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505 Stomp is Albuquerque’s only Lindy Hop camp; featuring some of the world’s finest instructors, classes for all levels, fun competitions, great social dancing, late nights, live music and more!
http://www.505stomp.com/

European Swing Dance Championships presents: Lindy Hop Bloopers from Sharon Davis on Vimeo.

I was very honored this year to be able to teach and perform at the event this year. The classes were amazing and I got a chance to perform a modified version of a chair routine, Crazy As A Loon Can Be click here to see it, with my buddy Nick Williams. It has nothing to do with Lindy Hop but this routine definitely challenged us as dancers.

We also had some fun times in the photo both with the boys and my new suit!

This year I was honored to again be invited to teach, judge, and compete in some of the contest of the weekend. Here are some of the videos from the weekend, enjoy!

This is the Invitational Strictly Lindy Hop contest. I was fortunate to dance with the lovely and talented Gaby Cook. We are second in the line up…

Next is the Invitational Jack & Jill Lindy Hop contest. Here the leads draw the name of a follow and are judged on how well they are able to dance together. I drew the amazing Kelly Arsenault.

But oh no, the fun doesn’t end there, then we had to choose a song at random from the eras of the 70s, 80s, and 90s… We choose the 90s, here was the resulting dance!

This year Mikey Pedroza and Nikki Marvin performed a brand new routine entitled Moonglow. This is our brand of slow dancing and it involves a lot fun and trust! Lindy Hop? Blues? Or just something we made up? Either way , enjoy!

Secret Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MGGT5Z2VcI&feature=related

The Great Southwest Lindyfest, or just Lindyfest as its known today, is a workshop and social dance weekend created to inspire and help others grow with in their own dancing of the Lindy Hop. Workshop classes run all day with some of the best Lindy Hop and Jazz dance instructors of the past and present. But the event is centered around one person in particular, the ambassador of Lindy Hop, Frankie Manning. Unfortunately we lost our legend and mentor in 2009, but in even though Frankie has passed on, his spirit is very much alive and strong in each an every person that walks out onto the dance floor and calls them selves a Lindy Hopper.

This tradition has played on from the first year of Lindyfest all the way to today with each instructor at this years event honoring Frankie by dedicating a class to the lessons they learned from the legend, mentor, and lover of life, Frankie Manning.

This year Nikki and I were invited to Lindyfest as featured performers during the Friday night and Saturday night shows. The first number was Nikki and I’s newest piece entitled, Georgia Swing Shift. This was one of the best and hardest pieces we have brought up to the people. And this time it was three times more exciting because we were performing in front of the living legends of Jazz dance performers of Chazz Young, Dawn Hampton and Steven Mitchell. With our nerves on fire and hearts pounding out of our chests we show the past generations what have to contribute to the legacy of lindy hop!

The next was a collaborative effort by the members of our swing and jazz dance group, Hot Club Stomp. Since not all the members of the group could make it to Houston we decided to change the routine up a bit and make it fit for 2 couples. And add in one Jo Hoffberg, of the fabulous Killer Dillers, as our special guest. One part smooth Los Angeles style swing inspired by the dancers of the 1930s and 1940s. And another part just all out free for all swing, jazz, lindy hop, or what ever it takes to get it done, dancing. This piece really flies high!

Thank you so much to each and everyone of the dancers that attended this years Houston Lindyfest it was truly a memorable and magical moment for us. And a very special thank you to Larry and Mariah and the rest of the Houston Swing Dance Society peoples for the invitation to perform for everyone at Lindyfest this year! We wont soon forget it and hope to see you again next year in Houston again.

For those of you that attended the workshops, here is the run through for the classes. If you didn’t attend you don’t have to look away but you can watch and maybe learn some new things! Here is the over views of 5 out of the 8 classes of the weekend.

For those of you that noticed the Soul dancing class review, I assure you that there was much more to that class then just a few moves. We run that class like a 2 hour party, its seriously one of the funnest classes we get to teach. I will talk more about that in another post. But in short we found a great way to actually and constructively teach others to dance to Soul music.

And lastly Nikki and I debuted a new demo routine of solo dancing. Using a part of the jazz routine the Trankey Doo, some comedy, add a little pose at the end and you got all of the elements you need for a pretty hot routine. Enjoy!

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