2012 Swing Music Mix Tape

Since the dance videos will take awhile, I’ll start off by giving you a little mix tape for 2012. In picking out these performances I realized that I am heavily biased towards those I experienced in person. Video isn’t a completely fair representation of a performance, especially since live audio recording has yet to catch up with the leaps and bounds that video recording has made in the last few years. However, it’s still good enough to relive moments, or at least get a taste for those that you missed.

2012 Blog highlights and the List O’Blogs

Note: This post compliments my previous compilations of dance blogs done in 2009 and 2011. I know a lot of people who don’t like blogs on principle. I have quite a few friends who don’t like dance blogs in particular. I usually just nod and smile because I don’t need to ask them why. After all, I see most of them on a daily basis. Notice I don’t say “read.” There are a ton of them not counting my non-dancing related reading, and there just isn’t enough time in the day to keep up with them all.

Occupying Lindy Hop: The Gap Ad to Twenty-four Robbers and Forward

I didn’t love Frida & Skye’s “24 Robbers” routine when I first saw it. I liked it well enough, but to be honest I was a bit shocked to find out that it won at The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in 2007. Although no one was more surprised than Skye & Frida. We were not the only ones. There were some loud dissenting opinions in the aftermath of that event. People were saying that it looked too easy, it was too slow, there were no new kewl moves. How could this be first place at an event billed with the name “Ultimate?” The same event that spawned the legendary 2006 Liberation final just a year before. A look at the other couples in that division shows lots of speed and lots of air. In 2007, there was even a special performance recreating The Congaroos clip which is much faster than Hellzapoppin.

With a little perspective, it seems that the appeal of 24 Robbers is because it was none of those things, and that all the criticisms laid against it are what makes it such a strong performance.

ILHC 2012 Scores Are Up

Full placements and scores are now up on the ILHC website. Every year, people have questions about how it works, so I thought I’d do a little preemptive strike with a quick and dirty explanation.

A Word on Swing #3: On The Porch With Nina Gilkenson Part 2

And the next part of our interview with Nina Gilkenson. We have an interesting talk juxtaposing her fear of competing with her role as co-director of the biggest Lindy Hop competition in the world. Then we move on to what makes her tick creatively and why Baltimore is the perfect place for such a person.

A Word on Swing #3: On The Porch With Nina Gilkenson Part 1

Here is the long awaited interview with the lovely and lascivious Nina Gilkenson. Or at least the first part. Theoretically, if you follow this blog, you may already know who she is, but if you don't, this is a good way to get to know this self described "forth grade drop out."

On Lindy YouTube Statistics

In my last post, I compiled this list of most viewed Lindy related videos. It was a relatively straight forward process of figuring out what videos uploaded since the start of the year had garnered the most views. Tena Morales then asked me in the comment section if my 2011 list accounted for events that happened earlier in the year, and if they had an advantage of getting on the list since they’ve been online longer.

Most Popular Lindy Videos of 2012: Halftime Report

While procrastinating on so many other things, I wondered what were the most popular Lindy Hop related videos so far in 2012 since we’re just past the half way point of the year. I thought you may be curious too, so I thought I’d share. That’s the kind of guy I am.

Five Holy $#&%! Moments That Changed Modern Lindy Hop

A comment on Facebook got me thinking of moments in Lindy Hop. Not just good dances or dancers, but singular moments that make you reconsider every assumption you had about the dance. Twenty-four Robbers by Skye and Frida or anything by Stefan Durham and Bethany Powell are great performances as a whole, but I’m talking about a short sequence, a single move, or even a footwork variation that turned the entire scene on its head.

Size Matters and other Annual Ruminations

I started this blog three years ago because there wasn't much Lindy related to read online. I thought I might as well start my own site. Much has changed since then, and now everyone has something to say. I think that's great. Some people don’t think so. I’m discovering how little faith my friends have in free speech for the masses. I’ve been accused of being a bit of a populist though. One thing I’m realizing is that what I’m looking for in online discussions is probably not going to materialize because it comes down to the fact that our scene isn’t that big.