Swingers

Have I mentioned that I have kind of gotten into swing dancing lately? It's like the early 2000s all over again!! Zoot suit riot!!!!

The story is that since I went to the Midsummer Night Swing event that I blogged about last month, I've been on a bit of a swing kick, along with my coworkers Megan and Carol. We've gone to about one swing event a week, most of which are free, and include an introductory class. It's been pretty fun, although I'd like to keep at it more seriously and actually become decent at it, versus just scratching the surface of the dance moves, like I am now.

Anyway, we went to a "hot jazz" swing event tonight which included a surprisingly useful lesson (these free lessons are definitely hit or miss!) and some of the best swing dancing I've seen in the city. Honestly, it was so good that I really preferred to watch the dancers than try to dance myself!

The only downside tonight was when I got kicked (accidentally) pretty freaking hard by one of the newbie male dancers. He kicked me in the ankle, and my ankle still hurts 4 hours later! At least I'll have a nice bruise to show for my new hobby tomorrow.

The Utopia of Brooklyn

Tonight, I went with Megan and Carol to see, and dance to, some Latin music in front of the Brooklyn Central Library. I hadn't planned to go (it's been a long week of teaching since Summer C started!), but it was a beautiful evening and the humidity from the last few days finally went away. The air was crisp and a little cool and the sky was totally clear. It seemed like I couldn't waste this nice evening by just going home and watching Netflix. 

So the three of us went to the library and danced a little. 

And I realized that every city should be like Brooklyn. Where else can you see such a mix of races and social classes mixing with an equal amount of joy and abandon? 

OK, OK, the people of Brooklyn don't always mix too easily, and there are definitely still a LOT of problems in this borough. But on nights like this, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that everything's gonna be just fine. 

        

On the way home, I walked through the park and looked at fireflies.

You make me feel like dancing

After work today, I met up with my coworkers Megan and Carol (the same friends who I spent the 4th of July with) to attend "Midsummer Night Swing," an event that happens every summer at Lincoln Center, where they have swing dancing (and other styles of dancing, like salsa) on certain nights of the week. It's fun because they have a dance floor, a live band, and a dance class for the first half hour. The only drawback is that it's a little pricey--$20 for 3 hours, if you stay the whole time, which we didn't. 

So we all went for the first time tonight. We took the dance class and learned the Lindy Hop, and then got to wait around awkwardly for people to ask us to dance. (I wanted Ari to come and be my dance partner, but he thought the price was too steep.) Thankfully, we all ended up dancing quite a bit by the end of the night, either with each other, or with random people who invited us to dance. It was a lot of fun! We plan to come back, and just hang out outside the dance floor -- thus essentially getting the same thing for free! 

This older dude was tearing up the dance floor. 

Our exhilarated walk back to the subway at the end of the night.