After hosting events for upwards of a decade, I can honestly say one thing: Nothing ever runs smoothly. For every event you attend that appears to run like clockwork, there is at least one somebody behind the scenes ripping their hair out. From sound system glitches, to weather problems… restroom “malfunctions”, to miscommunications with staff and venues. You are always fighting a battle with something that threatens to disrupt the event or worse… bring it to a grinding halt.

When I got the message on my phone Saturday from Maria saying there was a double booking for the night and the dance had to be cancelled at the last minute, I could feel her pain. It’s an event organizer’s worst nightmare. What do you do? The only thing you can. You extend an apology, offer to make things right with your audience, and move on. It seems most people I’ve talked to have been very understanding about this glitch. We hope you will be to. If you can, rally the troops and we’ll see you at the next dance on March 13th.

So Maria doesn’t feel so bad… here are a few memorable event glitches that Dawn and I have gone through:

Weather: Yes, we’ve had to cancel a dance at the last minute too. In 2004, Hurricane Charlie was bearing down on Central Florida. Leading up to the weekend, the storm wasn’t supposed to hit Orlando. It wasn’t until Friday afternoon that it changed course leading to a direct hit Friday night. After weathering the storm and accessing the damage at our own house, it suddenly hit us… what about the dance? We made a hair-raising drive across Orlando (with no working stop lights) to check out the situation at the venue. The venue was okay, but there was no power and there was at tree down in the parking lot. We decided to cancel the event. However, since we had no power ourselves and the cell phone network was intermittent at best, we had no way of letting anyone know. The best we could do is post a hand written sign on the venue door. To this day, we have only met two people who ever saw that sign.

Power: I’ve encountered a lot of technical glitches. From missing adaptors to the blue screen of death (why do you think I DJ with a Mac now?), however, there is one technical problem that is almost impossible to overcome… loss of power. One night power to the venue suddenly cut out due to some mild weather overhead. I mean, what do you do? Whistle and hum? How do you prevent something like this? Most portable UPS units will only last for few minutes. Even then, what about lights? Fortunately, the power came back on a few minutes later. Over the course of the night, this happened twice. Five minutes after the dance was over, the power blinked out and stayed out. We had to break down and clean up by pointing our car headlights in the front door.

Venues: There are a few factors in event planning that are out of your control. The venue is one of them and the one that leads to the most issues. Sure, you try to prevent problems by securing contracts, but even then, there are no guarantees. I don’t think I have ever worked with a venue that didn’t have one issue or another over the course of holding events there. As an event coordinator, this one constantly looms over you. From the A/C units undergoing “schedule maintenance” on the night of your event to last minute schedule changes and cancellations, I can’t even begin to tell you the number of times we’ve had to make emergency adjustments due to an issue related to the venue. One venue suddenly changed their close time and informed us during the dance. Another promised to provide food and drink for a special event and reneged the day of the event. The worst? One venue cancelled our booking at the last minute because they had an offer for more money… yes, they even admitted that. Obviously, that ended any future business they got from us.

So in the scheme of things, an over 8 year run at a good quality venue with only one scheduling glitch is pretty darn good! And to Maria… it happens!

Happy Birthday Dawn! Feel free to leave a comment with birthday wishes!

A little inspiration from the 1943 short “Maharaja”.

Dancers: Hal & Betty Takier

Who knew that being a dance instructor could be so dangerous? Just look at what this Wisconsin dance teacher went through.

A Baraboo man was accused of repeatedly shocking a male dance instructor with a stun gun, claiming the instructor was a “sinner” who “defiles married women.” A Dane County prosecutor said the suspect, 59, hastily arranged a dance lesson at the instructor’s Madison home and showed up with a stun gun and sledgehammer last Friday. The criminal complaint said the man told a detective that his church does not condone touching while dancing and that he was going to scare the instructor “and tell him to leave the women alone.”

Read the full story.

Wow… and ouch!

