Things I think about when dancing with less-experienced leads AKA just because they’re new doesn’t mean you are AKA if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate: Balance: Sure, I can pose as a yoga tree with fluttering branches, but can I actually keep my center in an underarm turn without pulling on […]

I’ll admit it: I get terribly jiggly and nervous talking to triple-A instructors.  Or just instructors, period.  It’s taken me a long, long, looooooooooooong-ass time to start acting like a real, live human around them.  Which is funny, because if you’ve seen me on the dance floor, or in life, I don’t hold myself back from new […]

During the eight hours we drove back from Inspiration Weekend, two of my dance friends and I started reflecting on improvement.  We talked about our strengths, things we wanted to work on, and made solid plans to schedule real practice sessions soon.  Okay, part of the reason was to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel, but it really yielded […]

I was asked again to emcee for Swingin’ At the Savoy this past weekend and was delighted as always to be the voice of an annual event that has come to mean so much to me.  I’m always working on being a better announcer and a large weekend event is a special kind of energy. […]

So you wanna be an organizer.  Maybe you want to start a swing scene in your area.  Maybe you want a different KIND of swing scene in your area.  Maybe you’re joining/taking over/inheriting a scene from/with other organizers.  Regardless of how you got here, I’d like to just say “Thank you”, “Bless your heart”, and […]

I’m not big on resolutions.  Part of this may be because I work in an education system that re-starts every September, so I experience “new year” syndrome twice as fast as most adults.  Or it may be because I’m Chinese, and the lunar new year has always figured more prominently in my life.  (And let’s face […]

If you haven’t spent enough time with millennials this season (or actually…maybe five years ago), FOMO stands for “Fear Of Missing Out”.  I know this fear well, not so much because I’m a millennial, but because I was a hyper-extended asian kid.  I was the kid who racked up extra-curriculars on top of straight-A grades. […]

This is one of my favorite dance pictures. I’ve tried to find some source information, but google images has failed me, and so I assume that it’s probably one of those illegal copies of something from somewhere (since there isn’t a digitally accessible copyrighted version online).  In any case, it’s absolutely beautiful: the way her […]

I might be alone in this regard, but when I talk to new and ambitious dancers, I don’t like to focus on competitions, or technique, or privates, or any of that stuff that makes you a “better” dancer.  I’ve seen far too many dancers fixate on these things as their golden ticket to the top: […]

I was going to wait for an actual Tuesday to do this, but with the Harvest Moon J&J Derby going on at Wednesday Night Hop and tonight’s solo jazz comp at Fog City Stomp, I’ve really been thinking about this topic a lot.  PLUS, I had a great conversation with some competitors from Wednesday and I realized […]