Festival Como 2011. Show LINDY HOP. Teachers
• The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown 2011 Finals #1
• Harlem 2011 – Todd&Nina
• Inspiration Weekend 2011 Instructor Jam

Alice Mei and Thomas Blacharz  deserve props for keeping this informal demo so entertaining for so long. As mentioned before, Jamin Jackson, made a huge impression on people with this performance being one of the first. The Swing Crash instructor jam was a great example of the best that Europe has to offer while that ULHS video shows off some of the best in North America. My favorite moment comes at the end with Alain Wong & Lunou Aamson-Poirot and Giselle Anguizola & Chance Bushman hitting a simpatico moment with the band. The last two are more informal teacher demo’s. Todd Yannacone & Nina Gilkenson are always fun to watch together while she and Annie Trudeau share a pretty loose dance with Mike Faltesek & Max Pitruzzella.

Team

Lindyfest 2011 – Swinging Air Force

• “Cruiser Zvonkiy” by “Всё те же рожи” at MOST2011
• barSWINGona 2011 : DEMO
• ESDC 2011 – TEAM DIVISION (Argenteam)
• Hoppers’ Performance in Harlem 2011
• KLHC2011 Showcase Team Division – Dark Knights (1st Place)
• Lindy Focus IX – Tuba Skinny and the NOLA Jitterbugs
• Shout Sister Shout – Roma Dicembre 2010 Promo dvd 3 (Ninjammerz)
• Harlem 2011 _Lindyhop.lt performance1
• Beantown Camp 2010 – The Show – Finale

The amount of quality team routines out there was pretty impressive especially considering how they came from different parts of the world. There are representatives from Canada, Russia, Argentina, Korea, France and the US. Also note that three of these performances are done with live bands with the NOLA Jitterbugs actually incorporating the band, Tuba Skinny, into their performance. I also like this angle of that performance. I included the Beantown performance because the video just came out this year even if the original performance was from 2010. I think it’s worth it for the vocal introduction by the ladies.

Music

There are so many highlights to pick from DCLX 2011. “Reefer Man” features an energetic duet between Glenn Crytzer and Meschiya Lake. My favorite part comes during Meschiya’s second vocal when the trombonist mistakenly comes in early. Dave Loomis weilds a powerful instrument, but it doesn’t phase Meschiya one bit.

Solo Dancing

Stompology 2011 Charleston with Laura

• 8th Annual Inter-Collegiate Swing Battle 2011 Diamond Dolls
• Savoy Swing Jam 2011: Short Showcase – Cheryl Soccer Routine
• Lindy Focus 2010 Solo Charleston Contest with Tuba Skinny

Laura Glaess is an amazing dancer to watch. Meanwhile, the Diamond Dolls began their impressive string of entertaining choreographies with this performance. Cheryl Crow’s Short Showcase was a pretty inventive mix of her two physical passions. I sat down and watched almost every solo contest that happened this year, just to refresh my memory, and nothing touches the energy level from the one at Lindy Focus which was just off the charts. Live music makes a huge difference.

Blues

Solo Blues @ ULHS 2011

• Lindy Showdown 2011 Slow Dance Finals

Could have easily called this the Evita Arce category. She had an entertaining dance with Mikey Pedroza in the Slow Dance contest along with several other couples. That must have been a rough competition to judge. However, she just mesmerized me in the Solo Blues contest. Just a slow burn throughout that held my attention he whole time. That’s a hard thing to do in an all skate format. It should also be noted that she also made the finals of the Solo Charleston contest at ULHS.

Something Else

ILHC 2011 – Cabaret – The Crazyers

• Lindy Focus IX – New Year’s Eve Show – Nina and her Zombie Whores – Roustabout
• 2011 Lone Star Championships – Invitational J&J Finals – Nick & Jo (karaoke)

• 2011 Lone Star Championships – Invitational J&J Finals – Andrew & Carla (karaoke)
• 2011 Lone Star Championships – Invitational J&J Finals – Peter & Mia (karaoke)

The Crazyers with Mikaela Hellsten, Nicolas Deniau, Maeva Truntzer & William Mauvais threw down the most entertaining cabaret piece this year that won contests on two continents . . . Nina Gilkenson choreographed this all star line up of dancers as part of the NewYear’s Eve Show at Lindy Focus which also featured the debut of the Swinging Air Force luggage routine I listed previously. I’m not sure where Patrick got the zombie description from other than the fact that the event is such a good time that you feel like someone ate your brains. . . . It was hard to pick just one moment from the highly entertaining Lone Star Championships Invitational Jack & Jill.  Carla Heiney & Andrew Thigpen, Mia Goldsmith & Peter Strom, and Jo Hoffberg & Nick Williams all did a great job by throwing caution to the wind. Even though it’ a competition weekend, one of the things I appreciate about this event is the deliberate effort put into bringing people together in unconventional ways;  undermining the way we think about people dancing at different levels.

We just have one more post about 2011 to go, and that will feature my favorite videos from this year and some final thoughts.

In looking up all the videos and blog links on this blog’s Facebook Page for other posts I noticed some things and was reminded of a few more. Obviously, this can’t be a comprehensive recap of the entire Lindy Hop scene, but I think it’s still pretty amazing that all this information is in relatively easy reach.

Show Me What You Got

I’m always impressed by the sheer the number of videos that keep coming out. I used to be able to watch anything recently posted in one sitting. It wasn’t that long ago that I would wait days for anything to be posted. Now it’s just a flood, and I have to pick and choose just what to click on. The downside to this embarrassment of riches is that I’ve become very picky in what to post to this blog or the FB page. Contest footage that would have been automatic a year ago now gets a pass because the standard for “interestingness to me” is much higher now.

One of the reasons for that is because of the amount of effort people are now starting to put into fully producing their videos. Not just recording high definition video, but also investing a lot of effort into creating music videos and short films. I actually wondered a few years ago on Yehoodi.com, how long it would take for dancers to take advantage of video as a performance venue (as opposed to recording a live performance), and now we have our answer.

The most high profile of these efforts was the Careless Lovers video for their version of “Black Coffee.” It was actually an entry for the Seattle Vintage Jazz Dance annual Swing/Jazz Dance Music Video Contest, which it won. It went on to become the most popular video not produced by some sort of major marketing or recording company.

That contest has been around for a few years, but more and more people are experimenting with different ways to use video, and not just to film dances. I mentioned Mikey Pedroza’s efforts to video blog in my last post on blogging highlights. Here are some more examples of inventive videos for promotion or just because.

• A Gal From Jump Session
• GI Jive – Never too old to swing
• Lone Star’s Signature Drink
• sweet substitute
• Swing Dancing with the Patriots³

The Hawkeye Swing Dance Festival has taken it to another level with an internet based choreography contest where entries of original choreography are being voted on online. The winner will have an opportunity to teach at next year’s event.

Let Us Entertain You

I think one of the reasons we’re seeing an increase in these sorts of performance videos is because more and more people are getting better at performing and presenting themselves. It used to be that you had to wait for one of a few dance troupes like The Rhythm Hot Shots (the precursors to the Harlem Hot Shots) to come your way to see a professional looking vernacular jazz dance performance. Now people are getting together into small troupes either for one song performances at their local dance, or for more elaborate shows.

This video of Evita Arce & Jo Hoffberg’s Can Can performance at Followlogie 2011 does an impressive job of combining behind the scenes rehearsals, classes, and actual performance footage. It’s just one of many examples from around the world.

• Killer Diller Weekend Cabaret – Lindy Hop!!
• The Midnight Rounders Jazz Routine at Karolinska Institutet
• The New Orleans Little Big Vaudeville Show! Miss Otis Regrets

Getting The Band Together

You’ll notice in a few of those videos is the live participation of musicians rather than just dancing to recorded music. Dancers and musicians have been developing better connections over the past few years, but one significant trend I’ve noticed is in the realm of how musicians play for contests. In the Jack & Jill contest at Lindy Bout in Vancouver this past Spring, you’ll hear the band change tempos each after each round of couple spotlights without stopping. What I thought was fun and unique actually happened a couple more times this year.

• Hawkeye Swing Festival 2011 – HSF6 – Solo Charlestons Competition
• Killer Diller Weekend 2011: Harvest Moon Lindy Hop Finals

It used to be a matter of luck if the band knew enough to keep playing until the contest was over. There were a couple of contests at the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in 2006 where the band finished the song in the middle of a couple’s spotlight. The more common problem is for bands to keep playing long after they need to, which turns dance contests into endurance contests. I think that it has gotten much better over the years because of the fact that dancers are getting better at communicating their needs and musicians are more receptive to them.

Dancers learning to play music and musicians learning to dance has also been a factor. It allows them to find some common ground and to “speak the same language.” There are bands led by dancers like Jonathan Stout, Glenn Crytzer, and Solomon Douglas. On the other side, I’ve seen clarinetist Paul Cosentino of the Boilermaker Jazz Band often grabs some one for a dance during band breaks. There’s even video of Meschiya Lake actually asking someone to dance mid-song.

However, Russ Reinberg, a clarinetist from Southern California, mentioned a few times on his blog about the way musicians are treated by audiences and dancers in particular. He got some negative push back by some dancers on my Facebook page, but when I showed the blog to other musicians, their main response was, “Amen.” So we’ve come some way, but there’s still room for progress.

Nor the Battle to the Strong

Also in the realm of Lindy Hop competitions is the expanded use of the battle format. Most Lindy contests are done in spotlight or jam format. In spotlights, one couple dances for part or an entire song. In a jam, couples take turns dancing for a set period of time during one song. In a battle, two or more couples dance at the same time, thus encouraging more interaction between them. Ever the innovator in competition formats, The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown started employing this format when it first moved to New Orleans from Minneapolis in 2009. This year a few other events tried it out including Savoy Swing Jam and Camp Jitterbug. In the aftermath of Camp Jitterbug, Mary Freitag wrote a reaction to participating in that contest, and drew a lot of responses.

The two main points of discussion revolved around the time allotted for battles and the comfort level that most Lindy Hoppers have with the more confrontational aspects of head to head competition.

