Steel City Blues Festival

Image found here

This past weekend I drove all the way to Pittsburgh for the Steel City Blues Festival. Steel City Blues is a weekend full of blues dancing workshops and open dances. Unfortunately I missed the first night because I was at a Blake Shelton concert (I know, life is rough), and since I didn't get a good night's sleep after that, I was exhausted the whole weekend. I also left Sunday before any of the actual dances, so I really wasn't able to take advantage of the entire weekend like I would have wanted. But I still had a good time!

On Saturday I took three workshops:

1. Adaptive Connection - I LOVED this class! This workshop was all about dancing with a partner without losing your own style. The instructors, Julie Brown and Dan Repsch, were wonderful, and showed how each dancer can interpret the music as he/she/zie wants (the blues dancing culture is very gender-neutral/trans-friendly [if that's the right way to say it], so I'm including other pronouns here), while still maintaining the pulse and connection with a partner. I've always wanted to do this but didn't know how, and now I do!

2. Off-Axis Trust - I was impressed with the instructors of this class, too. Forrest Rogers-Marcovitz and Laura Chieko were really great, and I enjoyed watching them dance. I think I would need a lot more practice before trusting a partner so I wouldn't lose my balance in some of these moves; Laura also said I should dance as if my ankles were touching, but I'm still not exactly sure how that works...

3. Live Music Rhythms - I was especially excited about this class because I always find it difficult to dance to live music. I'm used to regular "slow drag" blues, so when the music is a different rhythm, I don't know what to do! This class helped to explain different rhythms you can dance to in order to match the music that may be played in a bar or other informal venue.

Afterward, there was a break (thank goodness), so I was able to take a nap and then get myself ready. I went to Stack'd Burgers for dinner, which has a menu where you make your own custom burger, so I enjoyed that, along with some curly fries. Then it was time for the open dance! I had a few good dances, but I was still so tired that I actually was falling asleep in my chair while watching the "Jack and Jill" contestants dance. I still had fun, but certainly not my best dance ever. I obviously didn't bother to go to the late night dances, and instead hit the hay for some much-needed rest. I woke up around 7:30 to beautiful sunshine, but proceeded to sleep for another hour or two; clearly I still needed to catch up on my beauty sleep!

I took four workshops on Sunday:

1. The Savoy Walk - This "blues idiom" (i.e. type of blues dance) mixes slow and quick steps together, which I had never done before. While the song in the video below seems a lot slower than the songs I danced to during this workshop, you'll get the idea:

2. Texas Shuffle - This was the hardest workshop I took all weekend, and I'm not sure I'll ever do the Texas Shuffle again. I wasn't sure how to shuffle to begin with, and after a while my knees were killing me. One of the other participants told me to be "the heaviest follow you've ever been," meaning I should resist my lead as much as possible. That is NOT my following style: I usually am quite malleable as a follow and mirror my lead as much as I can, which is the exact opposite of resistance. I can appreciate how cool the shuffling can look, but I won't be doing it in the future. Kenneth Shipp, one of our instructors, was exceptional. See him in this video (start at 1:38):

3. Struttin' - This is like the merengue of blues dancing in that you dance on every beat of the music. This was so much easier than the Texas Shuffle! Dexter Santos and Heidi Fite were great instructors, and they explained struttin' in a way that a beginner like me could understand. The video below features two other instructors we worked with over the weekend (except they have much better haircuts now). Grace Jones-Taylor and Nick DeWitt are great!

4. Next Level Struttin' - After the previous class, I figured I was ready for the next level. We danced in the lean-to position almost the entire time (which later I realized actually bruised my sternum!). I will admit that I think the lean-to looks and feels awkward, and isn't the most elegant of postures. I definitely prefer a more ballroom-inspired, upright blues aesthetic. But it was fun learning more about this blues idiom, especially when we all started dancing super-close to each other as if we were in a real blues club. That showed us how much you can really move and dance, even in tight quarters.

Thanks for the great photo, Mike! Image found here.

I appreciated how organized this festival was (especially compared to my experiences at the Interfusion Festival). The venue was wonderful with lots of room and enough ballrooms, and free garage parking! The workshops were limited, but they were just the right length and had breaks in between them; the group also magically divided evenly between all the classes, so no class was ever too crowded. And while I didn't get my housing until the week of the festival (which made me nervous!), the team ended up placing me with a wonderful hostess. She was so good to me and another participant that she inspired me to host someone during the next blues weekend in DC! I really was impressed with how "together" this team made the event, and since this is coming from a professional event planner, that means a lot!