Monday, June 30, 2008

Flash Dance: The hatchlings spread their wings

Since Martha hasn't blogged about it yet, I'd like to report:

There wasn't an "official" caller at the flash dance last night. And since (wo)man does not live by waltz alone, the hatchlings stepped up (literally.) Each of us called a dance or two (I called the only one I know.) Martha pulled off The Levi Jackson Rag in spite of the claim by someone who shall remain unnamed that "that dance never works." Even with a fair number of first time dancers we were able to "leave one, pass one, get one" with style.

It wasn't a perfect venue -- doing a hey between those posts was a bit, er, intimate, but it came mighty close. Even the St. Louis weather cooperated.

Dale

5 comments:

Reida said...

I'd like to say thanks to Martha for getting me on this blog.

Having many dancers who can call is great for the group. Not only does it lend variety, it makes us all better dancers.

Call on. May the best dance be danced.

Reida

Unknown said...

I have to say I am impressed by our dancers! From where I stood, it looked as if every group of ten got all the way through the Levi Jackson Rag without problems! That was forty people, folks.

Kudos indeed to Dale, and Joe, and David and Bob and...and to me! I "just happened" to bring my cards, but no one else did, and yet dances were called. Mac, bless his heart, could have called, but begged off - and I'm sure he did it to create a calling vacuum that we rushed to fill. Yay!

Thanks also to Dan Klarmann who came up with the brilliant idea of hooking up an iPod to an FM broadcaster. I think if we had two boomboxes next time, we could get the music to the ends of the lines by tuning them both to the iPod's frequency. His original idea was to give each set of dancers a cheap radio, so you'd get the music beamed straight to you, so you and your partner could hear it, but we wouldn't be disturbing the neighbors since the radios wouldn't be very loud. I still want to try that one.

And, of course, thanks again to Greg Rohde for getting us all there, and for bringing his boombox and Waltz compilations.

M
E

mac said...

Of course - the ultimate extension of the FM transmitter would be that each dancer brings their own MP3 with built in FM radio and we all dance with no music outside our individual headsets. We actally did something similar years ago whe we did the NBC TV show - but only the men had the in-ear receivers.

Dale Wilson said...

What a cool idea, Mac. Imagine what it would be like to watch a dance when only the dancer's could hear the music. You could play your own music in your mind, or just listen to the rhythmic stamp of their feet and wonder....

Unknown said...

Is this our updated version of "marching to the beat of a different drummer"?