In regards to time, this year ULHS had couples battle for entire songs (played by live musicians) as it did in previous years, but this time they danced through a double elimination round robin tournament. That way everyone got more than a chorus to prove themselves. Every couple who made it into the quarter finals got to dance at least two whole songs against two different couples. The result was four couples in the finals. Because of the way the scoring worked out, Giselle Anguizola & Chance Bushman had to dance three times. It was a brutal gauntlet going through dancers from four other countries, but they helped produce another epic Showdown for the event’s 10^th anniversary.

While not necessarily head to head, I also noticed that more and more people are getting comfortable interacting with each other in solo competitions.

• Charleston final/Finale Charleston du Crazy Rhythm Challenge CRC à Toulouse
• Inspiration Weekend 2011 Solo Contest
• Savoy Swing Jam 2011: Solo Jazz Finals

Although on the blues side, Mike Legett seems to think that blues dancers have a way to go in this area.

Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer

I don’t do “Dancer of the Year” type of awards here on this site, but if I did, Frida Segerdahl would be my hands down favorite because I noticed that she won damn near every competition she was in this year. That’s impressive to me considering the mercurial nature of dance competitions.

Think of who you consider is the best follow. If it isn’t Frida, I guarantee that person’s answer would be Frida. Even Jo Hoffberg, arguable one of the top 5 women in the scene, noted with disappointment that she had to miss Frida dance because they were in the same contest.

One could say that Frida was lucky to dance with the three best leads out there, but I like to think that those guys were lucky enough to draw the best dancer in Lindy Hop.

Let me put it this way. On a scale of 1-10, most top level dancers will dance around an 8 on average, turn it up to 9 when it counts, and in those very preciously few moments of serendipity will hit 10.  Frida can crank it up to 11 at will.

Decades from now, if we’re still around doing this thing, people will sit around and talk about Frida in the same way we talk about dancers like Frankie & Dean do now. But we don’t need to debate that today. Just sit back and watch.

• 2011 ILHC Champions Strictly Lindy Finals – Spotlight
• 2011 ILHC Lindy Hop Classic – Skye Humphries & Frida Segerdahl
• ESDC 2011 – INVITATIONAL LINDY HOP (Max & Frida)
• ESDC 2011 – INVITATIONAL STRICTLY LINDY HOP Finals (Skye & Frida)
• ILHC 2011 – Invitational Lindy Jack and Jill – Todd Yannacone & Frida Segerdahl

And the best thing about Frida is that she is a super positive human being who just wants everyone to have as much fun dancing as she does. Dancers trying to look like Skye & Frida have been a sort of running gag in the scene for many years now, but it’s hard to argue a better role model out there than her.

Woman on The Verge

On the musician side, Meschiya Lake is breaking out not just as a crowd favorite at dance events, but also into the mainstream. She’s been getting a lot of coverage in the dance community and amongst her peers as she won “Best Female Performer of the Year” at the 2011 Big Easy Music Awards.  One of my favorite moments this year with her came at DCLX 2011. Sharing the stage with 30 musicians in two big bands, she stole the show with her rendition of “When I get Low, I get High” with Cryzter’s Blue Rhthm Band.

Read more about her in this lengthy feature from Offbeat.com and this entry on NPR.

You can also hear and read her in her own words with this article she wrote describing her influences and this lengthy video interview done by a dancer.

Barbara Morrison

On a sadder note, singer Barbara Morrison had a hard year losing her foot to complications with diabetes. Barbara is one of the most entertaining jazz vocalists around, and incredibly resilient as she was back to singing on tour not long after that. She’s a treasure to us especially because she’s one of the few mainstream jazz artists that loves playing for dancers

We Remember

Unfortunately, we did lose a number of people who meant a lot to our scene.

In drummer George Reed we lost another connection to a person who played and danced at the Savoy Ballroom. Check out Mr. Jesse’s tribute show to hear what the man was about.

One of the most significant alumnis of the Count Basie orchestra, Frank Foster also passed away. He was last seen by many Lindy Hoppers as an integral part of Frankie95. Frank wrote Shiny Stockings, which was one of Frankie Manning’s favorite songs.

Then there were elder dance statesmen John Mills and David Resnik who were inspirations to us even in their later years.

Especially tragic was the loss of Albany dancer Nick Birchak who many dancers in the northeast would recognize even if they did not know him personally.

Finally there was Terry Monaghan. After his death I wrote: “Terry was a true historian in the sense that he did the nitty grittty and unglamorous work of doing the research and interviewing anyone and everyone that had some sort of connection to the development of Lindy Hop in Harlem. But he wasn’t one of those guys who just amassed knowledge just to have it. He was instrumental in spreading the gospel of our dance. He also gave a sense of dignity and accomplishment to those older dance generations by tracking them down and bringing them out to witness their impact on newer swing dancers at events like the Harlem Jazz Dance Festival, The Basie Ball, the Savoy Ballroom’s 80th Anniversary, and the numerous birthday celebrations for Frankie Manning.”

You may not know it, but you’re probably dancing now because of him. To him we all owe a huge thank you. Follow these links to read more of his work and remembrances by others.

Lindy Hop, Won’t You Please Come Home

2011 was also a year of renewal as a number of Lindy Hop centric venues opened as discussed by Rachel Green on her blog.

Rachel co-owns the newly opened Rhythm in Albuquerque, NM.  Joe & Nelle Demers opened up The Overstreet Dance Gallery in Littleton, CO, and Baltimore now has The Mobtown Ballroom. in Baltimore

Then there are the organizations that found new homes this year like The Living History Dance School in Cincinnati, OH and The Jump Session in Nashville, TN which opened in spectacular fashion this year.

Here in DC we did lose the Washington Swing Dance Committee which had been hosting dances from the past 25 years, but other places continue to thrive like The Lindy Project in Austin, TX which just celebrated its 4^th anniversary.

On an international level Herrang Dance Camp continues to pack them in for now five weeks of instruction and the International Lindy Hop Championships* continues to grow, selling out with 700 dancers from 14 countries. Some people like to talk about how the Lindy Hop scene is dying. While some places go through cycles, the overall health of the scene seems to be thriving.

Mob Rule

Probably no other local scene received as much attention as Baltimore did this year. Admittedly, I contributed heavily to this because I have some close friends up there, but they definitely have this energy about them that most everyone can feel when they go visit or encounter at other events.

What is it about the place? They don’t have much a notable music scene like New Orleans, Austin or Chicago. They don’t have much of a history with the dance like New York or Southern California. Let’s be honest, the overall level of dancing in Baltimore isn’t that high like it is in a place like Seattle, but what makes the impression more than anything else is the attitude.

“Still debating if I am afraid how much I love them, or love how much I am afraid of them”

Andrew was just one of many people trying to describe their encounter with the Lindy Hop population of the Charm City.

No Really. Check out these posts on Dancing Past The Godzilla Threshold, Rockin’ in Rhythm, The GMU Swing Club and Jo Hoffeberg who wrote them up three times.

As per usual they made themselves known at ILHC, but in a rare quieter moment, Dorry Segev, one of the forces behind the madness, talked about what makes Baltimore hum.

In the brand new Mobtown Ballroom, they now have a permanent place to call home. But don’t take my word for it. Go visit. Sounds like everyone else is. They don’t bite. Hard.

Balti-Seoul?

The other scene to make international waves this year did so through more conventional means. A couple of years ago I did a survey of major events around the world. In my unfinished follow up analysis of those numbers, I was going to hypothesize that up and coming instructors should brush up on their Korean to get more international teaching opportunities. That window closed in 2011 as Korean Lindy Hoppers demonstrated that their advanced dancers are on par with their counterparts in the US andEurope.

They did that by taking every major competition in the world by storm. Check out this list of accomplishments.

Korean Lindy Hop Championships, Lindy Hop Showcase, Soochan Lee& Hyun Jung Choi 1^st  place

• KLHC Strictly Lindy Hop, Jeongwoo Hong & Crystal Lee, 1^st Place
• ESDC Advanced Strictly Lindy Hop, Jeongwoo Hong & Crystal Lee, 1^st Place
• All Balboa Weekend, Amateur American Classic Balboa Championship, JeongWoo Hong & Crystal Lee, 1^st Place
• ILHC All Star J&J, Nalla Kim, 2^nd  Place
• ILHC Open J&J Hyun Jung Choi 2^nd Place
• ILHC Advance J&J, Soo Chan Lee, 4^th Place
• ILHC Advanced Strictly Lindy Hop Soochan Lee & Hyun Jung Choi, finalists
• ILHC Solo Charlston, Nalla Kim, Soo Chan Lee, finalists
• ULHS Solo Charlston, Soo Chan Lee, finalist

Show Me The Money

Lindy Hop continues to grow around the world, re-integrate itself into our cultural consciousness, and even play an important role in accomplishing other goals. The folks at Atomic Ballroom held a 24 hour dance marathon, and raised almost $125,000 for cancer research. Over in Seattle and Josh Welter and Mark Kihara participated in a local Dancing With The Stars type event that raised $425,000 for the Plymouth Housing Group.

Contemporary History

Going hand in hand with my initial observations about videos is the fact that our growing facility with that medium will allow us to tell our own stories our way. Much of the historical knowledge we have about Lindy Hop is by way of movie clips, news articles, and books written by outsiders who only saw the dance as a curiosity. With websites and videos, we now get to show people our dance the way we see it; the way we experience it. That may not seem like an important distinction now, but it will be one day—even if it’s just to us.

Some of us have been doing this for awhile, and we’re creating out own very rich experiences out of it. I think it’s a good thing that we have this opportunity to better communicate our story through others or just tell it the we want to ourselves.

Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown’s 10th Anniversary

• Bluetopia in Chicago
• Community Dance Teaser – History and Video by the Denver Post
• Dancing with the Patriots: Swing Club
• Dawn Hampton School Visit 2010
• Frankie Manning’s first aerial
• Jitterbugs
• Rocky Mountain Balboa Blowout 2011
• SisterKateGirls.com – Sister Kate Tribute
• WNH – Hoppin’ At The Savoy – An Evening With Dawn Hampton

Why We Dance by Cheryl Crow from this year’s Seattle Vintage Jazz Dance Swing/Jazz Dance Music Video Contest.

