On behalf of Dawn and I, Merry Christmas to all of you! We very much appreciate all the wonderful people and friends we meet through dancing. We wish the best of the season to each and everyone of you!

I feel like I should sing a song now… but the medium doesn’t allow me to… nor would you probably want me to. However, instead I will give you a link to a public domain song from Archive.org. It’s not a swing song, but it is an old time vintage Christmas song. In a world of consumerism and as Christmas is becoming more and more commercialized, I think this song probably has more meaning now than when it was written.

Eddie Cantor - The Only Thing I Want For Christmas (1939)

Happy Holidays!

Back in November I started to experiment with with vintage style portrait photography. The goal was to use a combination of lighting effects and post processing techniques to replicate the portrait styles of the 1930’s and 1940’s. It took me a while to get through the post processing, but I’ve finally posted some of the results to the gallery. Most of the photos are in black and white with an almost “film noir” kind of look to them. A few I decided to leave in full color, or a convert into a retro style muted color. This session was a great learning experience and it’s given me a lot of ideas to use in the future. I’ll be doing another session sometime after the first of the year. Drop us a line if you would like to take part as a model.

For any woman who has yearned to do their hair in a sweet vintage style, this video clip tells you how. I have not yet tried the technique myself, but after doing battle with my hair on many an occasion, I can tell you that this should work pretty well. The lady in the video, as you will see, has somewhat short hair that does not look very thick and she is able to make it work quite quickly.

What I love about this technique is it does most of the hard hair work in one fell swoop and just some clean up pinning is required from there. The lady does not go into detail at all about how to roll your hair and it does not appear to me that she rolled her hair before showing the technique. If you have time and want to play with rolling your hair to get more body, that’s always helpful in doing vintage rolls… especially for those of us that have thick, heavy hair or a lot of hair.

What I have done before when I need to do a quick vintage ‘do is just spray the heck out of the areas of your hair that you are going to style and that will add some body and stylability to it. Don’t spray it so much that it’s stiff or unbrushable per se, just has some “grit” to it. “Dirty” hair or hair that has any styling product in it is much easier to style quickly than clean hair is. Between this and the technique that this lady shows you, anyone can do a vintage do in mere minutes

Happy styling and thanks Shelley for sending me the link to this clip!

On January 12th, we’ll be celebrating the new year with live music by Kid Dutch and his Blusicians! This band is a favorite in Orlando and they are sure to have you movin’ on the dance floor all night long! They’ll be featuring the music of Louis Jordan, Smiley Lewis, Fats Waller, Slim Gaillard, Cab Calloway, Fats Domino, and B.B. King, among many others. In addition they’ll be playing a selection of original tunes by Kid Dutch himself. They are masters of jump, jive, and swing! It will be an entertaining night for both dancers and non-dancers, so be sure to bring out the friends and family. Click here for more info.

Our friend Regina sent us this info on a New Year’s Eve celebration at Disney’s EPCOT Center. It looks to be a wonderful evening of dinner and dancing! If you would like to know more, or to make reservations, call 407-WDW-DINE.

The Carnation Garden

Description: Welcome to our restaurant, the Carnation Garden. The dining experience for New Year’s Eve at Epcot is a tribute to our original Disneyland Parks Golden Anniversary. When Disneyland First opened in 1955, All they had for a music stage was a small gazebo in Frontierland. Well, the Holiday season and the beautiful music drew such large crowds that in 1957, the Carnation Garden Stage, right next to Sleeping Beauty’s castle was born. After the Holiday season, to draw guests to the stage, Walt and his team started “Date Night.” We have a great variety of delicious food for you this evening and a special buffet just for you.

Happy New Year!

Time: 4:00pm-10:30pm
Theme: Big Band
Price: $59.99 Tax and Gratuity included
alcoholic beverages available at an additional cost.

