One of the worst things about the winter is the viral bugs floating around. I swear this winter, half of Vancouver population was infected by a super cold virus, and being dancers it’s a wonder how we even remain healthy throughout the year. I predict, we’ll be the one of the first wave of infections when the Zombie Apocalypse takes hold; but I digress.

The one good thing about having a cold is that it forces me to sit back when volunteering for workshops and really focus on taking photos of the event, and boy is it great to hold on to a Nikon D90 once again. Yippee! This time though, I had a manual prime 8mm f3.5 fisheye lens to play with throughout the weekend. From the photos you will see the fun times I had with it. On one hand, the fisheye lens was a breeze to use, point then click, great photo — most of the time. The trickiness about the fisheye is that the field of view is so large, I have to consider so many factors in the way I shoot, other than the distortion.

• My off-camera flash arm cannot be too far forward
• Bending my body forward at the hips to avoid my own feet in portrait photos
• Where the ceiling-bounce flash hits as the area will show up in photos
• Distance from the subject (you really need to be super close to negate the depth you get in a fisheye)

The results are worth the effort trying to keep track and learn all the tricks on the fly. The next thing I will need to focus on, is nailing the manual focus, and adjusting to using a manual aperture ring as well.

PS. RCMA (Rhythm City Mess Around) 2012 was a blast. The photos above is just a preview of the photos I took that weekend.

Gotta love Dublin. There’s so much drinking and dancing in such a small area that one can hardly sit still long enough to realize just how much euro one has really spent (fyi, it was a lot). I was able to fly to Dublin (albeit after a bit of stand-by ticket scare) and attend the Dublin Lindy Exchange to meet some dancers from across the Atlantic. Having never been to Herrang dance camp, it is such a great feeling to meet lindy hoppers from so many other countries in one location having the time of their lives. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about dancing in Europe. I have only ever danced in North America so I did not know if my dance style would mesh well with other dancers. I often get this feeling when out traveling to unfamiliar dance scenes. I always chalk it up to the “big dance pond” syndrome that I self-conscientiously get. The Dublin dancers were great however and were very hospitable from the moment we arrived to the Pillars Room to the very last dance of the weekend.

During the day when not out dancing, my traveling companion, Genevieve, and I did the tourist thing and visited the Guinness Factory tour, risked dismemberment by using the new city bike program, and met up with my good old Irish friend Laura. We also saw some traditional Irish dancing (crazy!) and even did some salsa dancing on the streets (what?) near O’Donnell bridge. Being only there really for three days, I feel that I need to come back at least two or three more times to really feel like I’ve “visited” Dublin. I guess I’ll just have to put it back on the list :-)

In other dance related news, here are two quick events that I am putting on in Toronto:

Teaching A Class Series

In Toronto news, I will be teaching a beginners Lindy Hop class every Tuesday at Dovercourt House starting next week (September 22nd). I’m very excited to have to opportunity to teach this class in Toronto so hopefully it goes well.

Fund Raiser for Hamfats’ Blues Team

The past month or so, I started up a Blues Dance Team to work on some more advance blues dance concepts that I can’t work on the dance floor as well as to compete in the North Star Blues Exchange. We are holding a fundraiser to get us to Minnesota.

Facebook Even Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=124675049209#/event.php?eid=132311290775

In the following images below, the flash did not fire unfortunately:

Check out more photos at: http://hamfats.ca/photos/salsa-performance-may-31

Videos

Thanks everybody who stopped by and shook their hips at our dance party. We’re looking forward to seeing you all next time!

For pictures head to: http://hamfats.ca/photos/spring-party

*Updated* Now with video! Check it after the jump.

After missing out on the Toronto Lindy Hop Homegrown Cabaret last year and hearing the post-excitement after, I was looking forward to participating in the event with the University of Toronto swing club as a performer, a photographer, and as a DJ. To top it off, I hosted the Hamfats first late-night blues party; the perfect ending to an awesome weekend.

Big props to TLH (Toronto Lindy Hop) for hosting the event, Stephen Cardie and Vicky Kidd for organizing, ChaChi as the MC, all the performers, and the audience. You were all fantastic and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did that night.

