Melbourne CBD Interviews



Interview


Chris
Dancing for/since:  5 years
Teacher for/since: 2 years (Swing)


A favorite tune Favourite tune?
Allen Toussaint - St James Infermary

One dancing experience you'll never forget:
"Dancing with my wife in AJC and performances. I really enjoy sharing the dance I love and being able to do that with my wife. It's an awesome feeling."

What makes your class a good class to come to?
What makes MY classes good ones? Um... I don't take too many things too seriously, so I try to make my classes fun to be in, if people accidently learn to dance while they're there then I'm doing OK.
Comments by me:
Chris was the second teacher who gave me different times as an answer to one of my first questions. He was only teaching swing for two years. In total he was teaching for 3.5 years. That automatically lead to a follow up question:

What type of dancing were you teaching before Swing?
"I previously taught Modern Jive, the dance that got me dancing before I discovered Swing and Blues.
It's a good dance, I know a lot of people hate it, but it is fun and there's a really nice community in Melbourne as well. People just need to try different things."

Interview


Julia
Dancing for/since: 2008 (Swing)
Teacher for/since: 2010



Swing Patrol Class Melbourne CBD

07/07/2015

 Location: The Exford Hotel (Tuesdays)
199 Russell St, Melbourne

 And it was her again: Julia. The lovely teacher from the blues class last Sunday. She had said to me she was teaching on Tuesdays and I was looking forward to it a lot. 

 The other teacher for the night was Chris, who had filled in for Jarrod, who was not well.

 It was good fun to try them out at the end of the class. What I really liked about this class was the amount of music played and there was enough time to really practice and understand the moves we'd been shown.
Chris and Julia were great together. They were both so enthusiastic about dancing that there was no way that was not going to reflect on to everyone else in the room.

We had good lessons on '6 beat Lindy' and 'West Coast Swing' which was first time I’d been taught this style and I really enjoyed it. 

 We learnt some cool little variations too which everyone could build in individually or together. It was great fun to try these out at the end of the class.

Blues Night Interviews

Interview


Julia
Dancing for/since:  2008 (Swing)
Teacher for/since: 2008 (Swing)




A favorite tune Favourite tune?
'One Night Stand' - Artie Shaw

One dancing experience you'll never forget:
When Julia was danicng in Sydney she came across an awkward guy, a strange dancer. At some point when they were dancing together, she added some variations to her dancing. When her strange partner noticed them he stopped dancing immediately and told her to stop doing that and kept repeating "I'm the star! I'm the star!!"
Hm, I think that would be a moment not to forget for me either :-)!!

What makes your class a good class to come to?
"Enthusiasm." she said. "I see what's needed and address it quickly in class."
I can only agree...

 Comments by me:
As Julia was the first teacher I talked to that is from another country (at least that I know of), I asked her a little bit more about herself and how comes that she lives in Australia.

Julia has been in Australia for over 10 years. She came over for uni, fell in love with the country and her now husband and just stayed. 

 Australia is her home. In Germany she feels like an outsider. Julia has been a Swing dancer since 2008 but has been dancing for much longer than that. She couldn't even remember for how long. It all started with Ballroom. That's something you'll notice about her straight away. She must have been dancing for a very long time and just loves every second of it :-).  

 Beautiful. All the best :-).

Interview


Joel
Dancing for/since:   10 years
Teacher for/since:  6 years



Swing Patrol Class Blues Night

05/07/2015

Location: The Exford Hotel (Sundays)
199 Russell St, Melbourne

I made 'Blues Night' my Sunday evening plan. Adrian, one of my friends from dancing had invited me along for a belated birthday dance. That was just perfect as I wanted to try a blues class anyway after I had a go at the Christchurch Swing Festival and really enjoyed myself. 

The first thing I noticed about the class was the really good atmosphere when I came in. It was a nice little group all ready to dance the 'blues'. They all seemed quite familiar with each other and joked around a lot. 

 The teachers for tonight were Joel and Julia. Joel I'd seen around and been to some of his classes but I'd never met Julia and she was mentioned to me before as we do have two things in common: our name and nationality :).

