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Fun! Funfunfunfunfun. WOW do Lindy dancers know how to scream and cheer! Feels like I’ve just finished raving about the Chicago crowd but holy shaMOLY these Lindy guys are LOUD! One whole corner (either loud Baltimore or louder Quebec – lotta Quebecois here, really fun crowd) screaming their heads off, standing on chairs, sitting on shoulders, break-dancing between heats, doing the wave, all wearing huge orange hands with a pointing finger which they’re waving in the air. Great crazy energy in the ballroom.

Last night was Strictly’s, two west coast divisions: Open and Champions.  Got one heat half recorded then gave up trying to scratch it down fast enough, so two heats about 20 couples each. Finals just got posted!

Benjamin and Melodie
Dave Damon and Sarah Richard
Davis Thurber and JessAnn Nail
Doug Silton and Samantha Ramirez
Erik and Anna
Gary Ulaner and Melissa Greene
HBrafnkell and Maria
Kevin Balcom and Lynne Anderson
Marc and Stephanie
Marcus Schwartz and Samantha Fernandez
Maxence and Jill Damarco
Stephane and Emmeline
Steven Hunt and Tiffany Lubran
Alternates:
Oscar Hampton and Annie Trudeau
Peter Fradley and kate Lovegrove

Then the 700 beats per minute WILD balboa and lindy strictlys, and holy crap people sitting on top of each other crowded all over the floor, pounding and stomping between heats – crazy energy. Those lifts and aerials – Wild! One guy did a double handspring, his partner catching him upside-down around the waist and they danced away like that!  His feet in the air! Crazy! Makes us west coast dancers look like snails. But sexy snails. We are snails but sexy skanky snails compared to them in their pretty little skirts and sailor suits.  Lindy dancers are so wholesome.  The differences between us are what make the pro crossover Jack and Jill (tonight!) so funny – you get to watch the pro’s trying to do the other dance and it’s always a caricature of what the dance is, it’s the concentrated condensed version. My favorite was Jo Hoffberg a few years ago dressed in skin-tight, low-cut, black (of course) rhinestones and glitter – the sluttiest hair-whipping pole-dancing version of how we wsc girls look to them. Priceless. And Tatiana last year, dressed half Lindy (one side of her face with red lipstick, a flower in her hair, a dress and white keds) half West Coast (the other side black eyeliner, frosted lips, bad-girl hair all in her face, one long earring on that side, one pants leg, one dance sandal.) And she did a lift! From a hand-stand! In slo-mo!

Rob Glover is emcee for most of the event, with a little help from Robert Cordoba and uh oh, didn’t catch the name of the Lindy emcee, and he’s doing a good job, upbeat and funny. Music’s been great so far … tell ya more in a moment.

Also last night, Invitational Strictly:

~ Kyle and Melina dancing to FU (Kyle and Erik Novoa, sitting on the floor trying to take pictures, also “dancing” to FU or, let’s see, how can I put it. Kyle obscenely dancing down at Erik, who obscenely put down his camera and obscenely danced right back up at Kyle, while Melina just stood there losing it)
~ Jordan and Tatiana (Famous Drop-And-Roll (I have no idea what this move is really called or even if it has a name but you know which one I mean), famous 40 katrillion skazillion flat-backs-while-circling-AROUND-Jordan-while-staring-at-your-feet-have-you-ever-tried-to-do-even-ONE-of-these?-forget-it-you’ll-fall-into-chairs; famous dislocated-shoulder spins; famous surprise ducking in and out of everything; Oh yeah hahahaha and Jordan wouldn’t dance for the first 20 seconds of the song – he just stood there gazing into the distance, comatose, waiting for the instrumental intro to be finished, Tat frantically trying to get starter-steps going, waving her hands in front of his face trying to get his attention)
~ Lindo and Jessica “Only Girl In The World” and man, John Lindo is on a rolllll lately, a rolllll, jokes and witty new ideas just rolling out one on top of the other, the man’s turned into a beast. He tried to be Jessica’s “only girl in the world,” ha! And then when Rhianna says “hold me like a pillow” he SLAMMED Jessica into himself, and I mean slammed, and there is a lot of John Lindo to be slammed into like a pillow.
~ Arjay and Jen – so sleek, so sexy, so elegant. I love these two, separately and together.
~ Robert and Deborah – “Please Don’t Go”
~ Ben and Sarah – “Finally Free”

