Once again, we have been nominated in the “Best Dance Studio” category on the WESH A-List competition. Last year we made it into the “top 5″ best dance studios in Orlando… pretty good for a specialized, non-traditional “studio” like us up against traditional studios in varieties of dance disciplines.

We ask you to drop by our A-List profile and cast your vote. Voting works slightly different this year. Once you click the “vote” button, it will prompt you to create an account. Note that they used good website etiquette and the “contact me” options are unchecked so you won’t land on any lists. Once you create an account, they will send you an email to verify your account. You must click on the link in the email to cast your vote. Once you have voted and are logged in, please feel free to write a review or leave comments! Thank you!!!

…or at least that is how the saying goes. I really try to be a pretty humble person, so this isn’t something I tend to write about. However, with a few recent events, I thought it was time to at least say something.

My alter ego is a professional web geek. I’ve been doing this since the birth of the web and have been around the block more than a few times. I know as well as anyone that copyright online is a sensitive issue. Snagging an image off a site here and a snippet of wording there is to be expected to a certain degree. In fact you know people are going to take and republish some content. The photos on this site are a prime example. I encourage people to take the photos and republish them. That’s why the watermark is there. It gives credit to the source and that is really what it’s all about. However, taking content in mass is where things get awkward.

Over the years, I’ve had people copy content off of our site. I’ve seen a few direct copies, some paraphrasing, and some borrowed words. Overall, nothing too major and nothing worth worrying about. Things like this may be annoying on one hand, but you can also look at it as a compliment. We must be doing something right if someone has attempted to copy something of ours. However, recently, we had an extensive amount of material from our web site magically appear in striking similarity on another site. While browsing the net, I ran across the web site of a swing dance organization from another area of the country who had large chunks of “borrowed” content on their site. Their sources included our class descriptions, private lesson descriptions, dance descriptions, beginner guide, blog/advice articles, promotions for public calendars, and even portions of our bio on the “about us” page! Much of this was word-for-word portions with only details and names changed. Some was our wording intermixed with their wording and vice-versa. I had to run this by a few friends to verify I was indeed seeing what I thought I was. How does one react to this? If it was only bits of our site combined with bits of other sites, I would have simply laughed and moved on. However, using one site as such a large portion of your “content template” goes well beyond what a webmaster would consider to be reasonable. In a sense, Dawn and I were honestly flattered by this. For someone to try to imitate us and/or our web site to this extent must mean they like what we do. In another sense, it is quite frustrating having someone “borrow” and pass-off as their own something that you spent much time and work on. Above all, to imitate solid portions of your biography just seemed plain weird.

So I emailed the owner of the site and got a call back. We had a pleasant conversation. While he agreed to the site being “similar”, he claimed that no material was copied. I tend to disagree seeing it was rather obvious that some of our content appeared on his site word-for-word. However, I digress seeing he apologized and agreed to make the site “less similar”.

At the time of publishing this, some of the site has changed to have a less copy-and-paste-ish feel and moved into more of what I would call “strikingly similar”. Other areas still have near word-for-word copies and bits of our wording is still scattered all throughout. This is still rather disappointing seeing that Plagiarism.org states that paraphrasing must do more than change a few words and keep the same sentence structure. You must phrase the ideas in your own words and even then, citing the original source is required. This is not a unique view, many educational organizations frown upon this activity; from grade schools like the elite Sayre in Lexington to higher education facilities like the University of Kentucky. I really hope and encourage the owners of the site to create some original content and wording. It seems like they have a good thing going on. I think their scene deserves something original.

While imitation may be a sincere form of flattery, it’s also so very awkward! So why bother? Why write about it? I guess it’s a combination of two factors. First, to ensure that in some way that our time, efforts, and work is credited. Second is to ensure that we continue to stand out and be recognized as individuals. I know all swing dance instructors do somewhat similar things. However, we all have unique backgrounds, strengths, and abilities. This is not only true for Dawn and I, but also for the identity of the Orlando swing dance scene in general. To copy or even paraphrase someone else’s information diminishes that individuality in the public’s eye.

…and it only took six months!