I liked her straight away. She has this really good energy and happiness about her. It was a lovely class and I felt very welcome as a newbie. We learnt a few nice basic blues moves that could be combined and played around with at the end of the class. 
More dancers had shown up for the social dancing by the time we finished. I was asked to dance by one of the dancers in the class and really enjoyed dancing with him. He was a very good lead and it just worked well. I tried not to think too much about the fact that I wasn't sure what to do. I tried to just feel the music and go with it and that's what I ended up doing all night. 

I really felt like a glass of wine with the music at some point. That's exactly what I did in Christchurch and it took me even deeper into that lovely relaxed feeling. I saw some bottles of wine around the tables so I wasn't the only one it seemed.

There was a difference between the Christchurch night and the Sunday night in Melbourne though. In Christchurch I knew I could just call my lovely friend Jeremy to pick me up any time.


All I had to do was just jump in the car and out again, whereas back here, in reality I'd just lost my job and had this agreement with myself to spend as little money as possible by not taking any trams any more or buying drinks.



My lovely bike friend Barry was downstairs in the pub waiting for me but I knew that wine wouldn't make it easier to cycle home uphill in one gear for half an hour after the music had stopped :). 

Therefore I kept enjoying the dancing with really good blues dancers without wine and I still had an amazing time.

The only strange thing that happened was that one dancer who'd ask me to dance, half into the song just went: "Do you want to lead?". I responded: "I've never lead." He then just switched the position, closed his eyes and said: "You can start now." I kind of pushed him back and forward a bit not really sure what I was doing and wasn't too unhappy when the song finished. 

That was my first blues lesson experience and I'm sold. I want more :-)!

Alicia


From the first time I wrote to the 'Swingtown Rebels' I was in touch with Alicia. She answered all my questions about payments from overseas and the locations of the venues patiently. I felt very welcome from my first email :-).

"Just a cool photo, showing all the energy at a dance :) (from Portland Lindy Exchange 2 years ago)"

When she found out I was coming over from Melbourne with no clue where I was going and how to get back to my friend's place in Huntsbury late at nights, she made a real effort to help me out with contacts.

I already liked her a lot from the way she was writing to me before we even met :-).

It was a pleasure to meet Alicia in person in Christchurch and we had a nice chat while I was on my volunteer shift on the last night. There was no doubt she was the one that could help me out with some answers about the 'Swingtown Rebels'. 

Not only that though, I wanted to find out a little bit more about herself too. Here her answers to my questions we exchanged again via email when I was back in Aussie:
"Me and Michael a few years ago we did a "Bear necessities" routine - which kind of sums up what I love about lindy hop - tons of fun, fairly ridiculous at times, and impossible not to be happy!"
How long have you been dancing?

 4 and a half years

 How did you come across swing dancing?

A guy in my office used to play in a swing band that played for the Swingtown Rebels every 6 weeks and used to always nag me to come along, and I was always like "oh yeah, some day..." then I ran out of excuses and went, and thought "wow, that's awesome...but I could never do that". But I was intrigued, so after several months of going to the 6 weekly band nights I started taking classes.

 What's a dancing experience you'll never forget?

That's hard! The cool thing about dancing is there are so many of those moments! I have to say that the Sunday morning at Canberrang last year dancing out in the sun with a live band and a bunch of crazy folk in animal onesies (reinstated my bear suit!) was one of my happy moments!

Or pretty much everything at Pocket Change last year - it was so much fun! Ooh no, I know! It was always my main motivation for learning to lead so I can dance with my little sister - and this year I convinced her to start dancing and went over to Hullabaloo in Perth where she lives and had so much fun dancing and hanging out with her.

 How do you fit into the picture of the Swingtown Rebels :-)?

I've been involved for a while in organising the weekly classes, and am on the committee for running our exchanges.






Swingtown Rebels

Alicia was the one I've been in touch the most before and around my time in Christchurch. She told me a little bit more about the 'Swingtown Rebels', I'd like to share:
How long have you guys been around and who set them up? Swingtown Rebels as it currently is was started by Becky Collett and Sarah James (they're sisters) in November 2010, taking over from the existing Hepcat Swing school which their parents Jeff and Debi has started some years before, bringing swing dancing to Christchurch.

Who was organising the event? Any names I must not forget to mention :-)? 