It’s been quite a year. Stay tuned for my video picks and my final reflections on this year.

*Disclaimer. I work for ILHC. It’s pretty fun.

In putting this list together, I ran into the same problems as I did in selecting blog posts to feature in the Wandering & Pondering’s Lindy Blogging Highlights of 2011. It’s a bit difficult trying to determine what was more popular than others based on all the different data available, both objective and anecdotal. In the end I just took everything that got pretty good numbers in one category or another, but didn’t do any sort of ranking other than selecting the main video out of each category to highlight at the beginning of each category.

The other thing I noticed is how something like this is at the mercy of what I decide to post. I realized this after noticing that this list is short on ILHC entries, and that’s when I remembered that I actually didn’t post many videos from that event because I saw everyone else was posting them on Facebook, on their blogs, and other places.

One of the purposes of the FB page is to drop the hidden gems I find without going through the trouble of formatting them for presentation here on this blog. In the process, I deliberately eschew stuff I figure most people already know is out there. Part of that is because I feel that the kind of person that follows this blog is past the casual beginner stage, and is a bit more discriminating in their tastes. I think that’s reflected in the videos you guys ended up favoring over others.

Yeah, I just realized that I just described you and my blog as the hipster part of the Lindy scene. I apologize.

But check out the first video below featuring Marie N’diaye & Anders Sihlberg which was the overwhelming favorite on this list.  It has a pretty good view count of over 3200+ views, but is well short of the videos from the most popular list. The Harlem 2011 Solo Jazz Contest clip is the same way, but there was still over lap with the first list as The Harlem Hot Shots at Herrang, and Slow Club’s Two Cousins were also pretty heavily favored.*

I’m not sure what that says about you guys, but I do like your taste in videos.

Couple Routines

“Denim Moves / Marie and Anders / Lindy Hop”

Oddly enough, this is the only couple routine that made the list. This choice is a good counterpoint to the Jive Aces video I mentioned in the “Most Popular . . .” post. I couldn’t include that video because the appearance of Lindy Hoppers in that video is so brief and the editing so rapid that it’s difficult to even realize that they’re dancing. I would have never known it was Lindy Hop if I didn’t already know who the dancers were.  This video with Marie N’diaye & Anders Sihlberg is a stark contrast. Just over a solid minute where the camera doesn’t do a damn thing except focus on them throwing it down. Originally filmed as part of a jean commercial series, it’s reminiscent of the Gap Ads for khaki’s over a decade ago.

Improvised Social/Competitive Dancing

“For Japan Tsunami Relief Performance by Peter Strom Naomi Uyama & Dawn Hampton at Frim”

• Savoy Swing Jam 2011 – Intergenerational Competition
• ESDC 2011 – INVITATIONAL LINDY HOP (Max & Frida)
• ESDC 2011 – INVITATIONAL LINDY HOP (Skye & Jo)
• Harlem 2011 Jack’nJill Final
• 통 큰 짬뽕 파티 Jack & Jill 뭉치 & 인간 (A Jack & Jill in Korea)
• jump for joy 2011 \\ Isabella & Vincenzo, Frida & Skye @ Bebop
• Lindy hop. Линди хоп
• Midwest Lindyfest 2011 – Invitational Jack and Jill – Naomi Uyama & Skye Humphries
• The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown 2011 Finals #3
• ULHS 2011 Showdown Prelims (1 of 11)
• Världscup i Lindy Hop 24 sept 2011 Karlstad – Final Lindy Hop Vuxna – Fast

Quite a few entries for this category. Jack & Jill entries from The European Swing Dance Championships, Korea, and Lithuania. A teacher demo from Russia and Germany. Plus some hot contests from Sweden and New Orleans including Chance Bushman and Giselle Anguizola’s last of three battles in the finals of The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown. Getting there was no easy task as even the prelim video against Delilah Williams & Andrew Thigpen shows.  Ultimately I chose to feature the video with Dawn Hampton, Naomi Uyama, and Peter Strom because it’s freakin Dawn Hampton. Although it was a tough call with competition from the other end of the generational spectrum by Jason Baggett and his daughter Lucy at Savoy Swing Jam.

Team Routines

New School Swing Performance at Boston Dirty Water Lindy and Blues Exchange

• Jump Session Show 2011
• The Just Born Jitterbugs – Camp Hollywood

The Just Born Jitterbugs are cute, but I think the performance is significant because it indicates another way in which our scene is growing and maturing. I don’t see a lot of friends out dancing much anymore because they have responsibilities to their families and careers now. It’s great to see people families make to time to still be involved.  If you haven’t seen the Jump Session clip, I won’t spoil the surprise. It’s hard to tell, but The New School Swing performance is backed by Gordon Webster and his band playing live, which I think gives it an extra bit of a kick.

Solo Dancing

Diamond Dolls Perform Shim-Me-Sha Wabble at 1940s Xmas Ball

• BOOGIE TRES’s Performance @ Burn the DAY!! Night Party
• Diller Weekend Cabaret – Sister Kate
• ILHC 2011 – Cabaret – Functionizin
• Harlem 2011 Solo Jazz Contest
• Skye & Frida’s Le Hot Sauce IV Jazz Routine

The Diamond Dolls a had a bunch of good routines this year with this one being their latest. The rest of the clips feature some inventive choreography in addition to the Solo Jazz competition from this year’s Harlem in Lithuania  and a peak into a Skye & Frida workshop from Le Hot Sauce IV in San Francisco. The Boogie Tres’s performance is also a fun routine, but is notable for something else . . . in the end.

Music Performances

DCLX 2011 -Battleof the Bands – Jumpin At The Woodside

• DCLX 2011 – Jam Circle at Glen Echo

The Jonathan Stout Orchestra & Glenn Crytzer’s Blue Rhythm Band threw one down for the ages at DCLX 2011. There are a ton of musical highlights from that night, and one day I’ll finish my own recollection of that evening. “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” has a lot of great interaction between the two bands while I still get chills from both bands culminating the final chorus in “Dark Eyes.” It’s too bad we missed the opportunity for Jonathan and Glenn to throw down against  each other in that dance jam as well.

Balboa

Balboa Slovenia

• Mickey and Kelly Demo – AJU Balboa night Henley Feb 2011

Balboa enthusiasts will admit that their dance has its own very subtle attraction, and this music video by the dancers in Slovenia capture that using their gorgeous country as the perfect backdrop. Balboa’s continued growth is impressive but unsurprising given the continued physical proselytizing  of dancers like Kelly Arsenault & Mickey Fortanasce as seen in the video from England.

Fun Stuff

Morgan & Molly – Surprise Proposal

• Minnetechno
• I Charleston Berlin
• Lindy Hop Stop-Motion Animation
• Swing open ver 8
• History of The Lindy Hop Onion
• Ballroom Spectacular – 8.7 – 2011 Vail International Dance Festival
• Omaha Jitterbugs on Omaha Morning Blend
• Uptown Swing – Intermediate #2, 11/8/2011

Busy year for Mario aka, Morgan Day who co-created the viral Camp Hollywood performance and also conceived this elaborate wedding proposal complete with a no-way-she-could-possibly-say-no-to-this secret weapon. Most of the videos in this category reflect the growing comfort and creativity dancers are becoming with the video medium. The last four videos are attention from outside the community with a parody from The Onion, Max & Annie’s appearance at the prestigious Vail International Dance Festival, and a morning show feature of the Omaha Jitterbugs on the eve of their annual event, Cowtown Jamborama with a remarkable performance of Karen Turman & Andrew Thigpen dancing. That is almost as weird as Stacia Martin & Peter Strom’s class recap for Uptown Swing in Minneapolis. What is is it about Minnesota?

I talked about this extraordinary growth earlier this year on this blog, and it’s been good to see it continue. I mentioned in my first year anniversary post that I started this blog mostly because I wasn’t seeing much in depth conversation about dancing. I like to pretend that my lack of production is reflected in the fact that so many other people are posting interesting stuff.

I wanted to do the same sort of thing for blog posts as I did for the most popular Lindy Hop videos, but I quickly discovered how hard that would be since there is no one place like YouTube where I can reliably check who has had the most hits over the past year. At first I went through my handy dandy Facebook page for this blog and compiled the posts that got the most “likes” and comments. As I went further back, I realized the problem with this approach since I only started FB page in February, so obviously items posted earlier this year got fewer responses. Facebook does provide “Insight” numbers (number of impressions, views, clicks, responses, and virality which sounds slightly obscene) for posts on the page, but they only go back to July 19, 2011. The other problem I noticed is that really popular posts like stuff by Bobby White or Rebecca Brightly were re-posted by other people which would garner responses I wouldn’t necessarily notice, and would subsequently lessen the likelihood of people liking or commenting on my page. I thought about alternate ways to factor this in, but there really isn’t a good way to do it, especially with my short attention span.

Ultimately, I compiled this list based on a combination of the available data, my terrible memory, and arbitrary bias. If you think of a really cool post that isn’t included here, feel free to post it to the comments.

Lindy Blogging MVP’s

Before we get to the bulk of the list I do want to single out the work of three people:

First up is my Jam Cellar compatriot, Bobby White, the man behind the ever interesting Swungover. I find it ironic that I write here just to write while Bobby often takes a more historical tact with his posts including his epic “Savoy Style vs. Hollywood Style: A Fight to the Death (Hopefully?)” post complete with equally epic footnotes. It’s funny to me because I’m the one with the degree in History and he’s the one studying for his MFA in Writing. He’s pretty much blowing everyone away in terms of the number and scope of his posts. If you missed them, then check out his “Happy Birthday Swungover: 2011 Year in Review” I’d also like to thank him not just for his work, but also for the feedback on my blog and the insightful discussions we have about writing in general.

On a related note, Bobby and I are working on a fun project, hopefully coming to fruition early in 2012.