Partner dancing can be a touchy subject in some religions. In fact, there are many in my own faith that disapprove of dancing. However, over the years, I have seen attitudes change and norms relax as more people see there is a difference between social dancing and… um… things that should be left behind closed doors.

Thanks George for sending this link along!

Our friend Shelley sent us a video that has been floating around in email. It’s of Eleanor Powell & Fred Astaire dancing. The email says:

A bit of history:

It seems as if Eleanor Powell was just too good for Fred Astaire, as he never wanted to be paired with her again.

He evidently was played down by her, but they were both great, and the likes of this will never be seen again.

The year: 1940 (69 years ago).   The narrator is Frank Sinatra.

It was filmed in ONE unedited camera shot.  Amazing!

It is considered by many as one of the best dance scenes ever filmed

Personally, I tend to like this clip from the same 1940 film (Broadway Melody):

Swing Dance Series Class – Starting January 10th: This six-week series class is designed to give you all the fundamentals of swing dancing, plus some great moves and variations. The class will feature the 6-count swing dance basic and progress into a variety of moves, turns, and combos based off of it. The goal of the class is to make you a strong dancer that is knowledgeable and feels confident on the dance floor. To do this, the class will introduce solid lead/follow techniques and explain how the dance works as opposed to memorizing steps. From the basics, you will learn turning techniques, double turns, tuck turns, kicks, sugar pushes, and more. Click here for more information and registration.

Charleston Series Class – Also Starting January 10th: This six week class will take you from the basics of Charleston to a large variety of moves and variations! It will encompass 20’s style partner Charleston, Side-by-Side Charleston, Front/Back Charleston, and Savoy Kicks. It will show you how to integrate Charleston seamlessly into your dancing no matter what style of swing you dance (Lindy Hop, East Coast, Jitterbug, etc.). This is sure to open up a whole new world in your dancing! Click here for more information and registration.

It’s hard to believe that we are already heading into the holiday season. We are currently winding down and wrapping up our 2009 series classes. However, we’re still staying fairly active throughout the Holiday season. We’ll be guest instructing the beginner lesson at a few of the 2nd & 4th Saturday swing dances, so be sure to keep an eye out for us there.  In addition, our private lesson schedule will continue as usual throughout the season. In fact, if you have daytime availability, Dawn is available for lessons with couples and leads during the day. Both Rob & Dawn are available on most evenings and weekends.

Looking for group classes? Our early 2010 class schedule is already set! If you are looking to get a solid start with swing dancing in the new year, be sure to check out the Swing Dance series class. Also, spice things up by adding some Charleston into you swing!

Starting Sunday, November 1st: We will be offering our Balboa series class in a special four week format. The Balboa is a 1930’s era dance from Southern California that has enjoyed a tremendous revival in popularity in recent years. It’s the perfect dance to both look and dance smooth from slow to even the fastest of tempos! The class will start out with the basic footwork, connection, and fundamentals of the dance. It will then progress into turns, moves, and the basic styling points of Balboa. Each class will build upon information from the previous class to continuously further your knowledge week by week. This is the last series class we will be offering for the year, so be sure to reserve your spot. Click here for more information.

This is some rare color footage of Lindy Hop (as well as some Fox Trot) being dance to the Glen Gray Orchestra at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This was amateur “home movie” footage that, unfortunately, did not have sound.

Looks like the had a shortage of leads back then.

Swing dancers come to find their passion through many means. For Dawn and I, we started by learning ballroom dancing for our wedding and though this discovered a love for swing. While pursuing our passion, we found that there is a lot of misinformation about swing (in particular, the history of swing dancing) amongst the ballroom community. Over the years, this has motivated us to educate people in the history of swing as well as the dance as we teach classes and workshops. Why care about some misinformation floating around? Because swing is a rich part of our cultural history. Until the swing scene boomed, ballroom studios were most people’s source for information about the dance. Given those stats, the history of swing dancing was almost rewritten with misinformation. In fact, when Dawn and I first started to pursue our love of swing, it was actually difficult to find good information about the dance’s history.

