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 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
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!
I put together the following song selections as a practice playlist for those learning swing and Lindy Hop for the first time. I know it tends to be a rather eclectic mix, but the goal was to pick some songs (available on iTunes) that have solid rhythms that are good for beginners and those in the learning process. I sorted them on increasing beats per minute (BMP) so you can start slow and build up in tempos. Given that as you get better, you can go much faster… but if you are looking for a “pushin’-the-tempos” playlist… well, I’ll build that later.
So, Rob and I went flying recently on a Friday night with a fellow dancer/friend who has a pilot’s license. As the afternoon passed by, I got more and more nervous and excited about what was coming up that evening. You see, I don’t necessarily have a fear of flying so much as a healthy respect for heights and aviation. Before a year ago, I had never been in anything smaller than a 25 person prop commuter plane and that wasn’t bad at all. Last year Rob and I got to ride in a 1925 biplane that seated 4 passengers and that was excitedly “gripping” (referring to my white knuckles), but quite nice once I relaxed and remembered to breathe.
So I wasn’t sure what riding in a 4 person Cessna plane would be like. As we watched our friend do the pre-flight check that the FAA requires of licensed pilots, I kept thinking that I just wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into and should I go through with it. It’s not like I can just bail once we get up there and I don’t like it ya know. But I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t let my fears stop me from enjoying life in different ways. And I’ve always had dreams of flying like a bird and how cool it would be. But even with my interest and bravado, I almost bailed like twice. But I persevered and got in, strapped in, and prepared myself for the experience.
It’s not like I’m afraid that we’ll fall out of the sky mind you, it’s more the feeling of fragility that comes with being in a small craft that is easily pushed around by winds. So it’s like driving in a truly 3D environment where you have the added element of physics affecting your stability from all angles, instead of just gravity as in a car. So we go and take off into the wind which caused us to have lift quite easily and quickly… and away we went. The wind did bump us around during the hour that we were in the sky flying all over Orlando and even Disney. But it’s not like we were hitting air pockets and falling 50ft or anything. Our friend Joshua did a GREAT job of keeping things smooth and easy going for me. He did do a few things that literally left my stomach in my throat. Like one maneuver called a parabola (the bell curve from statistics class… anyone… anyone?) where he points the nose up and then brings it down like going over a hill. Yikes that really got my stomach up in my throat (notice the look on my face).
After we got to “buzz” the Disney attractions at 3,000 feet, we proceeded back to the executive airport where the landing was really neat and we even saw a HUGE bald eagle at the edge of a pond on the way back to the tarmac. I survived and even had fun. And Rob even had the foresight to snap a few pictures of all of us (and me) while flying…so enjoy those.
Starting Sunday, June 15th: The summer series class schedule has been set! In the next rotation will be the ever popular Lindy Hop Series Class. This class will take you from scratch and show you all the ins and outs of Lindy Hop. In addition, we’ll be offering the Charleston Series Class. This will start out with 20’s style partner Charleston and move into side-by-side and front-back Charleston; all the while showing you how to integrate it into your swing dancing. Both classes are open to dancers of all levels. Classes tend to fill in advance, so be sure to reserve your spot soon!
On Saturday, May 10th: Flyin’ Footwork has teamed up with DJ Natch to take you on a trip down memory lane as we track back 10 years of local history. There will be a decade’s worth of favorite swing tunes to spin for your dancing inspiration. But that’s not all… you’ll see the best (and maybe the worst) photos and videos of the last ten years projected on the big screen. Oh… and don’t miss the feature video presentation starting at 10:30.
As always, the dance starts out with a beginner swing dance lesson at 8pm. Dancing is from 9pm to midnight. All ages are welcome and admission is only $6. Click here for more information on the dance and click here for more info on the event.
We’ve posted some of the “shapshots” of our vacation online. You can check them out on our travels gallery. We’ll be posting some of the more “artistic” photographs we took later on. It takes a bit to process through them all.
So many times we have traveled only to come home with few shots with both Dawn and I in them seeing we’re usually the ones behind the camera… so special thanks goes out to Maria for getting the shots of us together!
We’re back in town from our travels in the wilderness of the west. We’re catching up on everything right now, but we’ll have the photos online soon. We’ll also have the photos from the last dance online soon too.
Saturday, May 24th: For the first time ever at 