~ And then an all-skate (“Drinkin’ Wine”) where all hell broke loose. Ben and Sarah started it by doing Two-Step instead of west coast so hey! within seconds everyone was 2-steppin’ around (sort of) the floor. Not your ordinary 2-step, to put it mildly. Jordan and Tatiana doing the drunken slumped beer-on-her-shoulder version; some modern-dance versions of two-step, some hip-hop versions … and then Jordan suddenly sobered up and switched to line-dancing and within seconds everybody else was line dancing too; and then … complete chaos.

Love these people! Every crazy artistic colorful one of ‘em. So different from each other! Love ‘em all!.  So lucky to get to watch them play and be creative! Sheesh!

Oh. My. Gawd. I might have just seen the funniest hour-and-a-half I’ve ever seen in 25 year in the dance community. My stomach is killing me, had to keep putting down the camera cause I was laughing too hard to take pictures. Holy kriminy.

Talk about skanks. ALL the pro’s are skanks – lindy and west-coast. women AND men. Marty Klempner showed up bare-chested, with some kind of spray-tan on his face and just the front of his chest (Rob Glover says Marty learned, in the middle of the crossover, that whatever stuff he used to make himself brown (his face was ridiculously brown, and it stank) will take three weeks to wear off). The lindy girls had huge feather earring(s) and their hair down and they were WHIPPIN’ and WORKIN’ some hair … west coast girls dressed like school girls but not exactly, more like baaaad really baaaad school girls, verrrrry bad. Especially Jessica. She was the baddest. A sweet little skirt, and BLACK panties. Which kept “showing.” What kind of girl wears black undies? A bad bad girl, a girl who needs a spanking. Oh how I hope my pictures come out! If the do they’ll be priceless. So many panties! Lot of panties. (Which, by the way, Tatiana first PUT ON panties (I’m talking about put on panties ON THE FLOOR, in front of everybody, on the camera, just before going out to dance – Sarah, Jessie, Jen and Melina providing a human-shield around her – don’t ask me I haven’t figured it out. I asked John Festa (judging the division, laughing his head off for 1 1/2 hours solid) “DID SHE *HAVE* ANY *OTHER* PANTIES ON? YES? NO? IF SO, WHAT HAPPENED TO *THOSE* PANTIES?” Festa didn’t know either. But then 20 minutes later, in the midst of everything, Rob says on the mic “Tatiana would like to know if anyone out there (meaning the entire ballroom) happens to have a pair of SHORTS she can borrow?” omgawd! She was provided with a pair of what looked like to me men’s Hawaiin swim trunks? Oh and omg you should have seen the men! Our men, the west-coast men, dressed up pure vintage – caps and knickerbockers, Arjay in humongous slippers over lindy tennis shoes … oh man.

Okay, I’m going back down to the ballroom. The big one is west-coast, downstairs there’s a Lindy ballroom, and next to the bar is the Crossover Ballroom – some crazy stuff going on in there …

Oh, and just to clarify (cause I keep getting asked): they were not actually *panties* which Jessica had black ones of, and which Tatiana had way too loose ones of. They were *bloomers.*  Lindy bloomers (shorts as they’re sometimes called, and in fact many girls wear boy-shorts or biker shorts cause they don’t ride up) meant to be seen when you twirl around or fly up in aerials. Covered in ruffles if your skirt is full enough.

Our girls are not actually skanky. They’re just pretend skanky. And Tatiana was not really getting undressed in public. She was adjusting a pair of borrowed bloomers which were too big. Pretty daggone hilarious.  All of them up there together in a huddle doing frantic last-minute wardrobe adjustments.