Next is Rebecca Brightly over at Dance World Takeover. I think of her as the blogger that I should probably be more like. Her focus is different in terms of who she is writing for, but she does a great job of responding to people and encouraging conversation. In fact, her most popular post on my FB page is one asking for more input from others “Dancers: You’ve Got Frustrations? I Want to Hear About ‘Em.” I’m way more hands off by necessity, but if I had the time, I would do a better job responding to all the people who comment publicly and message me privately. I’d like to say that I have a lot of stuff going on, but it’s been an eventful year for her and I admire her ability to juggle it all. My main hope is that she blogs about the merits of dating and marrying Filipino men. In the meantime, you can catch up with her blog on her year end post “DWT: Best of 2011”

Lastly, I want to mention the efforts of Mikey Pedroza. In addition to his regular blog, Mikey has started posting vlogs (video blogs.) He says it’s because he doesn’t have the time to write, but judging from the way these things are put together, it’s obvious that he’s putting a lot of work into them. Follow them on his YouTube channel along with other past and current dance videos he likes to post.

And now, the rest of the notable blogs of 2011

Hands down, my favorite post this year:

• “Fear. May I have this dance?” by Peacefull Dawn on Practice Makes Better

Let’s Give ‘em Something to Talk About  . . .

These posts triggered a lot of commentary either on their sites or on my FB page. My advice to every would be blogger or just about anyone saying anything online: 1)Make sure you’re saying what you want to say, and 2) remember that once you put it out there, it’ll take on a life of it’s own. There are several billion people out there. The odds of someone disagreeing with or just straight up not liking what you say are pretty good. Get used to it.

• “The Power Of Jazz: DCLX 2011” by Russ Reinberg on theWestlake Records Blog
• “A Difficult Conversation About Sexual Violence in Swing Dance Communities” by Sam Carroll on dogpossum
• “Unintentionally Insensitive Routines” by Reuben Brown on Jive Junction
• “Competition Philosophy…and Camp Jitterbug 2011” by Mary Freitag on Art and Dancing
• “I Went Salsa Dancing?” by Rachel Green on rhythmic rambling
• “Why Women Should Wear Heels” by Sarah Breck on Dax & Sarah
• “Sweat Pants Almost Killed the Lindy Hop” by Dax Hock on Dax & Sarah.
• West Coast Swing competition controversy on Westie Discussion of The Day

You Really Like Me

Posts that people approved of or just clicked on a lot.

• “Lovin’ The Lindy Hop” by Rachel Green on rhythmic rambling
• “Jive Junction Interviews Interesting People: Andy Reid” on Jive Junction
• “Gotta Be Satisfied” by Tonia on ad liminem
• “Lindy Hop Since 1998- A Personal View” by Julius Yang on Jive Junction
• “I’m really bored of seeing the same thing over and over in Lindy Hop routines” on vernacular jazz dance
• “Defining a Dance” by Nick Williams
• “The Importance of Non-Evil” by Mike Legett at Mike The Girl
• “The Art of Learning” at New School Swing
• “The Ninjammerz Show – Rome 201” by Jo Joffberg
• “The emancipatory promise of the habitus: Lindy hop, the body, and social change” by Lisa Wade. This is a full length academic paper that was published in a journal.
• “The Mobtown Ballroom Philosophy” and “Why You Stick It To THE MAN by Going to Swing, Soul, & Blues” by Michael Seguin at Mobtown Ballroom. Money quote from the latter post that’s an example of the kind of swagger that you don’t normally find in advertising for swing dances: “This is not because you’re living a fantasy; it’s because you’re actually doing something. That’s what the night life is about: Remembering that you are more than a nerd, or a corporate drone, or a parent, or some schlub that schedules appointments all day. You’re someone who goes to Swing, Soul, & Blues to dance until 5 am. When you head back to work or class on Monday morning, and the next round of tasks begin, you can look the taskmaster in the eye and know with certainty that your weekend was way more interesting than theirs.”
• “Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You” by Jody Melo on The Huffington Post. Not by a dancer, and not necessarily about Lindy Hop, but it’s not often that your venue gets talked about in one of the largest news sites in the world. Suck on that Baltimore.

The Circle of Life

I love it when posts build on each other and create a dialogue.

• “The International Lindy Hop Championships (ILHC) 2011 – Competitions” by Patrick Szmidt at Building the Swing Dance Community
• “ILHC 2011 Results” by Jo Joffberg at Jazz It Up With Jo (Official results and score sheets on ILHC.com)
• “A Classic Conundrum” by Jason Meller at Dancing Past The Godzilla Threshold
• “ILHC 2011 Alternative Judgement” by Gayl at Howard and Gayl’s Lindy-Hop Stop

The List

Blogs and websites come and go, come back again, get deleted, and then find life on another site so this is a very small sample of sites that have been active in some way over the past year. I’m probably missing a bunch, so feel free to post more in the comments section. And if you don’t want me to list your site . . . well it’s probably too late, but let me know and I’ll take it off the list.

The Lindy Blogger’s Dozen: Stuff you should be reading, listening to or watching on a regular basis because they post stuff to read, listen to, or watch on a regular basis.

• Bug’s Question of The Day
• Swungover
• Dance World Takeover
• vernacular jazz dance
• dogpossum
• DJ Ryan Swift
• It’s The Way That You Do It
• Lindy Hop Variations For Followers
• Shuffle Projects
• The Swing Daily
• Yehoodi

Resources: Videos, competition results, fashion, music and stuff.

• The Lindy Calendar
• Building The Swing Community Videos
• Free Swing Dance Lessons Lesson videos
• Jazzpirations Videos
• Lindy Hop History via The Kansas City Lindy Hop Society
• Lindy Hop Moves Lesson videos
• Lindy Shopper Fashion tips
• Rhythm Results Competition results
• Swingin’ The Blues Music
• Swing Shift Shuffle Vintage curiosities
• Swing DJs Music discussion board
• The Lindy Hop Collection of Swing related links

Venues and Organizations: Lots of places post their class and dance schedules. These places make it more interesting and/or amusing than most.

• Atomic Ballroom
• Castle Dance Project
• Collectively Blue
• Generation Swing
• Girl Jam London
• Jazz Inc.
• Jazz Up Your Life Singapore!
• Mobtown Ballroom
• Mound City Stomp
• New School Swing
• Sweethearts of Rhythm
• Swing Dynamite
• swingdancemontreal (French language)
• The Jam Cellar
• The Swing Sesh!
• Toronto Blues Dance

Dancers that blog: It may not always be about dance, and it may not be posted often, but there’s a lot of good observations and information by these people.

• All The Cats Join In
• Ana*lindy hopping the Ph.D.
• Art and Dancing
• Augie Freeman
• Big ramblings from a little dancer
• Breanna Perry
• Brighter than a Buoy
• Dance with Gina
• Dancing Past the Godzilla Threshhold
• Diary of a Swing Dancing Kitty
• DJ Emily “BabyMama” Smith
• Feets of Jazz
• Functionizin
• Hamfats
• Howard and Gayl
• Jive Junction
• Jo Hoffberg
• Jon Tigert
• Laura Windley
• LindyGroove Technique Class Notes
• Lindyhopr
• lindypenguin
• Megan Rose Damon
• Mihai’s Blog
• Mike Legett
• Mikey Pedroza
• Morgan Lee Kestner
• My Jazz Can Beat Up Your Jazz
• My Swing Archives
• News and Views from the Hall LindyJazzMobile
• Nick Williams
• Parrot Cat
• Possessin’ Verve
• Practice Makes Better
• Pustoblogsky
• Reflections on Dance
• Reportace’s Blog
• Rhythmic Rambling
• Rockin’ in Rhythm
• Ruby’s Life
• Scottie in London
• Sharon Davis
• Spank The Baby
• Steve Hwan’s Photography Blog
• Steve Losh
• Straycat’s Swing and Blues Emporium
• Swing Fashionista
• Swingitout
• The Aural Majority
• The Click Heard Round the World
• The Enthusiastic Life
• The Rantings of a Lindy Hopper
• the swing of things
• Thrive
• V is for Vintage
• Westlake Records Blog
• World of Renaissance

I want to thank everyone who made the online vernacular jazz dance community just a little more interesting this year. Let’s do this again.

For the past couple of years I’ve done end of the year round ups of my favorite videos, but I decided to do something different this year.

The reason for those round ups were for me to share stuff I found over the course of the year, but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing on the Facebook page for this blog since February. That was not the original intention for the FB page, but it’s how it has worked out. It’s also been a very convenient way for me to keep pseudo-blogging since I haven’t been able to pull together my own full blog posts. That’s for a lot of different reasons. I’ve been writing quite a bit actually; mostly in terms of unfinished posts or lots of long emails to friends because they tend to be more forgiving of my poor grammar and editing. I like the FB page because it’s pretty low maintenance and the character limitation provides me with a good excuse not to go into too much detail. So basically I don’t post because I have too much to say about stuff, but not a lot of time to write it all out, edit it, and format it all nicely.

However, my latent OCD compelled me to go through that FB page and figure out what were the most popular items from the past year. But that is not this post. This post is the part where I decided to do a not very easy search for the most viewed Lindy Hop related videos on YouTube.  It wasn’t easy because the search filter on YouTube doesn’t allow you to search a specific date range. Plus, people like tagging their random crap with the words “Lindy Hop.” I have a feeling that is how stuff gets tons of views because users will tag their videos with all kinds of unrelated words to get suckers like me to pull them up in searches.

But you probably don’t care about details, so here’s the list. More details after.

As noted above, I compiled all these totals just today.* And yes, I did round all the numbers for simplicity’s sake especially since they keep changing. That Denver Flash Mob accumulated a couple thousand views in just a few hours this afternoon. The internet is a fast and scary place.

Also, I did tally all the numbers from multiple videos of the same performance which was an issue for a few of them especially the stuff from the International Lindy Hop Championships.

I’ll admit that I was incredibly arbitrary in what I included in this list. By far, the most popular video from this year tagged with Lindy Hop is The Jive Aces’s music video for their song “Bring Me Sunshine” with 1.6 million views. I left it off because while there are Lindy Hoppers in the video, the editing doesn’t actually make it clear that they are doing Lindy Hop. This is not helped by a lengthier section previous to them that focuses on a couple obviously doing Boogie Woogie. When the Lindy Hoppers hit the screen you can see the last two counts of two swingouts plus what looks like the Califonia Routine. But like I said, the video cuts so quickly and frequently, that it’s more of a suggestion of Lindy.

