Monday notes

Today was kinda ho-hum, until evening time. I worked most the day, then left around 3 o'clock to get a massage. That was my post-dance-midterms-and-hip-hop-performance treat to myself. It was so wonderful I fell asleep! Total relaxation.

It's nice to get some extra hours in during breaks, but good grief I hate sitting around all day. I left work in a zombie-like fog (I think I've complained about this in previous posts... sorry to be redundant, but I'm just not cut-out for an all-day desk job). I was glad the evening entailed some dancin' because I needed to get the blood flowin'!

Tonight my swing troupe organized a taping of the shim sham, which is a traditional jazz line dance done way back in the big band days, which we'll submit to the Frankie95 crew, in hopes that we'll make it into the compilation video.

Okay, let me back up and explain a few things... first, Frankie95 is the name of a big swing, jazz and Lindy Hop dance event that's going to take place in New York City in May. It's to celebrate the 95th birthday of Frankie Manning, one of the Lindy Hop pioneers from the 1930's. Mr. Manning is still alive and swingin' at 95! He is one of my dance heroes - talk about inspiring. Anyway, the organizers of the event deemed tonight a global shim sham night, and they put out a call to any and all swing communities to tape themselves doing the shim sham and send it in. The organizers will then put together a compilation video and premier it at the event.

My swing crew decided to play along. We (well, I didn't participate in the planning, but I was one of the actors/dancers) did this "restaurant" scene where some of us were sitting at cafe tables, and suddenly we pushed the tables and chairs aside, all the other dancers flooded into the room, and we all started dancing. Then we broke out into the shim sham! It was quite fun. Everyone who normally comes out to our Monday swing nights was there. We emailed the scene ahead of time to let them know that tonight was a vintage theme, so come dressed in your old-school duds. We did about three takes. It was a good time!

It was fun getting all prettied up vintage 40's style. I haven't donned my faux pearls, high-waisted skirt and hair rolls for awhile. I stayed for a bit after the taping to just dance, too... I miss just dancing. [There are definitely things I don't miss about the scene, though, but that's a another blog for another day...]

Anywho... as soon as the "directors" of the music video finish editing and such, they'll post it on our website and YouTube. I'll be sure to post a link to the shim sham shenanigans here, too.

Now I must finish putting away the mound of vintage clothes piled upon my bed so I can go to bed (I could not decide what to wear!), and the bathroom is a mess of makeup, hot rollers, and bobby pins (vintage hair and makeup is quite labor-intensive), so I'm signing off. G'nite!