Back during the holiday season, we did an exhaustive marathon video filming session.  We recorded a total of five videos in about three to four days. Might not sound like much, but it was quite a task and quite an accomplishment to get done. Once the filming was done, the editing process began. We’ve managed to fit the editing process into our workload and have completed each instruction/review DVD right before the corresponding classes have started. This way, all of our 2008 series classes have a fresh new video to go along with them.

The Charleston class starting this week marked the last of the five DVD that needed to be edited and produced. Everything was on track… until… I realized that an entire section of material was missing. No problem… pull the original tapes and re-import… something must have been left out. But no. It wasn’t there. It was then Dawn and I both realized that in our exhaustion from the marathon film session (and Charleston being the last to get filmed), we forgot to tape an entire section. Oh crap! What to do? Well, there was no alternative… contact Mr. Spielberg, fly back out to Hollywood and refilm. So we spent Saturday in front of the camera again. We now have the material we need and the video is in the final edit process and we’ll be testing the DVD tonight. So by this weekend, we will officially have all five of the DVDs competed!

…oh and the car chase scenes turned out to be awesome!

Just tripped upon this video… haven’t seen it since I was a kid. By far the most entertaining instructional dance video I’ve ever run across!

So I thought I would post a followup to my previous article about the new Indiana Jones movie. I admit, I saw the movie on opening weekend… I told you I was a sucker for an Indiana Jones movie… but I did avoid seeing it on the first opening nights so I guess I did win one battle. So after being a big skeptic of the concept of making a new Indiana Jones movie so many years after the last, what did I think? Well, let me first preface this with a warning… if you read on, there may be spoilers.

I guess most of the die hard fans have already seen the movie by now and formulated their opinions. If you are a fan and you haven’t seen the movie yet, let me first say that there is one spoiler that you may want to hear before going to see the movie… the story is about aliens. That’s right, it’s Indiana Jones meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As a fan, this is a tough pill to swallow. I knew this ahead of time and had time to warm up to the concept. However, that being said, the story handles this concept rather well for most of the movie and blends it well into typical Indiana Jones style archeology.

Harrison Ford returns to the role without missing a beat. Once again, the character lives up to the previous movies and Ford plays the role flawlessly. Was he too old? Not at all. In fact, the storyline handles the additional twenty years nicely and makes light of the additional years. He still pulls off all the action scenes with an additional sense of wisdom. Contrary to what many may say, Shia LaBeauf does an excellent job as the sidekick “Mutt” and Karen Allen has a nice return. All of the characters were handled quite well with the exception of Kate Blanchett’s villain role as Irina Spalko. Her character lacked depth and didn’t really give you the “fear the bad guy” impression the villains of previous movies did. However, this appears to be more the fault of the writing than any reflection on the actress.

This brings us to the story. Overall, the story was good… however, you expect “great” (or above) from an Indiana Jones movie. It wasn’t for lack of action. In fact the action was more over the top in the movie than any of the previous three. It’s suppose to be unbelievable, but not suppose to make you say “oh, come on!”. The real root of the problem seems to be the battle between Lucas and Spielberg over the storyline. There were many drafts of the script due to disagreements and the resulting work was a merge of them. To put it simply, it shows. Lucas has really lost his touch over the years. You could clearly see George’s influence on certain scenes in the movie; from the animated prairie dogs that hearken back to the silly cartoon-ish characters in the Star Wars prequels to the absolutely ridiculous monkey and vine swinging scene that should have been left on a cutting room floor. I think we have Spielberg to thank for not letting this movie go the way of Episodes 1-3. Sound harsh? It’s probably because certain scenes stick out like a sore thumb as clearly not belonging. However, as soon as you start to get annoyed, Indy belts out a classic one liner and you put it behind you and move on. The story starts out strong, has it’s choppy moments, and ends on the weaker side. In fact, I thought the ending was more of a tie-in for Close Encounters than the type of ending you’ve come to expect from the series. However, it does wrap up the characters rather well… in fact, it alludes to the possibility of passing the famed fedora on to a new generation… a concept that I’m sure leaves many of us long time fans saying “Oh, please God, NO!”.