Of course, I completely contradict myself by including Black Coffee on this list since that only features half a second of Lindy Hop. In my opinion, it’s made up by some fine solo dancing by Adam Boehmer and Josh Welter.

I don’t make it any easier on myself with the inclusion of William and Maeva’s ESDC performance. I’m of the opinion that it’s a Boogie Woogie routine. The comments on that video seem to lean that way as well. But they won what was labeled a Lindy Hop Showcase, so I let it slide.

You don’t like it? Well, put your own list together on your own blog. The internet is a big place.

A few things other things I noticed while compiling this list:

About half of the videos, including the top four, are professionally filmed. I mentioned in my introduction to my video round up last year that angles, editing, and video quality matters. Even the non-professional ones are still very high quality. The numbers support that it doesn’t just matter to dance geeks like me. The bottom line is that dance is meant to be seen, and seen in the most well filmed, high definition way possible.

Speaking of angles, Skye & Frida’s demo at Leapin Lindy in Switzerland is a good example of the fact that I am not the only obsessive compulsive video watcher in this community. There are several videos of this performance but there are two videos with over 13000 views each. One is linked in the list. The other is recorded from above. This is super odd because with most videos of the same performance, there is usually only one which has a lot of views while the rest only have a relatively small number.

I should also note that this is the only non-competitive social dancing video on this list. If you combine it with their ILHC performance, that’s almost 100,000 views of people watching them dance to that song (“Wham” with Teddy Wilson). Counting the Harlem Hot Shot videos, Frida is in five videos on this list. That’s 1/3rd of the most viewed Lindy videos online. Make it six if you want to include the Herrang promotional video. She doesn’t appear in that, but she is one of the main organizers of the camp.

I find it amusing that after the 3 viral videos, the only “regular” lindy video that beats out Skye & Frida’s individual performances is one that features them and all the other top dancers from the ILHC Champions Strictly division. For the record, they are, in order of appearance:

• Max Pitruzzella & Annie Trudeau (ILHC 2010 Showcase & Champions Strictly winners)
• Todd Yannacone & Naomi Uyama
• Stephen Sayer & Chandrae Roettig (2011 Camp Hollywood Pro Division winners)
• Thomas Blacharz & Alice Mei (ILHC 2010 Classic winners)
• Pontus Persson & Isabella Gregorio
• Jeremy Otth & Laura Keat
• Skye Humphries & Frida Segerdahl (ESDC 2011 Champions Strictly winners)
• Kevin St. Laurent & Jo Hoffberg
• Juan Villafane & Sharon Davis (ULHS 2011 winners)
• William Mauvais & Maeva Truntzer (Camp Jitterbug 2011 Strictly Lindy Hop winners)

Back to the top three videos. I think it’s interesting that those are runaway hits mostly because of factors not related to the dance. The Denver flash mob video is part of a big marketing push by Denver International Airport, and is a juggernaut right now. It beat out every other video despite being online for only three weeks. It also explains how all those people didn’t get tasered within the first 10 seconds of the music starting. Congratulations to cmDance for getting the Denver dancers organized and to Ceth Stifel, Heather Ballew, Joseph DeMers, & Lark Mervine for choreographing the whole thing.

I have a confession: I’ve played about two and a half levels of a Mario Brothers game in my entire life, so I knew enough to understand the references in Morgan and Emily’s performance, but I honestly didn’t think it was that big of a deal when I first saw it.  It ended up being a good example of the power of tapping into cultural touchstones. It reminded me of the One2Swing Jitterbugs’ team performance from the team division at ILHC 2009. At the very beginning, they pay homage to an animated short film done to Benny Goodman’s “All The Cats Join In.” I know of at least one judge that year who didn’t see the original, so that part made no sense to that person. Some stuff, you just have to be there to get.

On the other hand, I don’t follow very much music outside of traditional jazz, so I had never heard of Slow Club before their video featuring Remy Kouakou & Ryan Francois. However, I still found the video very powerful, and I still get a lot out of it from repeated viewings. Seems to be a two way street since a cursory search indicates that it’s their most widely viewed video.

Enough rambling. Watch the videos. I’ll be back with more year end observations soon. Maybe even by the end of the year. I hope.

*Funny story.  To me at least. I didn’t get home until 7 am this morning after dj’ing a dance in Baltimore.** As I got ready to go to sleep, I got the idea for this post, and started looking things up for almost two hours before forcing myself to go to bed.  I had a lot of ideas running through my head and only slept a few hours before I gave up and started working on this again.

**Just to show you how they roll in Baltimore, this is one of my sets (I alternated with two other DJ’s, Mike MArcotte & Rayned Wiles) coming out of a performance break

• Shake That Thing, Wynonie Harris
• Just One Look, Doris Troy
• Honeysuckle Rose, Gordon Webster
• Sister Kate, Kid Ory & his Creole Jazz Band
• Moves Like Jagger, Maroon 5
• S&M, Rihanna
• I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song), The Ikettes
• I Ain’t Got Nuthin But The Blues, Meschiya Lake And The Little Big Horns

***I like lists.

Prepare to unleash the hounds!

To be honest, while I’ve been to most of these places, I’ve never done them on a schedule like this. I don’t know about you, but we’re assuming some highly improbable things about my stamina. It’s entirely possible that I would need a nap before noon, but the main point is to list all these fun places to visit.

A few notes:

• I do realize that due to the restraints, I leave out a bunch of my other favorite places to go. I might do a separate list for those later, but this one gets in most of them.
• I’m not much of a drinker, which is why spending time at nightclubs or bars isn’t on the agenda. Even if I were, I’d still go this way because alcohol would probably slow us down anyway.
• I walk everywhere in this city, so you’re going to have to take my word on walking times. If it weren’t for time constraints I’d recommend the walking to each point.
• I don’t have a car, but even if you do, I still think we should do this tour without one. Whatever travel time we make up, we lose to finding parking and doubling back to pick up the car. The nice thing about doing this sans car is that we’re always moving forward, and don’t visit the same place more than once with only two exceptions.  Finding taxis maybe an issue late night/early morning, but we’re not on that tight of a schedule by then.
• This tour takes place in May, hence the approximate sunset and sunrise times. I chose May because it’s a nice time of year, after the chilliness of winter and early spring and before the brutally humid summers. Fall would be good too, but this time of year gives us a little more daylight to work with.
• All hours assume that this is a weekend trip starting Saturday morning. Although most of it can be done on a weekday with a couple of tweaks. But the fact is that DC isn’t a late night city, so the best chance for some late night/early morning carousing is on the weekends.
• The start time is dependent on the end time. You’ll see why.
• This day is going to end up costing us about $100 a person. Most of that is from eating four meals, plus cab and other public transportation costs. We can make it cheaper by eating less and walking more, but I don’t know if we’d have the energy to do the latter. I suppose we could eat power bars all day, but the point of this trip is to experience DC.
• Some of the times at some sites may seem a little short, but there’s not much to do at these places other than to get there.
• This tour is not for the weak, but let’s assume that right before we start, we’ve both either slept a lot or are highly caffeinated.
• For reference, I’m labeling each stop with options for rest rooms (R), Food/Drink (F), and coffee (C).

7:30 AM. Union Station. (R, F, C) We start here because I live nearby and this is probably your most likely gateway into the city regardless of how you’re traveling. There’s a Metro stop, two Circulator bus lines start here, Amtrak runs through here, there’s a direct line to BWI Airport, most of the bus lines stop here (or will soon) or nearby, and there’s a huge parking garage. This place is my second home. We’ll meet in the main hallway and talk about the gorgeous ceiling and the shields covering up the naked roman centurions. Also plenty of places to grab a snack and coffee if you need to fortify yourself, but you should hold out, we’ll be eating soon enough.

From here we’ll take the Circulator through Capitol Hill neighborhood. I am tempted to walk. I do this one almost every day, but we’re going to do a lot of that, so we’re going to conserve our energy. We’ll pass by The US Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the US Capitol.

First rule of urban traveling. Don't make eye contact. Second rule: Take advantage of everyone following the first one.

7:55 AM. Eastern Market. (R, F, C) We’ll get dropped off a few blocks away and then make our way up “DC’s oldest continually operated fresh food public market,” filled with longtime local butchers, grocers, bakers, and other shop owners. On the weekend, it plays host to the biggest outdoor flea market in the city, featuring all kinds of arts and crafts and foods. Eating at the Market Lunch is tempting but the line is a beast on the weekends. If you need a snack we can grab one at the “Fine Sweet Shop,” although I like to get something from Calomiris Fruits & Vegetables because they like to throw in a free fruit with whatever you purchase.

9:30 AM. Walking through Capitol Hill. (R, F, C) Via Pennsylvania Ave. SE. We’ll pass by many of the places where congressional staff grab their lunch or meet for happy hours.

Presidents never get any respect 'round these parts.

Highlights include what people affectionately refer to as the “Money Shot” fountain.

Seriously. Tell me you can't not see that anymore.

We’ll be back, so we don’t need to dilly dalley. Although I believe there’s always time to say hello to the ducks in the Capitol Reflecting Pool.

No really. Go on without me.

10:00 AM. United States Botanic Garden. (R) Not very big, but pretty and relaxing. I once spent an hour trying to track down a frog which just turned out to be a recording they play for atmosphere.

The stereo makes the colors much more sharper in person.

10:30 AM. The National Museum of The American Indian. (R, F, C) I used to work here, so I can do this tour in no time flat. Since most people start glazing over about halfway through, we’ll stick to the top floor where we can talk about Nazis and their intersection of Native culture. Plus my favorite exhibit: “The Hurricane.”

Totally wrong time of day for this point in the article, but YOU IN MY WORLD NOW!

11:00 AM. Lunch at the Mitsitam Café at NMAI. I’m not being biased when I say this is the best place to eat on The Mall. It’s just a fact. We’re eating a little early because this place gets slammed after 12 pm by tourists and locals alike. It’s that good. I recommend theFive Region Sampler Platter which gives us a taste of 5 dishes, but there’s enough variety to satisfy whatever you’re craving.

