Didn’t bring extra flashes or umbrellas this time around as I was in Toronto predominantly for work and had to pack accordingly. I stuck with a fairly light setup of one SB900 with flash bounce card and rented a canvas stand and “vintage” backdrop from Vistek. Putting it all together was a breeze, maybe five minutes tops with some help from two tall peeps (curse of a filipino) to raise the stands as high as it can go. There were a few close calls with the backdrop falling on people but that was because they stepped backwards onto the stands hehe.

An interesting situation happened – my two flash cards were nearing maximum capacity about half way throughout the night. I had to switch from camera RAW files to FINE JPG to squeeze out the last fifty or so photos. I’m not sure what the arguments are for having the photos compress directly to JPG but I was unimpressed with the results. It looks just a bit more washed than I would have liked but I will have to re-test for my next event so I know it’s not actually my post-processing that’s affecting the quality. Still, it was a great option to fall back to when the only alternative was to pack it in.

Till next time.

If there is an important lesson that I learned this year from being a quasi dance organizer is to accept that shit will always hit the fan. Once you accept this fact, it really is quite endearing – like a really bad joke that you haven’t heard in while being used an exactly the right moment that it’s instantly hilarious again.

Here is a really great quote by Carl Beuchner that I have been using for inspiration for the last few months for the Toronto Blues Dances, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This year I really worked on not worrying about things that doesn’t effect the overall awesomeness of your dance. Obviously you always want to learn from those mistakes but it’s not the end of the world if it does happen. What I did work on however is making sure that everybody who comes through the door feels welcomed (and that it’s great to see them again!), the volunteers who help out know they are making the event possible and are actually appreciated instead of being looked on as FREELOADERS, and that the DJs and the musicians who entertain the dancers get positive feedback throughout the night from community.

You would be surprised by how something as easy as telling your friends that if they really liked the music that night to let the people responsible know, can have a profound impact on the rest of the night. Second and third sets immediately have that much more OOMPH to it. Your DJs suddenly feel like they are doing more than just hitting play on their laptop and your musicians really start feeding off the energy of the room.

The same thing goes for your door shift volunteers. Some dances that I have door-shifted for have made me feel like I should be grateful that I’m coming to the dance for free and therefore I should be indebted until my shift is over. That is totally the wrong way to approach any volunteers because they are your first point of contact with dancers coming into your venue. They are the ones who are greeting new dancers to your community, the new dancers who will hopefully continue to come to your venue for years to come. Why treat your most enthusiastic and fanatic community members like a cheap work force?

An event you organize is really an extension of who you are as a person. If you genuinely are passionate about dancing and really care about your community, it will shine through at your dance. You might not open the venue on time and have everyone waiting outside in the freezing cold but I promise you they will walk away telling their friends what a great place it is to dance.

Check out when the phrase in the music changes and how the rest of the crowd gets into the groove. Really fun night at our last blues dance with a fantasmical band as always led by Patrick Tevlin.

Some more clips (but this time on vimeo):

• http://vimeo.com/22774873
• http://vimeo.com/22773750
• http://vimeo.com/22772391

Every two to three weeks, my life transforms into a TLC reality show episode – if I had to pick, probably most like DC Cupcakes. There is usually a seemingly easy enough challenge that I tackle head on with enthusiasm, the moment of anticipated shock when that challenge is… well a challenge, the crisis that usually involves some sort of comedic mishap and eventually a resolution with a bow of a life lesson learned to top it off.

In this episode, my partner in crime, Kevin Sue, went to some random event called “Boston Tea Party” (heh) leaving me to run the blues dance solo. Sounds easy enough right, I’ve run this event a bunch of times now that it’s pretty self sufficient… bzzzzt wrong. No cashbox, no cooler, no water, no car, and no emergency engineer to fix things that break. I found out that I had an alarming lack of knowledge of how audio equipment actually works (I’m good at plugging in my iphone to DJ, that’s about it) and I’m pretty sure that the Hobos outside of Habeebas Dance Studio were multiplying in real time as they smelled my stress level increasing.

