I had the pleasure of teaching at two college swing clubs in the last two weeks:  St. Olaf College near Minneapolis with Ryan Calloway and KU with Jason Zabinski. Here are my takeaways.

A huge THANK YOU to my wonderful teaching partners and all my students!

While I’m working on a blog post about my ILHC showcase, please enjoy this video of The New Hot 5, a Utah-based jazz band playing for a discerning herd of cows in Autrans, France. You can always count on the French to appreciate good jazz, and you can always count on trad jazz musicians to not take themselves too seriously (the French are pretty good at that too).

Continuing with the French theme, I present your new non-lindy dance crush inspiration: Guillaume Lorentz.

I have some friends in Paris who have been lucky/smart enough to take his classes in ragga jam, a fusion of caribbean dancehall and hip hop.  And who wouldn’t want to take classes from him? Guillaume has it all: fluidity, body control, contrast, great lines, precision (notice his hand positions), musicality, joyful/soulful movement, and hips that just won’t quit.

Yum.

Max and Annie at Camp Jitterbug 2007!

Jerry asked me recently what my favorite clip of a jam is, since this one is being tossed around the blogosphere. It’s fun, but I don’t think it’s the best I’ve ever seen…there are so many good clips of great jams out there…I’ll keep pondering it, heh.

Meanwhile, I do know which is my favorite video of a strictly lindy. It’s from Camp Jitterbug 2007, Max & Annie’s breakout year. They were hungry to make a name for themselves and it shows. I suppose it might be more generous for me to choose a strictly where everyone is amazing, but this one really sticks out in my mind since everyone was really good, but Max and Annie were great.

They were together, athletic, just the right blend of traditional and modern, they showed off all their fancy moves, and they were so musical that their all-skate looks like a choreographed routine. But it’s to live music!  This is how you throw 5 aerials in an all-skate and make them count, kids. (Of course, we’d all feel differently if Shesha’s head had been chopped off… but it wasn’t, yay! Lindy hop!)

The more you dance a routine, the more you can relax into it, dance it playfully and uniquely. I love dancing classic jazz routines like the Shim Sham, the Tranky Doo, or the Big Apple, and seeing how I can modify the different jazz steps, make them my own, and make my body a vessel for the music (I’m pretty sure that last phrase is trademarked by Adam Boehmer).

I’ve performed the Tranky Doo twice recently, and tried to share the joy of dancing a routine you know like the back of your hand.

I was lucky enought to be invited to teach and perform at Midwest Lindy Fest, an outstanding yearly event that boasts a Friday night performance revue. Adam and I did a straight Tranky with a little something special in the middle to match the music, and then tacked some California routine on the end of it.

Then just a couple weeks ago Adam was in town, so he and I decided to perform with our friend Ryan Calloway, the other half of Bearded Rhythm. Since there were three of us we decided to take some more liberties and play around with the structure of the Tranky a little more. We also decided to only do the Tranky once through, so we chose a song that was short enough to allow that, Gal-A-Vanting. May I present: Two Beards and a Belle or the Janky Tranky Trio!

Bonus video! Ryan and Sinclain Ang in Singapore earlier this year, really pushing the envelope in playfulness and creativity.

Ha, I just re-watched one of the Tranky videos that inspires me and discovered that they threw in the elephant too! I suppose it was a little seed they planted in our subconscious minds years ago. For you fellow YouTube nuts out there, here are some 3-person Tranky inpriation videos: The Spirit Moves, Shesha, Jo, and Mikey in 2007, and Falty, Bethany, and Stephan in 2008. And for dancers out there who don’t know the Tranky Doo yet, you know you can always count on Denver dancers like Joe Demers, right?

There has been another conflagration within our tiny lindy blog world! How exciting! This time the hot topic is whether followers in lindy hop and other swing dances should dance in high heels.  Sarah Breck started it all with the oh-so-provocatively titled Why Women Should Wear Heels, and Fenn followed it up with the scathingly worded Why Women SHOULDN’T Wear Heels. There’s now a Yehoodi thread dedicated to the debate and a ton of responses to Bug’s question of the day about it.

I’ve got to admit that I felt a little stabbystabby after reading both posts and their comments, for a variety reasons, but mostly because I was frustrated by the flood of contradictory and potentially baseless theories being tossed out there. My mainstays are flat Keds, but I dance in heels more and more often, so much so that 3 of my 5 favorite dance shoes are now high heels. I’ve thought about them a lot and danced in them a lot over the years, but that doesn’t make me a foot/body/health expert. I wanted an expert that I trust to tell me whether or not high heels damage our bodies, and if they do, why, how much, and what we can do about it.

