Jeremy Otth & Laura Keat vs. Adam Speen & Nelle Cherry, Eastern Balboa Championships (2009)
Taking a quick break from “Bluesday Tuesday” and trying to imagine up a moniker for a balboa-themed day. Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually watched a real Balboa um … fight scene(?) before. One of my regrets from this year’s Boston Tea Party was not paying more attention to the balboa competitions. Read: I’m bunkering down for all the Lindy Focus competition and having a camera ready.
Ignoring the arguably offensively orientalist intro to this video, here’s a pretty hot video of pretty fine balboa. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Jeremy & Laura spent November teaching in NYC, so as much as I love watching them dance, I spent most of this video paying attention to Adam & Nelle (which is easy to do, given that the cameras seem to focus on them more). What I honestly love is how Adam leads the slow motion moves in the beginning of the dance off, which complement the normally fast Balboa quite nicely. Not to mention, when both couples do those complicate spin-dips around @1:45-@1:50, and the given crowd reaction, my eyes sparkled with joy.
Anyway, expect much more balboa in this blog in the near future.
I hate this video.
Well, okay, the music selection of it. Not that there’s something inherently wrong with Fallout Boy—it’s just the use of a non-swing song for what’s inherently a Lindy hop routine. But the reason I bring this up is because
JEREMY OTTH AND LAURA KEAT ARE IN TOWN AND I’M TAKING THEIR LINDY HOP WORKSHOPS FOR THE WHOLE MONTH :D :D :D
*cough*
They’re better known in the Lindy hop community for being great teachers and dancers. I’d known about them before I even realized they were featured here in Dancing With the Stars (for those unfamiliar with them, they’re the couple dancing in the front at the beginning of the number). Coming up from the LA Lindy scene, this should be pretty interesting, especially since they emphasize Dean Collins’ Hollywood-style over the NYC Savoy-style. But hey, connection is connection, as long as you’re able to send the proper signals.
Lesson starts tonight and I’m so excited!
ETA: @muchmadnessisdivinestsense Just … just pay attention to the dancing! The dancing! The dancing is nice! That’s why God invented the mute button! :D