Unfortunately, that’s just my personality – I sweat the big stuff, the small stuff, and even the non-stuff stuff (don’t ask). Fortunately, my girl Genevieve (who also taught the lesson last night with me) kept me sane behind the scenes by basically running around town with me doing errands hours before the event and reminding me to chill the eff out. This definitely rings true to me one day after the event as I reckon that even if all the big/small/non-stuff stuff didn’t work out, most likely people would still had had a kick-ass time dancing and partying.

I didn’t need an awesome check-in system form (google docs does rock though) that time stamps when dancers arrive, a piece of scrap paper and pen was more than adequate. Ditto for the cashbox (replacement: plastic tupperware), drinks to sell (replacement: “here’s a cup and a pen to write your name on it”), basic knowledge of audio tech (replacement: “plug in everything until it works”) or even drop-in teachers (replacement: me). Those are just nice to have features at a dance but sometimes you gotta just head back to the essentials. And sometimes, you just need a good old TLC episode to bring it back to what’s important.

At our dance venue on Yonge & Bloor, people mess around with the temperature of the studio all the time. To combat this, Kevin Sue installed a case-lock around the studio thermostat so that you would need a key to open the case to be able to have access to the studio heating system. Great idea in practicality, except when the key is no where to be found. So if you went to the drop-in lesson and live blues dance last night (and why wouldn’t you have gone?) and were sweating buckets, there was a greater force at work :-)

But yah what a night eh? Brian Cober and Aslan Gotov, for their first time playing for us blues dancers in Toronto, were great great great. Everybody was walking up to me throughout the night and asking where I found them. Well, actually, my israeli friend Kim found them but they have been playing in venues all around Toronto for a while now (ie. Grossmans Tavern). If you know more great blues musicians, remember to refer them to me!

I’m a big fan of statistics. It allows me to accurate gauge how many people we will have turn out for our blues dances in Toronto (2nd and 4th fridays of the month) as well as provide a good base when deciding on what to focus on next. Some key milestones in the past six months include actually hiring musicians to play for us, expanding to twice a month dances instead of once a month, and having out-of-town instructors to come and teach workshops. Without accurate record keeping for making decisions, I might have been tempted to attempt to grow too fast and too soon. Nobody likes an poorly attended dance.

There are a number of important stats that have pretty much shaped our blues scene to what is today but none more than the image above. 61% of our dancers in the blues scene are females. 47% percent are females between the ages of 18-34. My goal for this upcoming few months is to make whole wack-load of new dance friends. Male dance friends. A daunting task even for myself, but when there is a will (and the dollars and cents), there is a way.

Which picture doesn’t fit? I’ll give you one guess.

Last Saturday, Toronto and Dovercourt House held a fundraiser for the Frankie Fund (or was it the Frankie headstone?) in celebration of the joy Frankie Manning left for the world. There were bake sales, raffle draws, silent auctions, performances, and taxi dancers for “rent”. Being not really useful in any multi-organizational dance coordination capacity, I volunteered to be one of the taxi dancers whom you can purchase for $3 per dance. Awkward… let me explain.

First, it’s awkward to think that someone will pay money to dance one song with anybody, let alone me. All I want to do is dance with you and I’ll happily dance with you for free. Second, what do you do as a taxi dancer while waiting for someone to hand you a ticket to indicate that they have purchased you for a dance? Awkwardly stand around and scan the room to see if anyone is coming towards you a ticket. Granted, I have epic skills when it comes to social awkwardness but this definitely was a memorable type of awkwardness.

A special shout goes to the wonderful Vicky for being so diligent in organizing all the taxi dancers and a big THANKS to all the great ladies (and one dude) who donated to the Frankie fund (or headstone?). I’ll make sure to find each and everyone who bought tickets for future dances (so you get your money’s worth).

The company line in Toronto has always been, “we are lucky to have so many great live bands”. Well, truth be told, I was not a company man for a very long time. Things are starting to change though and I’m slowly starting to see the light. I just need to look in different avenues and directions.

Two bands that really stand out are Patrick Tevlin & His New Orleans Rhythm and Up Jumped Swing. Both bands will be playing at Toronto’s main lindy dance (Dovercourt @ Saturday nights) in the upcoming month. Check out a clip of Patrick Tevlin and his happy pals playing at Grossmans this holiday weekend: