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from L-Jay:

Update: Erlend and I are unable to come this Friday – Erlend is working and I can’t get a babysitter. But you guys have fun and tell me all about it in Monday. Also, this Monday will be our last dance night for the year as we have to finish early – so… lets make it count!

Cheers.

And here is a very boring but thorough Swing Out lesson:

Practise, practise, practise!

We hope you’ve had a great Easter holiday.

We are going to do the last course before semester break. This course will start next Monday night, 19th of April, from 19:30 @DRIV. The course will run for four weeks – the fifth Monday will be Syttende Mai (May 17) Norway’s National Day.

The dance that we have chosen is a new dance never been taught before – the Lindy Hop. The Lindy Hop is the original Swing. It developed in America from the 1920s and has survived each era with new spin-off Swings (that you might have heard before) – the Jive, the Boogie Woogie, the Blues Swing, East Coast Swing and West Coast Swing – not to mention every other Swing out there.

This dance requires a little commitment so we will be dedicating the two hours of our dance nights to it. The dance also includes the couple Charleston and tricks and jumps (there are acrobatics but I don’t think we will get that far ). The traditional music to dance to is Swing music – smooth Ella and Duke, even Frank. There are two styles of the Lindy Hop – a ‘black-bottom’ style that is more chunky and a ‘Hollywood’ style that was smooth and danced by the Hollywood stars in classic movies. We will be learning the Hollywood style .

Hope you can join us on this last course for the year – tell one tell all!

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Thank you to all the people who worked on the festival and joined the parade. I hope you had a Hot Hot Hot time!

The fest is over and we only have tonight before the school holidays. So lets just do some Salsa for the night. We will recap what we have been learning and then add some more. If we get a good amount of people show up tonight then we will certainly go for the two full hours.

Our Easter break will go the length of the Easter School Holidays so no dancing on Monday 22nd and 29th March, and 5th April. We will resume on 12th April.

If we don’t see you tonight – happy holidays!

Ok – firstly, sorry about the dance courses on Monday. My plane got diverted to Andenes because it was too windy to land in Tromsø. After that little adventure we got back home at midnight. So sorry to everyone, but I heard it was a good night. Nik, the teacher, was a trooper! And thanks to Maria for jumping in.

Ok – Samba Parade. These are the times and actions:

11.00-12.00 – Kulturhuset foyeen workshops: crowns/instruments making for kids and families. There will also be recyled rubbish for you to make your own instruments to play in the parade. Recycled letterboxes make a great sound!

12.00-12.30 – Kulturhuset foyeen costume dressing. If you are wearing a costume (and I know you all are ) you need to come to get fitted and sorted.

12.30-13.00 – Samba rhythm tuition, Kulturhuset stortorget. The general paraders and us will get tuition on the Samba song, rhythm and dancing. It’s good to come to recap what we learnt in class.

13.00-13.20 – Samba parade march. The procession will walk on the city streets from the Kulurhuset to nerstranda shopping mall.

13.20 – 14.20 – Showcase performances at Nerstranda. When the parade arrives we will be Samba dancing while we wait for the crowd to be sorted. Then at the end everyone will be invited to dance the Samba at the music reprise.

14.20 – giving back your costumes. You will take your instruments home with you.

If you would like to volunteer for the festival then visit the website: www.nosiestafiesta.no and contact Ola ASAP.

We’ll see you at the Parade!

This is just a reminder that the dance night is at Salsademika with Bossa Nova at 18:00 and Bolero at 21:30. We have already practised a little Bossa Nova in class but you will be able to learn so much more tonight. The Bolero is basically a new dance but is from the ‘rumba’ dance group. I know it’s a late night (with a 2 hour break) but we can’t help that so maybe we can all go to a cafe and wait it out. (I will need to leave to pick up some costumes).

See you tonight!

NOTE: These classes are held at Salsademika. The address is Søndre Tollbodgt. 7

You sign up via the nosiestafiesta.no website. Click on “Frivillige” on the top bar and enter your details. You will be contacted about a general meeting this coming Tuesday. You might also be contacted beforehand to work this weekend on the Haiti concert and dancing. If you have any requests (like you want to go to a particular concert and therefore volunteer on another day then say so!

