Hey everyone! Been a while since I’ve blogged. Been busy! Travelling. Teaching. Speaking. Yes, that’s a new one, giving talks. How bleedin’ cool is that then 🙂 I’ll be posting about my experiences etc. as the info settles in my head. My mind has been buzzing with all the new things I’ve seen and heard. Good stuff. Really good stuff so come back soon for a bit of a read.
This is just a quick post to let you know that I’m still doing stuff and as a perfect segue – here are a couple of links. Click on the pictures to take you to the facebook events, there you’ll find all the info. Or you can email iheartcookiesjam@gmail.com.
“may you keep smiling and dancing and be fun as you are…” – luv, Michal
A bouncy young lady called Michal Kandal gave this to me during Herrang Dance Camp last summer. Michal is from Tel Aviv in Israel. Crazy huh, the Lindy Hop is there too. (Maybe, just maybe Continue reading →
Just wanted to share this one with you, the wonderful Chazz Young at his best.
His birthday was on November the 8th. He was 80 years young!!
In February whilst teaching at a dance camp in England, I was lucky enough that my timetable meant I could take some classes with him. What a treat! For several weeks following that, my Authentic Solo Jazz class was based on those classes. For me Chazz is Mr Jazz hands himself. Everything he does is so polished, no movement without meaning or soul. “When he dances his whole body dances” to quote Norma Miller.
Find out more about Chazz here,
here: Chazz’s facebook page and here: Chazz in my blog.
And if you would like to help expand the Wikipedia entry for him, go here
One of the many routines Frankie Manning choreographed is The Lindy Chorus . In my quest to fly the flag for the old skool ooh that sounds so…so evangelic doesn’t…hi hi hihi!!!..I wanted to teach this routine to my beginner class with the aim of Lindy-bombing or doing some kind of flash mob in Lyon. The flash-bomb didn’t happen, due to lots of reasons, but it doesn’t matter. Anyways, I digress.
The workshop was in January of this year, which meant the students had been taking classes since the end of September. So the average lindy age was approximately 4 months, therefore enough basics to get a good old chomp on the routine. It’s not a difficult routine, and very fun.
Being the kind of person I am, I not only wanted to teach the steps, but also the background. So, I did my research…
I remember back in the day that Frankie had taught the routine to a group of teaching couples in Herrang. It came across as being a bit hush hush at the time. Don’t ask me why that was, and it’s a pity that more people were not invited as I think the routine may have turned out to be much more popular than it is now. A standard as it were.
I scoured my videos of Herrang and found the clip in 1998. From that I contacted a few of the people in the video, plus a couple of others who I thought might have some knowledge of the why’s and wherefore’s of the routine. Everybody replied with more or less the same response. Caterine, Marcus andManu (bless ’em) were perfectly wonderful in sharing with me their extra thoughts on the matter.
Here is a digest of their thoughts: “The idea was to create a routine, like the California routine, but slower so that a larger group of students can dance it…the idea was to spread that routine around the world. Stephen Mitchell and maybe Erin Stevens may have given Frankie the idea. Frankie also taught the routine at some workshops. For some reason it never really became a standard routine”
Here is Frankie dancing it in Herrang ’98. The Teachers are: Eddie Jansson and Eva Lagerkvist Jansson, Martin Wedby and Anita Kankimäki, Benedict Furrer and Ursula Thulin, Marcus Koch and Barbl Kaufer, Mattias Lundmark and Asa Palm, Caterine Llungrun, Stephan Joller and Erika Schreiber. I love it when he messes up. That laugh. Miss it.
FINALLY!!! [UPDATE 19th November 2013] Apologies for the quality. This is me filming the tv screen at home with my iPod touch for a quick memory jogger one afternoon before a class!!! Système D as the say ha ha ha ha. Unfortunately I don’t have the original tape to hand and I didn’t have the time at the time to make a proper digital copy. Ah well, done is better than perfect huh?!
And here are a couple of my favourite renditions.
Manu Smith and Nicole Frydman
Lucy Falkner and her students
And here are my beginners in Lyon performing it for THE end of year SHOW. I heart Beginners 🙂
I can’t remember when it was. I need to check my papers.
Anyways. I was teaching at Herrang Dance Camp, and a young man approached me with a proposition (stop it!….). He had created an online shop for lindy-hoppers, idance.net; I guess it was around the time when ipod, imac, ibiduletruc* started to become part of everyday language. The premise was for teachers to record steps, moves, ideas, techniques, what have you and then sell these online. The lindy-hopping customer would buy as much as he or she wanted. Much like Ebay or Amazon. Me, the “Yes, let’s” type entrepreneurial chick that I am said “OK”. Pourquoi pas? Why not indeed. What’s the worse that could happen.
Well nothing bad happened. But then again, I can’t say that nothing good happened either. I recognise however that bad and good are such subjective terms, and it depends on which side of the jitterbugging dollar your holding. So with my Me, the “Don’t want to sell air” type dancing chick coupled with the Me, the “I just wanna dance” type teaching chick that I am, the whole business of marketing of this venture totally escaped me! I did receive an email, however, telling me there was some money to recupe (I know that’s not a real word) after a certain time. Around $19. I never withdrew it. Silly me. Money’s money. I dunno, I think I was a little peeved at the small return I had had. Having said that, I didn’t put much in either. Just a couple of hours spent in front of his camera and his assistant with the idance.net banner behind me, and no other additions after or since.
Sometime later, I received an email stating that changes were taking place in the organisation. I didn’t read it through, but what I gathered was that the chap had sold the company. Good for him if he made some money out of it.
There’s a moral to the story somewhere in this, I’m sure of it…! I’m bound to pick this up another time so keep coming back for installments.
Herrang Dance Camp is that kind of place where anyone can do anything (…). It’s like a concentrated version of the world, and that’s no joke. In the space of 5 weeks as it is now, and 4 weeks as it was then which lasted for more than 20 years, you get to see the flora and fauna of our beautiful world in all its natural beauty. Yes, it’s a jungle out there.**
Anyways, have a look and if you fancy buying a couple of videos please do. I’ll probably get an email soon. Tell me what you think, seriously, I’d like to know.
**If you have ever seen Monk, this is the theme tune. Please take note of the lyrics 🙂
It’s a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who’s in charge here?
It’s a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what’s in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it’s amazing
People think I’m crazy, ’cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you’d be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so!
‘Cause there’s a jungle out there.
It’s a jungle out there.
Cookie's Jam 