For those that weren’t there, here’s the night seen though eyes of my camera. Enjoy!

*Video Additions*

TIP: Watch it again and again. It gets better each time I watch it. :)

The opportunity to put this up in all its glory is too great, it just had to be its own post. Dancers Krister Shalm and Vincent Lemieux did an awesome job with this routine and had my sides hurting. The best part? I have a video… complete in HD! Check out the giant pic after the jump…
]]> http://hamfats.ca/toronto/sister-sister-too-great/feed 0 http://hamfats.ca/lindy-hop/klix?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=klix http://hamfats.ca/lindy-hop/klix#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:20:53 +0000 Randy http://hamfats.ca/?p=553 NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

Kingston Exchange (KLIX) was the first time offering from those wily kids from Queens Swing Club. I was surprisingly pleased by how much fun I had at this event. So much fun that I actually broke the heel of my right Aris Allens during the Sunday dance.

I love going to exchanges because I get to spend time and know some of the dancers a bit more than during the weekly dances that I go to at various cities. For example, I am always in awe of the man KT (also known as Kevin Temple) and his mastery of the dance elements. Why doesn’t this man have his own reality show?

I DJ’ed the band breaks on Friday night and one late night set on Saturday. My mantra for my DJ sets were, “hit em hard and don’t let go.” For the band breaks, to contrast the band, I played a fast set (fast in terms of rhythm) with lots of syncopation and shuffle so that the temperature of the room would get unbearably hot. I figure that as long as the songs were good, people wouldn’t mind sweating it out. For the late night, I decided to with a new orleans theme instead of going to straight blues. I was happy to see that the other DJs continued with the party and played songs to keep dancers tapping until we were forced out of the venue at 4am.

For the most part, I believe people enjoyed the set. I saw the tweet from Byron from Swing Dynamite, “… Randy is a wicked DJ.”. That’s how you know you are moving up in the swing social ladder – tweets! (If you did not know, there is a direct correlation between the number of computer scientists, engineers, internet gurus and the popularity of swing dancing.)

The exchange was so much fun that it looks like the Kingston crew will just have to do another one next year.

Pictures

Videos

I don’t really have anything to say besides that meeting new people who <3 dance as much as I do is one of the best feelings in the world.

Pictures

Here are a few pictures from the event:

On Friday February 6, 2009, the Toronto Swing Scene came together for our asian brother Kevin and his awesome (and very sweet) wife NaYoung who is battling Lymphoma (a form of cancer). There was a performance provided by Hogtown Swing, music by the Gordon Webster trio featuring Bradley Harder and local lindyhopper Alisha Ruiss, a raffle with great prizes like passes to Stompology, Kingston Lindy Exchange, Ottawa Lindy Bomb and a Reservoir Lounge gift basket as well as a bake sale with lots of tasty treats made by members of the Lindy community.

For those who have not met Kevin… Lana Luba, has this to say about him:

…Kevin has shown me what it is to be a true friend. His selfless yet uncanny character has been the basis of our friendship. Through our Martial Arts Training, we both learnt the “Code of Ethics” which states that “One should always be there for his brother”. I feel now is the right time to be there for him and let him know that I care, and that all his friends and acquaintances feel the same way… -Lana Luba

At the end of the night, this is what the community it should always be about, growing and striving to be something better because of their shared passion for the music, the dance, and the people within it.

It was a rocking good time and if you weren’t there, you missed out! Since pictures (and videos) can say a thousand words, just take a look below.

Pictures

References:

• Performance and party hosted by Hogtown Swing
• Music provided by Gordon Webster trio featuring Bradley Harder and local lindyhopper Alisha Ruiss

What a long, overdue post! 2009 is into the end of it’s first month and things are well underway with my goals. Still, there is much to do and I hope this will inspire all those who are looking to see growth in their dancing this year.

Like most, 2009 kicked off with a reflection of last year; my growth in personal and dance life, achievements, goals, opportunities (taken or missed), expected and unexpected happenings.

2008 was the start of a different life, a new city with little to no friends, living on my own and finding my way through dance. I kicked off ’08 with the New Years Swing dance at Dovercourt and what an awesome way to start, and it set the tone for the rest of the year.

