We hope to see you all tomorrow afternoon at the Howard Community Club where Jim Riley will be teaching a workshop on the Waltz. Here are the details:
You will learn
footwork and styling,
leading and following,
timing and rhythm, and
a choreographed routine to use for practice and social dancing.
This workshop will help you add elegance, grace, and movement to your waltz.
The workshop will take place from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., then our dance will start at 6:30 p.m. as usual. Cost is $20, which includes admission to the dance along with the workshop.
If you have any questions please call or email Daniel or me. See you tomorrow!
In October we are competing on two consecutive weekends. Can you believe it? One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2009 was to do 3 dance competitions; by the end of next month we’ll have done 4. Woohoo! Here’s where we’re going:
On October 18 we’ll be dancing at the SouthEastern Amateur Challenge that is part of the Hotlanta Dance Challenge in Atlanta. Our own Eddie Ares is the brains behind Hotlanta and it is, as they say, a Really Big Shew. The Southeast Regional Championship is no longer held in Atlanta (as it used to be every year), so hopefully this event will become a draw for amateur couples as well as pro-am competitors. I’ve not yet been to Hotlanta even as a spectator–as much as I am looking forward to dancing, I’m looking forward to watching even more!
The weekend of October 23-25 we’ll be in High Point, North Carolina at the High Point Classic Dancesport Championships. This competition is organized by Wayne Crowder, the same gentleman who runs the Triangle Open where we had so much fun back in February. So we expect to enjoy this one a lot. We may also have some long-lost friends coming to watch us dance. Hooray!
That will probably be the end of our competitive trajectory for 2009, which means it’s time to sit down and figure out where we want to go in 2010…Montréal, perhaps?
Last night, USA Dance Greater Macon Chapter #6059 had the honor to be invited to the annual Les Still Big Band Night at the Warner Robins Civic Center. The event is a fundraiser for the Houston County Certified Literate Community Program, an organization promoting adult literacy, and this year’s event was the 9th annual celebration. The Les Still Big Band, Still Swinging, was tons of fun to listen to and dance to. We had a great time dancing, and the organizers and spectators really seemed to appreciate our presence there, adding a little “floor show” element to the evening. Click each thumbnail to see the full-sized photo.
Granted, we Southern types have already been in school for weeks, but Labor Day weekend is the traditional end of summer. Time to pack away the bathing suits and lawn chairs and get out the pencils and notebooks–or in our case, the pencils, notebooks, and dancing shoes! Paula East has been working hard on her new schedule of classes and also on helping us promote our workshop at the end of this month. If you are interested in attending the workshop and haven’t already talked to Daniel, Paula, or me, please call or email one of us soon. It is filling up really fast!
Paula is also offering a full slate of classes this fall. You can visit her Web site for the schedule and registration information; here’s a rundown of the classes she’s offering:
Fridays beginning September 4 at the Macon Health Club: Social Ballroom with Dianne Kent, 6:30-7:30 p.m. ($40.00 per person, 4 week session)
Thursdays beginning September 17 at the Macon Health Club: Advanced Ballroom (Bronze level & up), 7:15-8:45 p.m. ($60.00 per person, 4 week session)
Sundays beginning September 20 at the Wellness Center:
Beginning Ballroom/Refresher, 1:15-2:15 p.m. ($40.00 per person, 4 week session)
Semi-Advanced, 2:30-3:30 p.m. ($40.00 per person, 4 week session)
Advanced Latin Dance, 3:45-5:15 p.m. ($45.00 per person for 3 classes: Sept. 20, Oct. 4, Oct. 11)
September 21 at the Wellness Center: complimentary lesson for a new class, “No Partner-No Problem.” Sign up that night for the class, which will begin October 12.
Mondays beginning October 12 at the Wellness Center: No Partner-No Problem, 7:15-8:45 p.m.
1st half of class: Line Dancing ($35.00 per person, 4 week session)
2nd half of class: Ballroom, ($35.00 per person, 4 week session)
At last night’s “Dancing For Our Heroes” charity dance at the Aviation Museum in Warner Robins, USA Dance #6059 Greater Macon and USA Dance #6100 Houston County raised just over $2,000 for each of two organizations supporting our military and our veterans. Hearts to Heroes and the Wounded Warrior Project each received a check for (if memory serves) $2,085. Hooray!