So…I’ve invited my friend Jason Sager, Rolfer extraordinaire, as my expert guest! Everyone, say “Hi Jason!”

Q: So, are high heels really that terrible?

Yes they can be damaging, but I don’t think they’re the fiendish devices the some people make them out to be.  A lot of the damage factor, like anything else, comes from doing the same thing many times over and not also doing something to balance it out.  I’ve danced in heels and found them to be both a challenge and a benefit to my dancing.  Dancing for a few hours at a time and stretching afterwards, I haven’t really suffered any adverse effects. Read the rest of this entry »

I am picky about shoes, always have been. When I was a kid I would put my mom through hell at the shoe store, rejecting pair after pair. I know what I like and I won’t compromise on comfort. This is a problem since shoe companies want to profit by changing styles every season and making their women’s shoes as cheaply as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want my shoes to be stylish.  But do they really think I’ll be attracted to a gold vinyl lining? Think again, commercial shoe industry. I want cute shoes that are COMFORTABLE and will LAST.

Is that too much to ask? No. Just look at men’s shoes! Shoes made out of natural materials (leather, cotton, etc.) will breathe and conform to the shape of my feet over time.  They will also last longer than shoes made out of synthetic materials and are probably better for the environment. I also happen to be partial to shoes that are made in the shape of a human foot, ahem. For all these reasons, I am willing to pay a little more for quality shoes, but as you’ll see below, with a little searching you don’t need to pay a fortune for good quality shoes.

Of course,when it comes to dancing I have additional shoe requirements. I need a sole that is fairly slick, shoes that will stay on my feet, and if there is a heel I need it to be short and stocky for stability’s sake (in the specs below I measured surface area of the heel prints).

I have spent hours and hours searching for shoes that are good for dancing (admittedly, not a particularly tedious activity).  Here are my top 5!

Read the rest of this entry »

My first memory of jazz is of seeing the great Dizzy Gillespie on the Muppet Show.  The image of his cheeks puffing out like balloons was forever burned into my memory.

Out of nostalgia I looked up some of those clips on YouTube and lo and behold discovered what was without a doubt my first introduction to the shim sham, at 2:25 in this clip!

Happy hippaversary to me! On January 29th I celebrated my one year hippaversary!  Last year I had hip surgery because I had broken a fleck of bone off my hip and torn the cartilage inside the joint. After the surgery I had to spend three weeks on crutches (during Snowpocalypse 2010, great), followed by months of PT. The worst part was not being able to dance for two moths, something I don’t wish on my worst enemies.

I used to stretch a little, but now I stretch daily, especially after I’ve gone dancing, to improve my hip flexibility, prevent further injury, and tackle some of the body imbalances partner dancing causes. A lot of my friends don’t stretch after dancing… they’re crazy. In fact, we lindy hoppers are notoriously bad at taking care of our bodies, whether it be lack of stretching, lack of cross-training, hydrating, or sleeping enough.

So, just for you, dear readers, I took some pictures of my stretching routine. I’m not saying you should do this exact routine, but please, for the love of your bodies, stretch after dancing!

Disclaimer: I asked my friend Michelle Sands, who is a yoga and pilates instructor at Ambaa Yoga in Montreal, if I was doing anything blatantly wrong in these stretches and she said I was ok (though I tend to lock my knees and elbows – don’t do that). However, I’m not a yoga instructor, nor a specialist in stretching, so don’t sue me if you injure yourself doing any of these. If you have bad knees/hips/whatever, go ahead and modify the stretches so they won’t hurt your body. Also, if you want to see really good form, look up yoga people online. Like this guy.)

ANN’S DAILY 10-STRETCH ROUTINE

1. Gollum (ankles, achilles, inner calf). Looks weird but feels great! It has eliminated all the ankle and foot pain I used to have because of an old ankle sprain. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet, your heels off the ground, and relax.

Read the rest of this entry »

Adam and I just got the photos back from a shoot with did with the very talented Gregory Bartning!  Check out my Media page for the highlights.

It was a typically foggy day in San Francisco, which couldn’t be helped, but Gregory did a great job with the lightning to get the most out of what colors there were. He was a good director too and demonstrated his previous experience in photographing performers. I highly recommend him!

Speaking of colors, I don’t wear actual vintage clothes that often, but this was an exception. That red dress was a vintage find from Minxy, a little shop near my place in San Francisco, and the shoes were from Bygones, an excellent vintage store in Richmond, VA. The shoes are surprisingly danceable because they come up so high on the back of my foot, and every time I wear them I can’t help but wonder if the previous owner danced in them in the 1940′s.  Dear shoes, how many swing outs are in your soles?