Now before I go any further, let me say that this is by no means a slam on the ballroom community. Nowadays, this “one off” history is being passed along through no malice. It’s simply people relaying the information they were told from what they felt was a reliable source. Fortunately, as the swing scene boomed and many others found a love for the history and culture of the dance, this misinformation has become more the exception. It’s now easy to find good information about the roots of swing dancing and many ballroom dancers have embraced it’s rich history. However, there are still pockets who have not been enlightened.

So what is this misinformation that I am talking about? We’ve heard all kinds of stuff over the years. When we first started dancing, our instructor told us several interesting factoids including “Arthur Murray invented swing” and “the name ’swing’ comes from the swinging of the hips”. Both statements are clearly false. Other statements include swing being a “modified Foxtrot” and/or a “modified box step”. Knowing the true history of swing (more specifically, Lindy Hop) proves that both are again false.

So what’s the big cover up? What’s the source of this inaccurate information? Well, just recently a good friend shared a website with us that sheds light on this. On this ballroom dance site was a “misleading” (at best) history of swing dancing. Having a hunch that this information was probably copied from a studio syllabus or publication, I did some searching and found that this description appeared almost word-for-word on multiple ballroom sites. This says that it was clearly a copy/paste job. It’s not my goal to single anyone out, so I will simply link to Google results so you can view the source. Since one site references the swing era as “about 35 years ago”, we can assume that this is from a studio publication that has been passed down over the years. The wording has either been changed by some when put online, or the document evolved over time. In fact, I’ve seen some of this wording that has been mixed in with more factual swing histories.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that you can see some of the roots of the years of misinformation. Look past the facts and look at the writing. Certain phrases stick out:

“For many years now the better establishments have frowned upon the wilder forms of the Swing”

“It is possible, however, to do a fine Swing… providing the dancers are better than average…”

“There is no question that the dance is here to stay”

“…originally called the Lindy Hop, was born in the South of the U.S.A.”

To really understand the meaning behind these phrases, you have to put them in context. Swing is a street dance. During the swing era, the ballroom community and studios rejected it as an improper dance. It was viewed as a passing fad that would soon go away. In their eyes, no respectable person would do the Lindy Hop. What was the motivation behind this? Some say that it was because during the time the dance was popular amongst the youth of America and was viewed as wild and rebellious. Others say that race came into play. At the time, ballroom catered to upper class white clientele while swing was created by blacks in Harlem. Personally, I think it was a heaping helping of both.

Regardless, sometime in the 1940’s and into the 50’s, the ballroom community came to accept swing, however, not in its entirety. After years of the dance being wildly popular, it was clear to them that “the dance is here to stay”. At that point, studios looked to capitalize on the trend. However, due to their previous bias, they felt the dance must be repackaged to be more acceptable to their clientele. In marketing material and internal publications, the history of the dance was obscured. Instead of acknowledging the black roots of the dance in Harlem, it was instead claimed that the dance came from the south. While possibly true seeing Lindy Hop evolved from Charleston (a dance with some roots in the south), the statement is misleading at best. To further cover the roots, the steps were likened to basic ballroom steps like the box step. This gives the impression that swing came from a more “proper dance” and not an evolution of jazz steps. To add on, studios implied that with proper training it is possible for someone to dance a “fine swing” and not be frowned upon when visiting “better establishments”. This was an early form of what we would now call marketing spin.

Here we are many decades later and these old inaccurate, misleading publications are still making appearances on modern web sites. It’s a sad reminder that a part of our cultural heritage was almost obscured. This isn’t due to any conspiracy on the part of any modern ballroom studios or instructors. They are just relaying what they were taught and what they have always assumed as accurate information. However, this is a good warning that marketing spin can often rewrite history and obscure the real facts… often destroying culture in the process.