The festival organisers are a great bunch of people and are very well connected in the industry – this is a great networking opportunity or a fantastic chance to work with the world’s northern most Latino festival!

This next class we have some percussionists coming to play the parade Samba rhythm for us. The guys will learn the rhythm to play for the parade and the girls will practise dancing the Samba. This first hour of practise is specifically for the Samba parade on the 13th March.

In the second hour we will revise Salsa.

Remember, the week after we are hosting at Salsademika with Bossa Nova and Bolero for the festival. There will be other free dance classes by other dance studios during the parade week so make sure you check out the fest program.

If you want to get free tickets to events at the fest you can volunteer. The fest is looking for hard-working volunteers that will earn their free tickets. If you’d like to volunteer go to the festival website: www.nosiestafiesta.no and sign up under “frivillige”

Thank you to those who signed up to be a part of the Samba parade.

The festival program comes out this Wednesday at www.nosiestafiesta.no . They also have a printed newspaper that you will find in different cafes around town.

Remember next week, Monday 1st March, we have a very special class. At 19:30 we have some drum percussionists coming to play for us. The guys are going to learn to play the rhythms and the girls will practise the Brazilian Samba. We will also practise the couple Samba too.

From 20:30 we will be practising the Salsa steps we know – basic (On2, On1 and Classic) right turn, left turn and 2nd position breaks/Cuban basic. I’ll also throw in some quick and easy Tango! (especially for those who learnt Tango last year) as there will be a Tango band at the fest too.

The week after, Monday 8th March, we will be having classes at Salsademika for the festival – we are supporting with Bossa Nova and Bolero. On Wednesday 10th we will be having our club excursion to Compagniet. The dancing is from 21:00-00:00. I will be there after 21:30pm as I have a dance class beforehand.

To recap: On the Saturday 14th March, we will be casually dancing at the parade assembly at the Kulturhuset at 12:30 before the procession. This is to show the general public how to dance Samba. We can dance as singles or couples. During the parade the Samba girls will walk/dance in costume behind the Queen of the Drums (two vid examples are below so you can practise what we did in class) and the boys will play percussion instruments to help with the rhythm. Then at the end of the procession in Nerstranda as the percussionists do a reprise to by time for all the parade to get into the shopping centre, we will be dancing a casual Samba again – solo and in couples. I will be there all the time and will help you start the dancing etc but I am also managing the show so will be occupied with many things. I can start you off but then I need to focus on running the show.

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Samba/Maxixe
Tonight we learnt a lot in the Samba. Here is an example of the steps we learnt – they start in a different order and they also do a continuous underarm turn (we will try that next lesson )

Samba de Gafieira
This dance is a mix of Samba and Tango – it developed in the South of Brazil near the border of Argentine of course . You will see similar steps to ours in this clip if you watch closely.

Here is a Maxixe/samba (the clip says it’s from 1914 – but you can tell it is almost like a folk dance style so it could be right.)

Here is a SYTYCD Maxixe in the old style – you can see that our Samba is certainly modernised from this (the dance doesn’t start till 2 mintutes in):

Here is another one that is a little cheesy…lol:

Here is a beginners Maxixe and you will notice the back and forth hand movement that I showed you in class…lol:

The Brazilian Samba
There are many different types of ways to dance the Brazilian Samba, here are a couple.

This first one we practised in class – it is a Rio style Samba – which has a little more style:

Here’s a girl who teaches the generic Samba but I think it is the easiest one to learn it! It is not as feminine though. It is basically the same as the one we did tonight but the rhythm is even instead of emphasising the 1 beat. But you will notice when she goes fast that she adds in the swivel and knee raise that we were practising in class. This comes from the momentum of you changing legs and turning a little side to side.

So practise this way and then we will add the emphasis in to help our hips.

Salsa timing and counts
Here is a vid that explains what I’ve been talking about in class – it is a little wordy and also has a jump in the middle but the information is good:

So, as we discovered tonight – if you do the harder one first the easy one is just too easy!

Cheers!

Have you noticed our sidebar lately? We have a new addition: Bli medlem/Become a Member!

It will tell you all the information you need to know to become a member of danseklubben. However, if you are not a past or present student or employee of UiT, no worries! Each dance night is only kr50,-!

Cheers