11:45. Walking down the Mall. (R, F, C) A time honored tradition. We’ll go out through the luscious landscape of NMAI. We’ll pass the National Air & Space Museum. I worked inside there too. I’ll tell you about it from the outside.  You’ve probably been anyway. Also, there’s the National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum along the way. Great places, but take too long to really appreciate. However, there’s an outdoor sculpture garden for both. The Hirshorn one gets forgotten these days because of its newer, sexier counterpart next to NGA**, but still worth going through. The NGA garden does have the fancy fountain which is turned into an ice rink in the winter. We can soak our toes for a bit if you’re starting to feel it. After that we’ll keep moving down the Mall passed the Smithsonian Castle and the Freer Gallery of Art (ASIANS!)  on the left and the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History on the right.

Someone is already tired.

12:40 PM. The Old Post Office Pavilion. (R, F, C) A neglected landmark, but has my favorite view of the city from atop the clock tower. I don’t understand why people go through all the trouble to get tickets and wait in line to go up the Washington Monument. You don’t have to do either for the OPO. Maybe it’s shorter, but the OPO has wide open views in all directions. It’s so criminally overlooked by tour operators that it’s pretty easy to go up even when the food court on the bottom level is packed at lunch time. Plus, if we have time, we can throw some quarters down at the only coin operated arcade in the whole freakin’ city. Btw, we’re not going to see a public bathroom or any accessible food or drink for the next few hours, so this is your last chance for a pit stop for awhile.

This blog is too classy for dick jokes.

1:10 PM. Hit the Metro. Go to the McPherson Square stop. Get out, then hit up the Circulator to take us up to 16^th & Columbia Rd, NW.  We could take the Metro all the way up, but the bus gives us a better view of the city. We can talk about all the massive changes along 14^th street over the last few years. If you lived here 10 years ago, you would not recognize the area which took forever to recover from the ’68 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1:40 PM. Columbia Heights We’ll get out and walk down the 16^th Street and see some historic churches. 16^th Street is unofficially known as the Avenue of Churches. There are well over 100 on the street from downtown to Maryland.  There are embassies (including the handsome Embassy of Mexico) since 16^th leads directly to the White House and was originally envisioned to be the city’s Embassy Row.***

You will like it!

1:50 PM. Malcolm X Park. Actually it’s unofficial name. Officially it is Meridian Hill Park. This is where local DC chills out on the weekends.  It’s located next to one of my favorite hang outs on Tuesday nights, The Jam Cellar in the Josephine Butler Parks Center. Late Sunday afternoons it is home to DC’s legendary drum circle. Even without the people or the music, you can see one of the city’s most dramatic fountains.

Thankfully, I didn't have to beat any hipsters from ruining my shot . . . This time.

2:20 PM. Catch a cab. After  relaxing for a bit we’ll find one on 16^th St.

2:30 PM. Khalil Gibran Memorial. I’ve never been here, so this is an excuse for both of us to see something new. The reason is that it’s pretty inaccessible via public transportation. Even riding by on a car, it’s easy to say “What’s that?” and then forget two seconds later. I’ve always thought this looked like a cool place to visit.

2:50 PM. Embassy Row. A long stretch of Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest DC is home to a huge number of embassies, ambassador homes, chancelleries, and annexes. We’ll make our way southeast on the road just for a short part of it. The Khalil Gibran Memorial is located opposite the massive British Embassy complex with red phone booth and a statue Winston Churchill. We’ll also pass the Embassies of South Africa, Bolivia, Brazil, and the former Embassy of Iran. We’ll turn off by the Embassy of Italy, then go up the street which dead ends. You’ll have to trust me on this next step. Across the street from the home of an unnamed former first lady and hidden next to the entrance to Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, we’ll find a very little used back door entrance to . . .

3:05 PM. Rock Creek Park. Actually since no one is supposed to go back here, it’s hard to know what exactly this area is supposed to be. It could very well be part of Dumbarton Park or maybe Montrose Park or even the Embassy of Denmark. Did I mention you’ll need hiking appropriate footwear for this part? It’s a little rough. It barely qualifies as a trail, but eventually clears up and we’ll run into local runners and neighbors familiar with this hidden oasis. I can’t take credit for finding this one. It was part of a DC Walking Town tour I went on a few years ago. Theoretically, we’ll pop out on R St. Although I’ve never gone out that way, so we both may be in for a bit of an adventure . . .

The tour has a 70% survival rate.

3:35 PM. Oak Hill Cemetery. And then end up at another place I’ve only passed by a few times, but comes highly recommended from friends. It’s a very gothicy cemetery with many elaborate headstones and mausoleums. A bit of a maze from reports, so we’ll take our time here.

4:30 PM. Mt Zion Cemetery. I think we should also pay our respects here. I have been through here a few times. It’s pretty small and easy to miss. It’s an almost forgotten cemetery for black residents from the turn of the 19^th century. It’s not maintained at all compared to its more elaborate neighbor. It’s pretty sad because of that. Heads stones have been knocked over and many are too weathered to be read anymore.

4:45 PM. Dupont Circle neighborhood. (R, F, C) Walk down Q Street, NW over the Dumbarton Bridge.**** I’m leaving the next couple of hours a little flexible. We’ll be eating at Moby Dick House of Kabob which is my favorite place to eat in the city. I found the original hole in the wall in Georgetown while I was in college, but now they’re a small chain around the area. It’s counter service Persian food, so it won’t take long to eat. We can sit and relax for some time over dinner, or maybe grab desert at any number of cupcake, frozen yogurt, ice cream, or donut places in the area. We can also people watch in Dupont Circle itself, one of my favorite pastimes.

This roughly represents the percentage of people in the Circle wearing collars at any given time of day and your best strategy for meeting them.

If we’re feeling motivated, we can do the 30 minute walk to the next location. Otherwise, it should be easy to catch a no more than 10 minute taxi ride over to . . .

7:00 PM. Albert Einstein Memorial. My absolute favorite memorial in the whole city. One of the greatest minds in history, just straight chillin by the side of the road.

Who wouldn't want to sit in this dude's lap?

7:15 PM. Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. We’re getting into the more clichéd part of the tour. My twist is the time of day. The sun is going down right about now which should make for some nice sights. We should also stop by the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.

7:45 PM. Lincoln Memorial. (R, F, C) I don’t have numbers, but I’m willing to bet money that this is the most visited memorial in the city. With good reason. The unfortunate part, is that there is rarely a not busy time here. Even in the dead of night, it feels like Grand Central Station. However, after you do the Rocky run up the stairs and before you enter the main statue area, follow the outside of the wall to the back. It’s like walking into the eye of the storm. Not many people think to venture this way, but if you do, you’ll be treated to one of the quietest and prettiest views in the city. The added bonus of going here around this time is that we get to take in the sun setting over the Potomac River behind Rossyln and Arlington National Cemetery across the way. (Some time after 8:00 pm) We’ll take our time here. Maybe look around.

I think quietly reading either the Gettysburg Address or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is an unwritten requirement here.

This place inspired me to memorize this speech a couple of years ago just because. Really. No joke.

8:45 PM. Korean War Veterans Memorial. (F, C) I used to volunteer for the Park Service here and the FDR memorial. There’s an incredible amount of detail to the soldiers walking in the rice paddies, and the lights beneath them are especially dramatic at night.

Shhh . . . Don't move. I think I can get a picture of that squirrel over there.

9:15 PM. Night stalking. Dark makes the memorial core of DC that much more bad ass to see. All times are approximate since we can take our time during this next stretch. All of it is open to the public around the clock, year round. There are public restrooms by the major memorials, but I’m not completely sure of the hours. They should be open 24 hours because we’re going to have plenty of company with all the tourists, although it’s not nearly as crowded as it is in the daytime. At the very least, I’m fairly certain that they’re still open around midnight, but I can’t find official corroborating information. If we get tired, we can probably cat nap on a bench somewhere. Patrols by the Park Rangers and the National Park Police almost guarantee that we’ll be rousted before we sleep the night away. However, we should probably keep moving to keep from getting too lethargic at this point. Because of the volume of visitors, cabs camp out at various spots by each memorial, so we have a good chance of catching a cab to the next destination if we need to. Otherwise, times below account for walking in between. We should probably get a taxi ride from the KWVM to the next stop, but the walk down along the river is especially scenic. There’s also what I call the “New Year’s Bridge,” just a short bridge over a waterway connecting the Tidal Basin to the river.  I don’t remember what the story is here, but it has two different years on either side, so I like to think that they broke a bottle of champagne on it at midnight of New Years.

9:45 PM. George Mason Memorial. Not sure why there’s a memorial to the one dude who didn’t sign the US Constitution, but it’s a quiet enough little grove.

10:05 PM. Thomas Jefferson Memorial. (R, F, C) Another personal favorite. It’s nice to sit and look over the Tidal Basin to the White House.

10:45 PM. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. (R) This one gets a lot of criticism because there’s so much going on with the different “rooms,” but I like it because of that. Lots of opportunity to think about the myriad of issues he had to grapple with over an unprecedented (un-president-ed?) four terms especially since we’re coming at night. It’s too bad we’re coming at it from the opposite direction intended by the designers, but we can always loop around by walking along the edge of the Tidal Basin.

It's not that hard. The only difference at night is that it's pitch black.

11:30 PM. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. DC’s newest addition, I’ve only seen it in the day, and am very curious to see what it looks like at night.

Respect.

12:00 AM. DC War Memorial. An easy to overlook part of the Mall, it was first dedicated to the veterans from DC that served in World War I, but is now an all purpose memorial to all DC veterans.

12:15 AM. National WWII Memorial. (R) A very dramatic vista in between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Even more so at night.

1:00 AM. Constitution Gardens. (R) This used to be one of my favorite places in the city, but we might bypass it depending on our energy and time. The Park Service lets it get overrun by geese and ducks, so it’s like walking through a very smelly minefield. Still, it does have island Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence which I find nerdtasically cool.

1:30 AM. White House Ellipse. Let’s face it, we’re not getting in no matter what time of day it is. Might as well hit it up when the least number of tourists will be in the way of our photo ops by the fence.

Do you see the sniper up there? Don't worry. He sees you just fine.

1:50 AM. Catch a cab to U Street.

