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 :-)