Entertainment: Tom Butler Orchestra starting at 7:45 pm, dance floor is available

“Tom Butler Orchestra consists of Orlando musicians who have performed with such names as Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Wayne Newton, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Natalie Cole, the Temptations, and many others.”

Background Music will be played from 4 pm until 7:45 pm and during Orchestra breaks

Due to the nature of the event, the sound levels in the pavilion may be loud at times

Menu: Buffet

Note: The $59.99 price is in addition to park admission.

Just a quick note for those of you who enjoy dancing to the big band on the 4th Wednesdays at Beardall. There will not be a dance in December. The dance normally would have fallen on the day after Christmas. As you can imagine, much of the band will be preoccupied with Holiday activities, so they decided to cancel for this month. Regular 4th Wednesday dances will resume in January for the 2008 calendar year (Jan. 23rd to be exact). Hope to see you then!

It seems like you can find everything on DVD now days… well, almost everything. With the resurgence of dance shows such as “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” in the last few years, why hasn’t anyone released some of the original dance shows on DVD? Thanks to the swing revival of the late 90’s and the hard work of some dedicated dancers, you can now do some searches on sites like YouTube and find lots of clips of vintage swing dances from old movies of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. These have been an invaluable resource not only for technique and moves, but for the history and culture of swing dancing. So what about that big gap between the 50’s and now? In that time frame, dance shows boomed, collapesed, boomed again, and collapsed again… and where are they now? After running some searches online, not much comes up in regards to videos or DVDs.

What shows an I talking about? Well, you didn’t think dance shows were a new concept did you? Let’s start with one of the most well known, “American Bandstand“. The show ran from 1957 all the way to 1987 with its heyday being in the late 50’s and early 60’s. While not specifically a dance show, it is credited for bringing swing dancing (aka “jitterbug”) to much of the nation (especially the less urban areas). It’s also a center of debate on what roll it played in influencing the dance. Dick Clark had much control over what moves the dancers performed and what the show highlighted. Moves, styles, and even dances could be deemed not in vogue and left out in favor of others. As the show started to highlight dances such as the twist and mashed potato, it almost certainly played a role in the downfall of swing dancing in the era and contributed to the boom of solo dance crazes. All great material that I’m sure many dancers would love to see on video.

But don’t think the dance show boom of that era was isolated to just that one show. “The Buddy and Deane Show” of Baltimore (57 to 64), Allen Freed’s “Big Beat” of New York (57), and “The Milt Grant Show” (56 to 61) of Washington DC all featured dance crazes of the day and would all be very interesting to see. “Teenarama“(63 to 70), a Washington DC show that became the first dance show dedicated to African-Americans, and was recently featured on a PBS special. I’m very much waiting to see that one re-aired!

Dance shows seemed to loose popularity a bit after the early 60’s. But wait… there’s more! (as I do my best William Shatner) Let’s not forget about the late 70’s. Oh no. We can’t forget about the late 70s. Two words… “Dance Fever“! No, not the cable channel me-too remake that tried to ride the wave of the latest boom… I’m talking about the original! Hosted by disco legend Deney Terrio (the man that taught John Travolta his moves) during the peak, the show ran from 79 to 87. Sure the dancing may have been tacky in today’s terms, but this dance competition show holds a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s because I grew up watching it as a kid, but I think this was the pinnacle of dance shows. Unlike shows before it, it was about the dancing and not about promoting bands or music. It’s competition format with celebrity judges laid the format for the wildly popular shows of the last few years. The show had a raw sense about it unlike the overproduced dance shows of today. Hokey? Maybe. But it’s a piece of dance history that we shouldn’t brush under the rug. Where is it now? I’ve done searches for it, and have only found a few brief overview web pages and the oddball YouTube clip or two. Most feature guest bands or judges and not the dancers. It’s a shame. This is another prime candidate for the DVD market.

I’m sure the current dance shows land on DVD shortly after the season airs… but if someone out there is listening, let’s see some of the originals please! And if you have any videos, or links to share, please send them our way!