2:00 AM. Oohhs & Aahhs. (R, F, C) I know some locals thought I was going to say Ben’s Chili Bowl. That could still be an option depending on our tastes. It’s also open later than Oohhs & Aahhs which closes at 3:00 am on the weekends. But Oohhs & Aahhs has a wider menu and, some of the best soul food in the city. It gets extra points because they make their sides vegetarian. (Most soul food veggies are made with pork/bacon) They have some of the best collard greens and mac & cheese (made with real cheese) I’ve ever eaten.

3:00 AM. U Street to Dupont Circle. (F, C) Just across from Oohhs & Aahhs is the African American Civil War Memorial. We could walk the rest of the way, but that’s probably not the smartest thing to do. However, it does show you how much things have changed that walking is a somewhat viable option. The triangle area between U Street, Adams Morgan, and Dupont Circle has most of DC’s late night action. Last call in DC is around 3 AM for most places, so catching a cab on what used to be known as Black Broadway may be a challenge, but at least we know they’ll be plenty out and about.

3:30 AM. Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café & Grill. (R, F, C) Another DC late night institution. We can peruse the book store, grab desert or drown ourselves in caffeine for awhile. Maybe even go down to the Circle itself if we skipped that earlier.

5:00 AM. Cab back to Capitol Hill.

5:20 AM. US Capitol. You can’t say you’ve been to DC until you’ve contemplated your place in the universe on the steps of the Lincoln memorial or the US Capitol. We get to do both. This one at sunrise. (Some time before 6 AM)

You're welcome.

6:00 AM. Cab downtown. If we have trouble finding one we can definitely catch one in front of Union Station (10 minute walk) or hit up the nearby Pete’s Diner, but I’m partial to . . .

6:10 AM. Lincoln’s Waffle Shop. (R, F, C) Lots of food and drink in these last few hours. But I’m thinking the late night eating may end up being earlier since the memorials are such a long stretch to wander around. Anyway, we miss such a long line of places to eat, this is as good an excuse as any to squeeze in DC’s ultimate greasy spoon. A holdover from the days not too long ago when it wasn’t a smart idea to walk around old downtown alone at any time of the day. Food isn’t bad and remarkably cheap compared to a lot of fancy pants places that have been opening nearby recently. It’s so named because it’s located across the street from the Ford’s Theater, the place where Lincoln was assassinated.

7:00 AM. Metro back to Union Station. It’s only a five minute ride, but this time of the morning, it may take awhile to wait for a train to come through.

You waited the whole damn post for this obligatory Metro shot didn't you?

7:30 AM. Union Station. (R, F, C) Hopefully you’re not driving. I’m going to go home and crash. Thanks for visiting!

Tired Squirrel is tired.

*Only tourists ever call it by the full “Washington, DC.” People who talk politics, call it Washington. Residents call it DC. (Oddly enough only old school white racists and Parliament fans call it Chocolate City.)

**When I worked at the Smithsonian, we used to call each museum by its acronym, and a made a word out of each. Say “NASM” fast enough and it sounds like a sneeze. We never did this for The National Gallery of Art acronym. Say it in your head. You’ll figure out why.

***We used to tell a terrible joke when I worked as a tour guide for a couple of summers: Going up the street with all the churches alongside it made you feel like you were ascending towards heaven. But if you head back, towards the White House, well . . .  let’s just say you’d be going in the opposite direction of heaven.

****I like to call it (and I suspect others do as well) the Buffalo Bridge because of the four buffalos on each corner. I like to think of them as a memorial to the Buffalo Bills four consecutive Super Bowl chokes losses.

At the end of her second encore of the night, after playing for five hours, an exhausted Meschiya Lake motioned for everyone to kneel as she drew out her final chorus.  She then joined them on the ground, genuflecting to them as much as they were to her, and drew out a final breathless coda that brought everyone back to their feet, arms outstretched, and thanking her for helping them open this new house of a different kind of worship.

It’s hard not to make the religious parallels. The new Mobtown Ball is in what was formerly known as St. Paul the Apostle Episcopal Church and before that as Henshaw Memorial Church for almost 100 years. After the last congregation left a few years ago, the building was home to gutter punks who staged shows in the abandoned spaces. The neighborhood itself is known unglamorously as Pigtown, a name it got when there were slaughterhouses in the area to service the nearby rail road station now museum. The latest chapter of this eclectic history started on September 24, 2011, and centers on a bunch of Lindy Hoppers.

“All this hard luck in this town has found me

Nobody knows but the troubles are all around me”

Many people like to compare getting into Lindy Hop to joining a cult. The Baltimore Lindy Hop scene would not help to dispel that perception. I had my very first dance in the ballroom when a woman, who I had never seen before, asked me almost a half an hour before the dance even began. Karen was that eager to break in the new dance floor she helped to build. She was one of the dozens of volunteers that had feverishly worked on completing the ballroom for the opening that night.

According to the Mobtown Boss, Michael Seguin, “The dance floor is composed of 5 different layers. Contains over 10,000 nails or screws and, to my knowledge, uses a design that hasn’t been used for probably 50 years.” All assembled by an all volunteer army. When Andrew Thigpen, Stephen Grimes, and I walked in earlier that day, they were still working.

There was still a strong smell from the last coat of polyurethane put on the floor a couple days previous. The contractors just finished the bathrooms the day before. We spent about an hour clearing some of the bigger stuff off of the stage area which is what Stephen doing in the background of this video.

I guess maybe not all of it was work, but that’s how Baltimore makes you want to roll.

After that we went off to grab some dinner and then change at Nina Gilkenson’s place. I barely recognized it from the last time I was there a month ago when it was bursting with supplies for the new space. Brand new chairs and tables packed the living room, covered in a voluminous drape that Nina was sewing together by hand. Michael says its maroon. According to Nina it’s actually a cabernet color.

We got back to the ballroom around 7:30 pm. Just in time for Andrew Thigpen to be the very first paying customer of the Mobtown Ballroom.

That bright light coming from the register may be the reason Keyser Soze will be visiting soon.

The chairs and tables are now spread around the main room to encourage the social part of social dance. For nights with smaller crowds, they plan on using the furniture to shape the dance area to be as big or as small as needed. The drapes cover the sanctuary, the area where the altar used to be, and will now serve as the stage where musicians and other performers will testify in their own ways. Sometime in the recent past someone thought it was a good idea to install fluorescent lights which give the church a more institutional feel. Some rummaging through a flea market by Nina unearthed a half dozen “ball and chain” lights that can be dimmed and help make the space a bit more intimate.

Before the dance started, we went over to the pre-game at the Calypso Cafe which is a bar a couple of blocks down the street. That bar is pretty new itself. It’s a bit nicer than the neighborhood which I guess is a sign of how it’s turning around. We definitely got eyeballed by the locals quite a bit. Since its by M&T Stadium and Camden Yards, they get their fair share of visitors, but I don’t think they’ve seen anything like a bunch of lindy hoppers all fancied up for a big event. It’s especially hard not to notice with Andrew Thigpen doing his Saturday Night Fever strut down the street in his purple zoot suit.

I ducked out of the bar early to go back to the ballroom. There was a good 50 or so people for the beginner lesson taught by Ranya Ghuma and Dilsad Hikmet. Nina’s mother, Laurie, was behind the bar helping to sell drinks alongside a dedicated group of close friends and volunteers. The bar itself was hand built from random items found around the church. It’s backed by a 950 pound refrigerator bought on ebay, picked up from the wilds of Pennsylvania.

During the lesson, Michael grabbed me and asked, “Do you want to see our ritual?”

Earlier in the day, I joked about blessing the building by breaking a bottle of champagne on it. Even after when Michael asked us to buy the cheapest bottle we could find, I didn’t think he’d actually do it. Maybe pour it over himself or more likely Thigpen. Sure enough, my bottle of champagne was in Nina’s hands as she said some nice things about the founders of Charm City Swing, Sommer Gentry & Dorry Segev. Next thing you know, it was flying towards the wall.

After the lesson ended, Hikmet played “Blues My Naughty Sweetie” by Sidney Bechet while the band got on stage, and I danced my first dance in the ballroom with Karen. They all did a great job with the floor. Almost too good since it was super slick at the beginning. I almost bit it a few times in that one dance.

After that song, Nina took to the stage to welcome everyone and introduce Meschiya Lake for the first official dance at the Mobtown Ballroom.

Even though Nina kept Dorry at arms length, he took it very well. He would have plenty of opportunities to talk later, but at least that moment was classy.

It got crowded right quick. There were dancers from as far north as New York City and as far south as Virginia Beach. And of course Thigpen who flew in from Minneapolis. They sold out before 10 pm. They had a small line of people outside for awhile, but everyone got in eventually. There were also good number of people from the community who just came in to check out the place and get a first hand view of their new neighbors and their friends.

Bobby White did his solo routine from ILHC during the 1st band break.  The crowd was super jacked up, and they gave him a standing ovation.

Nina did a belly dance performance during the second band break. My video doesn’t do it justice since it has trouble focusing in the dark which is why it gets fuzzy at random times. Nina may have something to do with that too.

Somewhere during the second set someone triggered a jam, and it was pretty hot. The musicians and the dancers were into it. The song was “Reefer Man” which has a great call and response element to it, but I think everyone was cheering too loud to notice.

The rest of the night was a blur of great music, fun dancing, and only in Baltimore moments. At the end of one of the sets, the sound system went a little crazy, sounding like a beat box with all the static, so Meschiya started rapping some of the most obscene lyrics I have ever heard come out of a woman’s mouth.

The late night antics showcased more vintage Baltimore “weirdness.” There was Ian Blumenfeld reprising his spoken work act from Lindy 500. Sommer, Dorry, and Thigpen did a  rap hip hop version of the old jazz song “Take it easy greasy” with Thigpen laying  down the beats, Dorry rapping, and Sommer singing the chorus into a machine that auto-tuned her voice.

Seguin DJ’d the last few songs of the evening by paying homage to Baltimore’s irregular musical tastes: A little Cee Lo Green (uncensored) and then a little Lonely Island.  It was quite a sight to see one of the rising stars of traditional jazz music joined one of the best vernacular jazz dancers in the world in a mosh pit of Lindy Hoppers from up and down the East Coast screaming out the lyrics to The Misfits and Journey. Somewhere in there, the cops showed up just to say “hey.” It seemed like all of Baltimore was in a welcoming mood that night.