 We have an events committee (Becky, me, Andrew, Maud, Angela, Shona, Lissy), who did most of the legwork. But there were also heaps of other people who helped out before and during the weekend - everyone is super supportive and willing to pitch in, which helps make our events feel so friendly and fun!

 Who was responsible for the amazing performances?

We have a bit of a culture in Christchurch and Timaru of putting together amazing showcases - whether it's a massive team one (the Timaru one "Diamonds" had 22 members, and some had only been dancing for a few weeks!), or a pair or solo routine. So credit goes to all the people that danced in them or put them together. 

  Special mention though, to Lenard Smythe who wrote the two Timaru routines (he always writes incredible showcases), and Sarah James and Jess McLachlan who won the small showcase category with their "Swingtown Rebelettes", wrote the "Fe fi fo fummers" performance from our performance troupe, and also put together the special performance on Friday night with dancers from several different cities!

 Is there a performance group (or more?) (What's their name/s?) 

 We have two performance troupes, who don't have names yet (ideas welcomed!) - one is called "Performance troupe" and the other is called "Development performance troupe." Timaru also has a crew of dancers who pull out really epic routines every year.

How many hours practise time for some of the performances for the Chch Swing Festival? 

 Can't speak for all of them, except to say "lots!".

Anything else you like to share :-)?? 

 Thanks for coming!! It's what really makes our events special and fun to have out of towners (or out of country visitors!). And now that Christchurch Swing Festival is over we're right back into the swing of things organising Pocket Change Exchange which is our biggest event of the year - New Zealand's only social only exchange over 6 nights (30th September - 5th October) and it's gonna be a blast!! Maybe see you there...?

Christchurch Swing Festival - The Final Day

Sunday arrived quite quickly and started with one hour sleep in for everyone to be ready for the first class at 11am. I’m sure everyone could do with that extra hour after all that dancing but nobody was too tired for more :-).

My schedule included two more ‘all lindy level classes’ with some good variations on swing outs. There were also blues classes and aerial classes happening in the other room, which people got very excited about. For this festival I had decided to focus on my basic Lindy Hop but listening to some conversations I’ll so give blues a go. From what I heard the Melbourne teachers did quite well and must have given really good classes on that.

The very last class on the list was called ‘soft shoe for lindy hoppers’, and was held by Tina. What a great class :-)! Tina explained beautifully that it wasn’t a tap dancing class as she was not an actual tap dancing teacher. Soft shoe dancing is a related to stap dancing but danced in soft-soled shoes, the way tap dancing actually started. Tina did a real good job teaching different steps and slights. Everyone had a lot of fun. I’m not sure if it’s possible to not enjoy Tina’s classes. She always brings so much positive energy into them and time just flies by. 
The very last event was the ‘black and white Sunday Night’ at the ‘Boo Radley's’, a real nice bar with yummy food on the menu. It had the perfect atmosphere for the night with only a little light and a cosy setup. Half the place was booked for us.

Pretty much everyone got there early and had some dinner. The tables were there to eat when people arrived and were then moved off the actual dance floor for the night to start.

Not long after I arrived it was time for my volunteer shift. That meant sitting for a whole 30 minutes by the door to say hello to people and send all swing dancers to the left and all non-dancers to the right. Isn’t it lovely that so many people signed up to volunteer that it got a little tricky to fit everyone in. I was very happy about the 30 minutes for which I earned my volunteer chocolate .

After a few warm up dances the band arrived and the evening could begin. The atmosphere turned all mellow with the first tone of the music. The 'Devilish Mary and the Holy Rollers' were just amazing!
All dancers looked really smart in black and white and fitted the ambience perfectly. I got the vibe that everyone was just relaxed and enjoying the music and the dance. Having warmed up all weekend the dancing looked really smooth all around me. That’s at least what I was thinking while holding my glass of white wine watching the dance floor :-). 

The big acknowledgement speech was not left out of course :-). Appreciation was given from the organisers to the teachers and everyone else. Then back from the teachers to the organisers and from everyone to everyone with a long warm applause. Well deserved :-)!!



I’d never danced blues before. To be honest when I’d watched people or heard the music, I never really felt like this was for me as it was so slow. 

Having watched the really good blues dancers during the championships left me quite impressed though and when I was asked that night to dance ‘blues’ I just gave it a go. It kind of helped when I was assured I could not make any mistakes :-).