Overall, it is a good movie, but not a great movie. It lives up to the name Indiana Jones, but at moments will make you wonder. While it is the weakest of the now four movies, it does rank up there with them and will find itself right next to the others on the DVD shelf.

Funny how life works. Almost two weeks after the Swingin’ the Decade dance, I run across this gem while searching through our old VHS collection looking for something completely different. This ran on channel 6 local news in the summer of 1998 when swing hit big in Orlando and across the country.

You might see some familiar faces flash across the screen. Dawn and I lurk in the background of one of the studio segments. The dance instructor dancing with the anchor was one of our first teachers. This was a real trip down memory lane!

The Memorial Day weekend dances are fast approaching (this weekend already) and I thought it might be helpful to provide links to some sites that cover fashion and hair for the periods being featured (20’s & 30’s Sat. night, 40’s on Sun. night in Tampa). Keep in mind that some or most fashions might look great, but not be very realistic for dancing.

No matter how you decide to dress up, when it comes to the hairdo for the ladies, I highly suggest you try doing it one night before the night of the dance. Doing it once before will give you an idea of how long it will take and what problems you might run into. With that said, below are links broken out by fashion and hair for the 20’s, 30’s , and 40’s eras:

20’s Fashion
http://www.fashion-era.com/flapper_fashion_1920s.htm
http://www.1920-30.com/fashion/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_in_fashion

20’s Hair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapper
There is much more information available for women’s 20’s styled hair, just do a search on “finger waves” in Google and take your pick

30’s Fashion
http://www.murrayonhawaii.com/nolan/fashionhistory_1930mens.html
http://www.angelfire.com/retro/lisawebworld/30sfashion.html
http://www.fashion-era.com/stylish_thirties.htm

30’s Hair
http://www.hairfinder.com/hairstyling/1930b.htm
http://www.fashion-era.com/hats-hair/hats_hair_8a_hairstyles_history_1930_1940.htm
http://www.revampvintage.com/30shairstyles.html

40’s Fashion and Hair
http://www.flyinfootwork.com/blog/2007/05/08/vintage-style-tips/
http://www.flyinfootwork.com/blog/2007/12/12/how-do-to-victory-rolls-in-5-min/

For men, you can find men’s vintage style wide leg pants at Adam’s Men’s Wear in the Seminole Town Center Mall. You can typically find wide leg pants in specialty menswear shops that carry more trendy/edgy men’s suits. You may have to sort through the bright colors to find the vintage look, but men’s dressy fashions haven’t changed that much over time. As for the 20’s/30’s style driving caps, fortunately those have made somewhat of  a comeback in recent years and you can find them at many stores like Burlington Coat Factory and occasionally even at Target.

We’ve been teaching Hal Whips in our intermediate Lindy series, so I thought I would post this clip for the class to see where the move originated. This is Hal and Betty Takier dancing a blend of Balboa (Bal-Swing) and Lindy in the 1943 short “Maharaja”. You can see Hal’s signature move at :47 and 2:24.

Saturday, May 24th: For the first time ever at Whirl & Twirl, we’ll be featuring a big band! Harlem Madness is a 9-10 piece band that focuses primarily on hot jazz of the Harlem Renaissance. The band draws their inspiration and material from greats like Duke Ellington, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Cab Calloway, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Paul Howard, and the Casa Loma Orchestra just to name a few. From the up tempo to soulful swingin’ slower rhythms, there is something for everyone. Certainly a night not to miss! To complete the theme of the evening, everyone who shows up dressed from the era will get a ticket for a chance to win some great prizes (including an iPod Shuffle)! Click here for more info

I found this article  online this morning when I came into work and thought it was definitely worth sharing. It’s all about Django Reinhardt, his music, his origins, and how he lived his life. If you’ve never listened to or heard a Django song, you are really missing something. His music is quite upbeat and “plucky” as they reference in this article. I’m such a huge fan of 30’s hot jazz…..it literally inspires me to do things on the floor style wise that I wouldn’t otherwise do. And Django’s music falls smack dab in the middle of that category (30’s hot jazz) for me. So take a few minutes when you have time and check out some of his music  (iTunes link) to see what you’ve been missing!