I will post results here in a minute … Steve and Rebecca have already posted the offiicial results online!  WOW unbelievable! They are efficient!

Whole weekend was like that … everything ran precisely on time, without a hitch.

Results!

Last night’s great Crossover Jack and Jill:

1st Arjay and Naomi Uyama
2nd Jordan and Annie Trudeau
3rd Andy Reid and Sarah
4th John Lindo and Nina Gilkenson
5th Peter Strom and Deborah Szekely

JJ’s

Allstar:
1 Steven Hunt (uk!) and Yuna
2 Erik Novoa and Lynne Anderson
3 Gary Ulaner and Tiffany Lubran
4 Oscar and Melissa Greene
5 Marc Levitin and Yuna

Advanced:
1 Rob Glover (uk ex-pat) and Alysia Bonvino
2 Dave Damon and Sammie Fernandez
3 Peter Fradley (uk!) and Samantha Ramirez
4 Neil Crosbie (Scotland!) and Anna Lumsden (uk!)
5 Mitch Marcello (France!) and Caroline Amblard (London, and France!)

Inter:
1 Stephane (Quebec via France!) and Dianna Lyn Cote
2 Dan Devan and Emeline (France!)
3 Matt Smith and Kate Lovegrove (uk!)
4 Martin Roy and Marina (Russia!)
5 Hrafnkell (Iceland!!!) and Nina El-Badry

Novice:
1 Steve Yi and Kristin Bianco
2 Nicolas Besnier (Quebec!) and Michelle Fletcher
3 Jim Chow and Irina Avdeeva (Russia!)
4 Paul Chapman and Mariel Manzone
5 Billy Marti and Shoshi Kushnir

Newcomer:
1 Marlon Mills and Colleen Vernon
2 Justin Davis and Sara Carrero
3 Steven Jin and Charlotte MacConnell
4 Benoit Lapointe and Marilyn Smith
5 Evan Haas and Amanda Townsend

Prelims for the Champions Invitational Strictly:
Kyle and Melina
Jordan and Tatiana
John Lindo and Jessica
Arjay and Jen
Ben and Sarah
Robert Cordoba and Deborah Szekely

and the Winners of the Champions Invitational Strictly:
1st Jordan and Tatiana
2nd Ben and Sarah
3rd Kyle and Melina
4th Arjay and Jen
5th John Lindo and Jessica

Prelims for the Open Strictly:
Benjamin and Melodie
Erik and Anna
Marc and Stephanie
Hrafnkell and Maria
Dave Damon and Sarah Richard
Gary Ulaner and Melissa Greene
Marcus Schwarz and Sammie Fernandez
Steve Hunt and Tiffany
Doug Silton and Samantha Ramirez
Kevin Balcom and Lynne Anderson
Davis Thurber and JesAnn Nail
Stephane and Emeline
Oscar and Annie Trudeau
Peter Fradley and Kate Lovegrove
Neil Crosbie and Irina Avdeeva
Brian Man and Tammy Greene
Maxence and Jill Dumarco
Phouvanh Meckhasinh and Marine Fabre
Michael Pisco and Jennie Hartman
Dan Devan and Elizabeth Pouwels
Roberto Villamarin and Cali Buntin
Nicolas Besnier and Cheryl Williams
Mitch Marcello and Susan Flaminio
Randy Payne and Noel Mathur
Robert Vaughn and Raquel Montanez
Wes Cooper and Sara Barker
Derick Van Ness and Jillian Townsend

And the Open Strictly Winners:
1st Maxence and Jill
2nd Erik and Anna
3rd Doug and Samantha
4th Steve and Tiffany
5th Stephane and Emmeline

Perfectly cloudless blue-sky days all weekend long. Chilly and windy but brilliantly sunny, almost spring. My room hung over the Charles River … the outside wall a floor-to-ceiling window which from dawn to dusk flooded the room with beautiful light and a wide view of the gray brush and bramble on the shores, the painted boat-house on the other side with sculls, canoes and kayaks lined up along the riverbank, ducks splashing around in the algae and reeds, geese veering and gliding above looking for fish, and pairs of swans floating quietly on the crests and ripples so dazzling in the wind and sunlight it seemed God might be tossing handfuls of diamonds onto the surface all day long for play. The window doesn’t open (diving into the Charles River would be too tempting, I guess, even more tempting than trying to touch a low-flying plane out the 29th floor window of the Chicago Hyatt) but I wish it did, to fill the room with that wonderful dank fishy river smell.