It was an excellent event, too. Our two chapters did an amazing job and thought of everything from table decorations to door prizes. The turnout was great, the hors d’oeuvres were delicious, and the dancefloor was packed. A few couples even came from Atlanta to attend. We met one couple, Bob and Vanessa, who will be competing alongside us (and possibly against us!) at the High Point Classic in October. They are awesome dancers and very friendly people. Bob helped me fake my way through a West Coast Swing, which was big fun! Later, Jim Riley allowed me to step all over him in a quickstep–I got up expecting a foxtrot and learned a whole new dance instead. SSQQ, SSQQ, SS, lockstep, rinse and repeat! The quickstep is just one more reason to keep up one’s cardio endurance, let me tell you.
Daniel took some good pictures last night–here are a few of them. Click each thumbnail to open the full image.
Jorge & Elaine and friends
Ed & Lisa
The Usual Suspects
CeCe, Faye, and a very lucky man
Mary, Tom, John, & Elizabeth
Shiny happy people!
The Macon Telegraph was on hand last night taking photographs and interviewing dancers, but I haven’t found an article online yet. If I do, I’ll post it.
Clint Rauscher of Tango Evolution, assisted by our own Joyce Newman, will be teaching two Argentine Tango workshops in Macon on September 20 and October 18, with plans for a regular third Sunday workshop if turnout is good for those two dates. Each workshop will be 2 hours followed by a one-hour “practica” (practice time). Click here for details and online registration.
On Sunday, September 27 in conjunction with our Sunday Night Dance Party, Jim Riley, assisted by JoyDawn Perry, will teach a 90-minute workshop on technique and styling in Waltz. Last week, Jim, JoyDawn, and I got together and he demonstrated for me some of the material he plans to teach. Having seen what Jim has planned, I can safely say that this workshop will be great for those who already know some waltz steps but want to add more movement, flow, and grace to their dancing. Jim will also teach a short routine you can use for practice or social dancing. Click over to our Fall Dance Workshop page for information.
Local TV station WMAZ ran their promotion of the “Dancing for our Heroes” event as part of their “Scene 13” weekend entertainment roundup on last night’s 11:00 news and again on today’s morning news. Here is the story; our event is the first one presented in the package:
Hope to see everyone at the Aviation Museum tomorrow night!
Maconites, tune in to the 11:00 news on WMAZ, channel 13, on Thursday the 27th. During the “Scene 13” feature you will see members of the Greater Macon and Houston County USA Dance chapters (including yours truly!) dancing and promoting this coming weekend’s “Dancing for our Heroes” event. The feature will also be rebroadcast around 6:40 a.m. on Friday the 28th and will be online under the “Entertainment” section of 13WMAZ.com.
As soon as I can get a link or an embeddable video clip, I’ll post it.
Around here, the dance scene always slows down over the summer. A lot of people are traveling, so not many events are scheduled. As the summer winds down (our schools start early, so for all intents & purposes the summer is now over), the dance events wind up. On Friday we attended the monthly dance at the Howard hosted by John Herren et al.; tonight is our Sunday Night Dance Party, also at the Howard.
Last night we went to Warner Robins for Dance Houston County‘s monthly social. They have recently moved their monthly dances to an excellent new venue, the Warner Robins Conference Center. The facility offers nice chairs, adequate air conditioning, and most importantly, a good floor! The Houston County chapter offered free admission to last night’s dance to anyone who had bought a ticket to the Dancing for our Heroes event that is coming up on August 29. Their chapter president, Kristin Streilin, said that hardly anyone had paid to get in, so it sounds like ticket sales are going well.
But if you don’t already have a ticket to Dancing for our Heroes, I know that some are still available. The event is a fundraiser for the Hearts to Heroes chapter of the Wounded Warrior Project and will be held at the Museum of Aviation’s “Century of Flight” hangar. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door and are available from board members of Dance Houston County and USA Dance Greater Macon.
Just received via email a link to WMAZ’s video from Friday. Fortunately (since I was exhausted and probably speaking gibberish), they did not use any of the interview clips but instead put together a nice montage of all of us dancing.
I will post this on the Video Gallery page as well.
EDIT: I’ve removed the video from the main page since it auto-plays every time one visits the page, which is not much fun. Check the Video Gallery page to see it.