I just went along with it in between the lindy hop and need to say I really enjoyed it and couldn’t have felt more relaxed and better by the end of the evening.

What a perfect last night, what a perfect weekend :-)! Thanks so much Swingtown Rebels Christchurch! I had the best time!

Justus


As the Christchurch Festival was flying by I never had the chance to sit with Justus for long enough to ask him my questions in person. That's probably a good thing as it would mean we had to cut down our time on the dance floor and who would have wanted that :-)??!

 We exchanged contact details though and I sent him an email with some questions I'd come up with combined with things I remembered from talking to him. I meant to organise it all nicely after he had filled them in but to be honest, I do like it the way it is. Enjoy :-)!

Questions:
So, let me put down what I still remember ;-):
You are originally from Germany but moved to NZ with the age of 6, right?

Yeah, that's pretty much right. Technically I was 5 as we arrived two weeks before my sixth birthday. I come from the South-West of Germany (Schwabenländle) near the Lake of Constance.
How come your parents moved to NZ? (I wish my parents would have had that idea!! ;-))

 Well, the main motivation was actually Chernobyl. My parents weren't too impressed with what happened there and wanted a somewhat safer place to raise their family. New Zealand was clean, green, nuclear-free, and at that time, reasonably easy to get in to. Still, seems kinda crazy that we ended up moving to the country that's the furthest away from Germany in the world. Ah well, don't think I'm gonna complain.

What’s your earliest memory of NZ?


Hmm... When we first arrived we lived in a cabin in a camping ground that was beside one of the beaches near Auckland (can't remember which exact one). I remember us watching "Duck Tales" and also the fact that there were a lot of peacocks. I remember being very impressed with watching the peacocks as they fanned out their tails. Kinda random things to remember but anyhoo.

You said you were a musician…
When did you start playing music?

 I think I started playing recorder when I was 6, violin when I was 7 and German Tenorhorn when I was 8.

 What instruments do you play?


I play the violin, viola, cello (just need to learn the double bass so I can play the whole string family!), German Tenorhorn, Trombone, Guitar Ukulele, and I have some basic skills on instruments like piano, bass guitar and drums. Oh and I guess singing counts as an instrument. Just about forgot, but since rehearsing for the routine for Christchurch Swing Festival I also play trumpet!

 Do you have a favourite?


In terms of sound, I really like the cello, but guitar and violin are the instruments I use the most.

 Have you always liked Jazz?

 I didn't really grow up with jazz but started getting into it when I joined the school jazz band at high school.


How did you come across Swing dancing?
You’ve been dancing for 3 years, right?

 I was first introduced to swing dancing back in 2009 (I think?). I was back in Timaru (where I grew up), and I was invited to come to swing dancing as some of my friends from high school were doing it. I really enjoyed it but only did a few lessons as I was only back for a few weeks. I got a job in Timaru in mid-2012 so when I moved I decided I was keen to get into swing dancing plus it was a good way to catch up with old friends and meet new ones.

 For how long have you been part of the performance group in Timaru?

 Not sure when I did my first competitions but I think it was in 2013.
How long were you practicing to get the performance all right for the championships :-)?

 Umm... Not too sure, but definitely a few months, 2-3 times a week. Most of those sessions would be longer than an hour. Yeah, quite a bit of work goes into it. There were a few stressful times as we have all been very busy outside of dancing as well over the past few months. Ah well, we seem to have pulled it off alright and for that we are thankful and feel quite blessed.

 Who wrote the performance and do you want to tell me a little bit about the dance scene in Timaru?
Lenard Smyth choreographed our winning routine. He's also the one who set up SwingKatz in Timaru and our main teacher. There is a good group of teachers/advanced dancers who all help out to make sure the club runs as smoothly as possible. We do lessons on Thursday night but have been experimenting with different ideas to get more dancing happening beyond just Thursday.
What’s a dancing experience you’ll never forget? Could be a moment, sad, funny, an event…
Ha, hard to pinpoint one in particular as there have been plenty of good times. One of the most memorable would probably be Windy Lindy 2013 (Wellington, NZ). Just mind-boogling amazing to see so many good dancers and Jamin Jackson and Sonia Ortega were the best teachers ever. I love Jamin's style, just so relaxed but also smooth and creative.