I want to say that Baltimore has a classy side, but that wouldn’t be quite the word I’m looking for. It’s probably more like working class. And it’s a contagious sort of vibe that inspires people to work as hard as they play. Baltimore took several moments throughout the night to thank all the people who made the Mobtown Ballroom possible. Not because of vanity, but because there were so many people who make that scene what it is.

Dorry likes to joke about defiling their new home with their presence, but Mobtown Ballroom has more in common with a church than they care to admit. A place like that doesn’t happen unless there’s a solid foundation and an enthusiastic and dedicated community to build on it. Talking to some of the people who helped build the floor was pretty intense since they have a bit of religious fervor to them. It’s a dedication that doesn’t come from having a hobby. It comes from being a part of something.

Meschiya Lake’s encores embodied this sort of hard work as party attitude. The first encore was actually a waltz. Even if people didn’t know how to waltz, they made it work.

Then The Little Big Horns ripped into “When I get Low.” It’s one of Meschiya’s signature showcases, but everyone was on their last legs after playing through five hours. During the instrumental solos, somehow Meschiya mustered the energy to ask Andrew Thigpen to dance. She was soon joined by a line of leaders including Seguin, Dorry, and Nina. She got too carried away and wasn’t quite ready when it was her turn to take back the mic. She rallied as much as she could, and dug deep to give back Baltimore the energy they were showing her all night. She could have easily ended it there and left the crowd satisfied, but something urged her to give them more.

She may or may not have been cognizant of the symbolism in motioning everyone to kneel for that last chorus. After such a raucous show, that flock was more than happy to obey. But rather than lord over them like a musical high priestess, she got down there with them as if she knew that by virtue of blessing them with her voice and her sweat, they were now claiming her as one of their own. She did Baltimore proud by giving them all she had, and then a little bit more.

And that was just the first night.

Coincidently, the name Baltimore comes from the Irish phrase Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning “Town of the Big House.” The Mobtown Ballroom isn’t  just a dance hall, it’s a home. Hopefully you can come visit soon.

Over at Bug’s Question of the Day, someone asked for people’s favorite competition videos from 2000-2004. No one answered seriously, so I whipped out a post I wrote on Yehoodi a few years ago when they asked for the top American Lindy Hop Championship moments through 2006. I was just going to cut out the excess years and post that to Bug’s question, but then in a fit of late night random productiveness, I added a whole bunch of stuff I could remember.

I always wanted to turn the original post into a blog, and since I did all the legwork last night, I just made some adjustments and voila!  I’m probably missing a bunch, but this is a pretty long list anyway. This isn’t a definitive list, just a list of stuff that I grew up watching over and over while I tried to figure out how to dance.

The parameters are pretty straight forward. The list is limited to competition videos from 2000-2004, so there are no performances, jams or other informal social dancing videos. Also, the west coast will have to forgive me, but I never got around to traveling out there and never got any videos from Camp Hollywood or any other events from that time period.

To show you how much video is important in remembering things, 2003 is a black hole for me because I don’t have any footage from any event in that year. I’m just relying on memories of watching stuff online that I lost or other people’s videos. 2000 is slim because I didn’t start traveling until 2001 which is why there’s a ton of stuff from that year.

In case you’re wondering, here’s a little guide to the events listed:

ALHC=American Lindy Hop Championships. A Lindy competition weekend that used to be held in Conneticut just outside of New York City from 1998-2010

NADC=North Atlantic Dance Championships. A crossover event that included Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing, Hand Dance, and Carolina Shag. Lasted from 1999-2004.

ULHS=Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown. A Lindy competition started in 2002 in Minneapolis, MN. It moved to New Orleans, LA in 2009 and is part of The New Orleans Swing Dance Festival.

HJDF= Harlem Jazz Dance Festival. Vernacular Jazz Dance event that included tap, hip hop, and Lindy Hop. The prelims where literally held on the streets of Harlem. The event was only held in 2002 & 2003.

Basie Ball-Part of the Yehoodi 6^th Anniversary weekend in 2004. The Hellzapopin contest was originally part of HJDF, but this event adopted it after HJDF folded in 2003. There were no Hellzapoppin contests in the US until Frankie Manning’s 95^th Birthday Celebration in 2009.

2000

NADC Lindy Jack & Jill-Caitlin George & Skye Humphries: The first of many moments for the Skye highlight reel.

ALHC Classic- Justin Zillman & Jenn Salvadori: THE prototypical “groove” routine performed, ironically, by two of the genre’s most ardent  detractors.  That didn’t stop them from showing people how it was done.

ALHC Junior- Ben Furnas & Lucy Dunne: Brilliant send up of the state of Lindy Hop competitions that’s still relevant.

2001

NADC Team-Minnie’s Moochers

NADC Team-Loose Change: this was supposed to be a cabaret piece, but had to change to the team division when it got cancelled. The cool thing to watch is how they compensate for being short one person due to a last minute injury which is why Elliot Donnelly walks through at the beginning. This gets referenced at ULHS many years later.

NADC Champions Lindy-Jojo Jackson & Skye Humphries: A lot of people watched this trying to figure out WTF happened.

ALHC Classic-Naomi Uyama & Matt Smiley: My favorite performance from this era, I wrote a whole post about it. I don’t know how I forgot to list it.

ALHC Blues-Andrew Twiss & Julee Mertz: Andrew and Julee exhibited the more fun and flirty side of blues that so many others turn into crass physical innuendo.

ALHC Blues-Peter Vawter & Maggie Moon: Peter and Maggie actually performed a number of pretty inventive routines over the years, but I think this was their best one.  Very few performers at ALHC have been able to provide such a distinct atmosphere in the short time allotted to them.

 ALHC Blues –Amanda Gruhl & Ogden Sawyer:

ALHC Junior- Todd Yannacone & Emily Hoffberg:

ALHC Juniors- Skye Humphreys & Ramona Staffeld: Before Mad Dog ignited the fast lindy revolution, Skye and Ramona kicked down the door and dumped kerosene all over the floor.

ALHC Team-N’ Back: The loudest reception for a routine that I’ve ever heard in person.  Probably the last best public boy band performance.

ALHC Advanced J&J Final Heat 2-Carla Heiney and Skye Humphries

ALHC Advanced J&J All Skate: Skye cuts loose.

ALHC  American Showcase-Valerie Salstrom & Joel Plys

2002

NADC Champions J&J-Virginie Jensen & Peter Strom: A very rare appearance of Virginie in a competition.

ALHC Cabaret-Houston Hep Cats: I think this is actually the best performed version of the “Keep Punchin’” Big Apple routine (of the modern era) that I have seen.

ALHC Junior-Stephen Jean & Danielle Eley: Great, classy performance.

ALHC Strictly Lindy- Justin Zillman & Caitlin George: Up until that point, the prevailing view of musicality encouraged dancers to contort their bodies to mimic lyrics or notes in a song.  Here the dj lays down Count Basie’s “Topsy” which starts off very mellow for the first eight 8′s before the band screams into the “b” section, and finishing off mellow again.  Keeping with the music, Justin and Caitlin dance fairly small until the whole band kicks in, and suddenly they’re taking up three times as much room as they were before while still doing the same basic moves.  Their enthusiasm infects the competitors standing behind them as they go crazy from the burst of energy before Justin takes it back down to close their shine.

2002 ALHC Strictly Lindy Hop-Jen Ulrich & Marty Lau: I always just liked watching Marty move.

2002 ALHC Champions J&J-Nina Gilkenson & Marty Lau: He could even make falling down entertaining.

ALHC Team- ZAH-ZU-ZAY: Overshadowed by Mad Dog, Seattle showed how far ahead of the curve they were by busting out old school before Mad Dog hit the floor five routines later.

ALHC Team-Mad Dog: A milestone of the modern era.

ULHS Liberation-Nina Gilkenson & Matt Smiley: The first major video to come out of ULHS and put the event on the map

ULHS Slow-Naomi Uyama & Peter Strom: I lost my footage from that round. All I can remember is I’m a little tea pot . . .

N/A.

2003

HJDF Hellzapoppin Contest-Andy Reid & Sarah Spence and Corina Acosta & Minn Vo: A dance contest to the original Hellzapoppin music in the Apollo Theater. Just epic.

ULHS Jack & Jill-Frida Segerdahl, Skye Humphries & Ben Furnas: Another lost gem. All  I do remember is watching Skye Humphries & Ben Furnas trading off Frida Segerdahl because there were too many leads in the J&J finals that year. Damn amusing stuff.

2004

NADC Invitational Crossover J&J-Tatiana Mollman & Skye Humphries: 2^nd ever crossover J&J between Lindy Hoppers and WCS Dancers.

NADC Invitational Crossover J&J-Ramona Staffeld & John Lindo: My favorite moment comes when Ramona just turns to look at the audience with such charisma that everyone, even the people behind her, react.

ULHS Libertation: Notable turning point for the event with the increased level of competition highlighted by Naomi & Todd’s Minnie Dip from Hell and Minn Vo stage diving through the all skate.

ULHS Team-120 Special: Incredibly fast topped by a sort of call back to the Loose Change performance from NADC 2001 above.

ULHS Champions J&J-Everyone: Great interaction between all the competitors as you can see Lindy starting to get comfortable with the jam format.

ULHS Solo Charleston Dance Off-Frida Segerdahl & Jojo Jackson: A first in the tradition of throwing it down one on one at ULHS.

ALHC Masters- Craig Hutchinson & Nici Mahlandt:  Awe-inspiring, humbling, and heart wrenching.  Not many people will realize the contributions this man has made to not just Lindy Hop, but to so many other dance communities.  Despite being physically ravaged by Lou Gehrig’s disease, Craig made the trip up to ALHC and competed if for no other reason than to remind people that some people simply have to dance.

Basie Ball Hellzapoppin Contest-The whole thing. A band made up of alumni from the Count Basie orchestras led by the legendary Frank Foster. Counted off by Chester Whitmore. And a 1100 screaming Lindy Hoppers; newbies and old timers, amateurs and legends alike.