Fitted sheets! And crisp white duvet covers over crisp white comforters. Recently rennovated rooms, plenty of outlets, desk with ethernet cable and all kinds of ports, lots of counter space on both sides of the sink (I get both sides. Genieboy’s lonely razor, toothbrush, and deodorant go way over in the corner of one side, he can handle it. I also get the whole closet except for the far end where the ironing board hangs. I also get three dresser drawers and he gets one for his workout clothes, underwear, socks, and t-shirts.)

Great hotel staff – it’s clear Steve and Rebecca trained them well in the peculiar needs of a dance event: buffets for breakfast *and* dinner both with extended hours (breakfast till 1pm! our kinda breakfast hours).The lobby floor – with computer room, restaurant, bar and a lovely open lounge – all bathed in sunlight or starlight from two massive floor-to-ceiling glass walls overlooking the river. Starbucks in the lobby (with muffins, bagels, stuff like that) open from crack of dawn (when most of us are still dancing anyway) till 11 or midnight. Bar in the lobby open as late as Massachusetts Blue Laws will allow. Liquor store and grocery store within walking distance (almost) and a refrigerator in every room so you can eat or drink up a storm in the privacy of your room if you want. Hot-water boilers which can handle 1,000 people taking showers at the same time at weird hours throughout the day and night. Close to the airport, too, right down the Mass Pike (which you can see just beyond the river, lines of cars like busy ants sparkling along all day and night). In other words – a hotel which works in all the ways important to dancers.

Three ballrooms: the big one on the lobby floor, medium-sized Lindy room downstairs, and a third – the crazy crossover room (that word is beginning to sound dirty, isn’t it?) next to, where else? the bar. This is not a NASDE event so no routines which means it’s not heavy in allstar and advanced level dancers. Pro’s, yes, as you’ve seen in the Invitational strictly lineup, but they’re not doing routines and no routines means no floor trials/ resting up/ stressing out which means the pro’s who are there are more relaxed and able to play and maybe even spend time actually dancing for a change. Theoretically. Feels like I saw ‘em in the ballroom(s) more than at some events, but who knows. Once late-nite starts it’s dark and you never know who’s where or when or what. Saturday night, maybe 3am-ish, I headed over to the “DJ Booth Corner of the Floor” (in this ballroom the DJ booth is along the far side of the same wall as the entrance doors, so “DJ Booth Corner” is downstage left) and sat there for a while watching Tatiana.  Someone said “Ugh! Ugh! Wugh! The floor is impossible! It’s so crowded ugh wugh can’t move without crashing ugh!” I said “ummmm the entire whole rest of the floor is roomy and perfect. Only here in this bathroom-stall-sized-spot is it squashed. Look! See? You can go dance right there!” “Yaaaa. Noooo,” she said, “Naaaa. Think I’ll stay here.” I’m glad I’m not an event director. I would constantly be banging my head against the wall in exasperation.

Didn’t get the exact numbers but this is neither a huge nor a small comp. It’s a medium mamma-bear-sized comp. Steve says it’s exactly where they want it to be both for attendee-to-hotel ratio as well as for making the effort worthwhile business-wise (thanks gawd cause we certainly want them to keep doing it for us). He says it reached the numbers they wanted several years ago and has continued to stay exactly there. And I agree, the floor(s) and hotel feel just crowded enough to be exciting and filled with dancers everywhere but not so crowded that you can’t move and have to wait in lines at the ballroom door, elevator, bathroom, restaurant, bar – cause that’s not fun.