Have you travelled to go to dancing events apart from this festival in Christchurch? If so, where to or are you planning on?

Yeah, I've been to Christchurch for a few things over the years and have also been to the Windy Lindy festival in 2013 and 2014. We are hoping to take a team up to Windy Lindy 2015 this year again and hopefully we'll be able to defend the title of the winning routine that we won last year.

























Christchurch Swing Festival - A Day Full Of Classes And The South Island Championships

I found Burnside High School without any problems after a nice bus ride on a sunny day. Well, I need to say thanks to Jeremy at this point for putting me on the right bus and for walking me to the bus stop too. Another thank you goes to the driver for telling me when to jump off and to the nice man by the car reading the map for me pointing out where to turn into from the bus stop. Back to no smart phone while travelling so I’m proud I made it on time with almost no help at all ;-).
More and more dancers showed up. In daylight wearing rather dull clothes I now recognised about 40% of them from the night before :-).

I picked up a lot from the ‘all level lindy classes’ I had in the morning. The lunch break was good fun too. I got lost in the good company of another tourist trying to find a place to eat by ‘just walking down the street and have a look’ :-). We should’ve checked our welcome packs! They included a nicely prepared map with all food places highlighted with little stars :-). Oh well! We didn’t end up hungry though as some of the more organised dancers brought us back food after an emergency phone call.

After lunch all of a sudden there was a different crowd in my class. I didn’t worry about it much though. The first move was called out, shown once and everyone nailed it, except me!! Hmm… ok. I was thinking it could be me being a bit slow. 5 minutes later I got it but by then we’d moved on with 3 more moves, all built on top of that first one. I was completely lost and then found myself in a ‘spare follow gap’ as well, which didn’t help. 

Kiwi teachers Dave and Emma
Also my stupid nose wouldn’t stop running and my head was sore, so I moved back slowly and sat down to watch the others. I remember I had read about advanced classes for very experienced dancers and teachers. I also remembered to try my best not to book any of those :-). I sneaked over to lovely Angela (one of the organisers) who was preparing something in a corner of the room. I told her and she said there must have been some sort of mistake and sent me over to the ‘all level lindy class’ in another room.

I joined in for the last minutes and found out afterwards that they’d tried to even out the numbers in the classes and I was mistaken for a dancer from Auckland with the same name. It’s a good name I must say and I’m flattered :-). To be honest, for my sore head and throat it was probably good to have a bit of a rest. The advantage of having been to both classes was that I collected the very first advanced move plus a couple of little variations from the other class :-).

Exactly like Jeremy predicted I’d made more friends by the end of the day and was looked after well. I was invited back to Bob’s house to get ready for the big night. Bob is just lovely and a local dancer. He is also one of the hosts for the festival and was looking after the green Dunedin dancer Matt. Not only that, Bob was also taking part in the South Island Championships that were about to take place. He was in the category for dancers that had been dancing under one year. 

We made it back from Bob’s to the ‘Salsa Latina’ just in time for the Championships. I didn’t feel too bad at all after a hot shower and some food holding a glass of wine in my hand ready for the show. 

To be honest, I’d pictured the South Island championships to be slightly different. A bit more like you’d think of the South European Championships I guess. Those would probably include hundreds of dancers from all sorts of countries competing. It had slipped my mind that not that many people live on the South Island. There are just over one million actually.

So it happened that the same dancers competed in different categories, wearing different outfits. Little breaks were needed sometimes, so the costumes could be changed and a few deep breaths taken. I was just so impressed! They must have practiced for so long doing all that!

It was just a great show! Amazing performances in all categories! They were very different to anything else I’d seen before. Some were almost like a play or musical, done to the lyrics of the songs or better the song picked for the performances. There was some humor in them too. I think I might have even got some of that despite being German :-)!

Amongst the group performers some of the dancers had come all the way from Timaru :-). They pulled quite an impressive group performance and got a lot of applause! I chatted to one of the performers afterwards. His name is Justus, who had a funny role as a burglar in the show. After chatting for a bit, I made him ‘the interesting dancer to talk to’ for this festival. You can read more about him later on. 