Let me put this out now, I had only started dancing Lindy Hop late-spring/early-summer of 2007 with only a small number of lindy classes taught by Jungle Swing in Vancouver. By the time Seattle Lindy Exchange rolled around, I was about 3 months into it. My resolution for 2008 was to expand and train more in swing. This led to a huge growth in my dancing.

’08 Milestones

• 2008 Annual NYE dance
• 3 classes a week with Bees Knees Dance (for 3 months)
• Stompology ’08 in Rochester, NY – May 30th – June 1st
• Soul and Lockin’ class with ShabbaDoo @ Broadway Dance Centre in NYC
• MezzJelly Blues with Jeff Benoit & Kristen O’Neill in Waterloo – June 20-22th
• Kevin St. Laurent guest class for BeesKnees Dance
• LindyStock ’08 in Toronto – Aug 1-4th
• Joined BeesKnees Dance as a Junior/Assistant Instuctor (I’m a male prop)
• Started going back to Salsa/Mambo
• Swing Explosion III with Zack Richard & Maryse Lebeau in Ottawa Sept 26-28th
• Swing Out to Victory – Nov 15th

As for salsa, mid-’08 was when I started to pick up salsa again, this time with mambo/on2. This kicked off with Randy’s multiple visits to Toronto. Randy = more salsa.

• Salsa classes with Frankie Martinez in NYC
• Salsa classes with United Salseros
• Joining the United Salseros student performance group
• Salsa dancing at the Howard Johnson in Vancouver

Just to reminisce a bit. Here are some photos I have found of me dancing in the streets during an extremely hot day in Seattle. Terrible yes, but we all started somewhere :)

Seattle Lindy Exchange ’07

It started with a killer workshop weekend with Mike Faltesek and Casey Schneider from Seattle and shortly after, the Toronto University eXchange 2 which took place last weekend and it was KILLER! Kudos to the students that came from all around to enjoy and take part in the Toronto lindy hop scenes; McGill, Western (UWO), Kingston, Ottawa and of course the local Toronto students (UofT). The highlight of the weekend was the Saturday night dance with Swing Toronto with live music from the Rainbow Gardens Quintet.
The next workshop is in February with Steven Mitchell & Virginie here in Toronto with a few other events coming shortly after. I’m excited with all these lindy events so far, it gets better and better each time which will help improve my dancing.

I’ll probably have a number of posts about this throughout the year so watch out for it.

Next, salsa, my gateway to the world of dance, is something that I have been looking to get back into for the last 2 years. To push myself, I have started performance training with United Salseros with 2 classes a week, one performance training and the other a regular mambo/on2 class. What I have enjoyed with United Salseros is the focus on techniques in the class, mixing body isolations with the steps and patterns as well as control over each move that is made.

I have always believed that all dancing is related and that each borrows ideas and movements from other dancing, thus I will also focus on other aspects of dance in order to help improve. These goals are: More focus on lead/follow connections, more locking and arm movements (maybe wacking), overall body finess.

Finishing off, this year, I would here are a few lindy events that I would like to attend for ’09.

• Frankie’s 95th Birthday Festival (http://www.frankie95.com/) – New York – NY
• LindyBout III Apr 17-19 – Vancouver, BC
• Stomplogy ’09 – Apr 17-19 – Rochester, NY
• Lindyfest 2009 – Mar. 12-15 – Houston, TX
• Camp Jitterbug – May 28-31 – Seattle, WA
• Seattle Lindy Exchange – Aug 7-9th – Seattle, WA
• Lindy Bomb II with Peter Strom & Naomi Uyama – Mar. 6-8 – Ottawa, ON
• Vietnam Lindy Exchange (at a beach!) Mar. 20-22 – Ho Chi Minh, VN
• Canadian Swing Dance Championships (CSC) May 15-18 – Montreal, QC
• Kevin St. Laurent & Emily Hoffberg Lindy Hop Weekend – Jun 5-7 – Toronto, ON
• Swing Out New Hampshire – Sept. 2-7 – Hebron, NH
• Lindy Focus VIII – Asheville, NC

Obviously, I will not make it out to all of them, but ideally, I would like to be there.