Anna

Another very cool person I met at the Swing Festival in Christchurch is Anna. She is the one that came up with the idea for all Dunedin dancers to show up in their own dino t-shirts. Not only that though, she actually made them herself! 

I got in touch with her after the festival and she was happy to answer some questions about herself and the cool dino idea.

I enjoyed a lot to find out a bit more about her and I'm sure, you will too :-)

So... tell us a little bit about yourself ...

In real life I'm a rocket scientist (worked on Orion, the next deep space vehicle for human exploration, the past 8 years developing the fault protection and response systems needed to recover autonomously from a failure). 

I like doing abstract photography and have always needed some creative outlet :).

My dance background is Blues! It's a dance that just gets better and better with technique.

(It all makes sense now! You'd know what I mean if you watched Anna on the dance floor when a Blues song is played.)

Swing ...

I've been dancing since 2011 when my friend finally got me to start going to his Blues lessons. Got easily hooked as I can listen to Blues and never get tired of it and it's variations (fusion).

In Denver I kept going Blues dancing and hadn't made the time to start Lindy or West Coast. Since there's not much of a Blues scene here I took the opportunity to finally get started on learning swing.

I've been in Dunedin for little over two months now. I was traveling around the South Island and came back to Dunedin for the Swing Festival and a job teaching a STEM focus program to a girls high school for a month.

And how come you are part of the Swing scene in Dunedin now?

I only started swing, Lindy hop, after arriving in NZ. Probably around March. When a mutual friend got me in touch with a swing dancer in Christchurch. I love dancing communities and started going to their Lindy nights in between car searching.

I met part of the Dunedin crew at the Omaru Jazz Festival. So much fun! At that point I was still dancing 'fake' Lindy (just trying to follow without knowing the steps).

Why dinos?
So why Dino's? For some reason a couple of us in Dunedin started mimicking animals in some of our goof off dances. Had some chicken and T-Rex moves that brought a lot of laughter :-). There was a 'Dinos In Space' party a friend hosted and my friend and I made dino tails. We started musing what kind of dance a T-Rex would dance ... It'd be Balboa (had just learned some basics)! Thought it was too cute not to try to make shirts to go with our dino tails.

I made a stencil from a plastic folder and painted them by hand. Each Dino has different stripes and spots since I had to hand trace the outlines anyway. 

The shirts were such a big hit at the party and subsequent swing dances in Dunedin that I offered to make some for people going to the Christchurch Swing Festival. 

I've helped out with some screen printing designs for a kickball team I was on but never gone through and made my own from scratch. Bit of an experiment but lots of fun.

Thanks Anna! Great job :-)

North Melbourne Interviews

Interview


Nial
Dancing for/since:  4 years
Teacher for/since: 1,5 years




A favorite tune Favourite tune?
'All The Cats Join in' as it's a great song to dance shag to. Although The California Feetwarmers are one of my favourite dancing bands at the moment.

One dancing experience you'll never forget:
A dancing experience I'll never forget is watching my original Shag teachers, Glenn and Rachel, dancing some social shag. They were so fluid and smooth in their movements.

Photo by Fudz Quazi

What makes your class a good class to come to?
I think Annabelle and myself are able to go in depth for both the lead and follow technique so that both roles are always learning something. We always make sure that we're giving feedback and advice to both roles.

(Annabelle and Nial run monthly Shag classes. But at North Melbourne both Julia and Nial were filling in for Kara and Keith, who normally teach that class)

Comments by me:
Nial is hasn't been teaching for that long. It was a special situation with him because no one was teaching a dedicated series of Shag classes. He became a teacher because he was passionate about the dance and wanted to see more of it.

You can't miss that if you watch him dancing the Shag

Interview


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

Swing Patrol Class North Melbourne

08/07/2015

Location:
Czech House
497 Queensberry St North Melbourne (Wednesdays)

It was 'Julia day' again today. She was filling in at North Melbourne tonight too.She welcomed me with a big smile and a "hello, I see you every day of this week!"

That was very true and I had no problem at all with it as I've been enjoying her classes a lot.

I also liked the fact that it was Nial this time she was teaching with. I'd met Nial many times and danced with him at all sorts of social events.

It was always good fun and I only found out by chance that he was a teacher when I watched him dancing 'Shag' and said to someone, "wow, he’s good at that!" That’s when I was told, "he’s the 'Shag' teacher!"

This was my first class with him and I was looking forward to it.

The level 2 class was really good, we learnt variations for swing outs, that worked well and looked good.

 
I again liked the fact that Julia looked around and always seemed to pop up at the right moment if somebody needed some help or had a question. That way it really made the moves sink in.

The second class for that night was the 'Shag level 1'. Perfect. I hadn't done much 'shagging' but knowing the basic step made me just the right level to fit in as the 'Shag' classes had been going on for a little while.

I had so much fun with this one. Nial is not only a good dancer but also a good teacher and I could tell that everyone around had just as much fun :-). We left the class with quite a few fun little 'Shag' moves we all tried during social dancing afterwards.