It was my cold again that made me skip the blues late night party to get some sleep and recovery. I heard only the best things about it the next day though :-).

Here more photos of the winners :-):

Christchurch Swing Festival - A Colourful Start

It’s time to tell you about my awesome weekend in Christchurch! It couldn’t have been better.

Well, in some ways maybe. I’m thinking of the moment on the plane when I discovered that my toothpaste had come out in my hand bag! Unfortunately it left the most mess on the pretty little red flower I was going to wear in my hair to look beautiful while dancing :-).


 The other thing was that I started coming down with a cold the night before I was off to catch my flight. Litres of tea and lemon with ginger wouldn’t get rid of it. Therefore I made sure to take all the ‘lemsips’ I had left from my last cold to make it through the weekend.


That’s it though, only good things from now on :-)!


The first night social dancing had a funny theme: ‘Rubic Cube Party’. Everybody had to dress in as many colours as possible and swap any item after a dance to get closer to wearing one colour only. It said specifically on the program it would be best not to wear anything you don’t want to lose.

Makes perfect sense and I LOVE dressing up! I was just a bit worried about my situation as a traveler. I’d actually bought a couple of tops to have enough to cover 3 days of dancing without having to do some washing :-).

Nothing really to worry about though. The answer was simply op-shop :-)! My good friend Jeremey who hosted this excited swing dancing girl over the weekend took me to a real big one! We had so much fun picking accessories! We spent only a few dollars and walked out with sparkling red glasses, different coloured scarves, spotted ties and some pink fishnet gloves. I got right in the mood creating my outfit in combination with some of Andrea’s clothes she had just sorted out. Andrea is Jeremy’s lovely housemate.

When I first arrived at the venue I didn’t see any colourful people around as I got there a bit early. What I did see through the door though was 3 of the teachers and ‘Echoes of Harlem’ members from Melbourne, who turned out to be the international teachers … How cool is that :-)? This had to be good.
Melbourne teachers Tina, Noni and Jarrod
A few minutes later a lot of people showed up all dressed really silly or converted themselves into colourful individuals in front of my eyes. There were also extra items in a box everyone could help themselves to. I got to chat to a few people and it seemed that whoever I asked where they had come from said: “Dunedin”. 



                



There was quite a big group of them and from the next day it was easy to tell who was part of that as they were wearing awesome handmade ‘dancing dinosaur t-shirts!’Looking down at myself I’d just decided to collect blue when all of us were welcomed and found out that in our welcome pack was a little piece of paper with the colour we had to chase after. More of a challenge that way :-)! I had a look and found a green scrap of paper. I looked around and there weren’t that many green items available but I did my best catching dances with people who were green in some way :-). 


After a couple of dances I couldn’t help but notice Matt (one of the Dunedin people), who was already almost there! He had even managed to put a tight bright green pair of leggings or trousers or whatever they were over his jeans. That looked interesting but helped the green picture tremendously and reminded me a little bit of St. Patrick’s Day for some reason :-).

Anyway, from when I first saw green Matt I kind of gave up on the green and danced for other colours or just for the sake of it :-). We got to see great outfits during the night and it wasn’t easy to vote for the winner. A very creative white outfit made it in the end. 
That wasn’t it though. There was still the neon after party to come. Being a Melbourne girl at the moment I wasn’t wearing anything more than ¾ leggings and a dress with only a couple of the accessions I had left from dancing. 

 Let’s put it this way: It was FREEZING outside! My bright idea to find those warm looking green leggings anywhere amongst the leftovers wouldn’t work out and having that silly cold didn’t help either :-(. Brrrrrr!!!…



Luckily I was given a lift to the next ‘Salsa Latina’, which is a lovely little dance studio but wasn’t the warmest place that night. The key was simply dancing, dancing and dancing :-). The DJ competition definitely helped to get me off my chair.

It’s quite funny that all of a sudden I found it very hard to tell who I’d met before as wigs, hats, scarves and a lot of layers had been removed by most dancers. I had to stop introducing myself to avoid more: “but we’ve danced earlier.” :-). I still looked the same though and was happy about any layer left :-).

Sickly me had to leave the after party a little early and was already in bed by 2am to still be alive for a day full of classes in front of me.
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