Blues Union Boston

Thursday, March 18

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:06:49 +0000

Hey, folks! Our month of guest instructors continues with Dan Repsch, whom you may recall from the competitions at Sweet Molasses Blues. He’s here this week to bring us some out of town goodness.

Shapes, Shifts, and Safety belts

This is a lesson designed to acquaint beginners with the blues. We’ll start with moving your own body, then introduce a partner and learn the basic shapes that blues dancers create in almost every dance. If you don’t have any experience dancing you’ll be prepared for a social dance by the end of the class and if you’ve been dancing for a while you’ll come away with new ideas and some of the finer details of the fundamentals.

Putting Yourself Into Your Blues

This class uses a concrete structure to show how you can bring your personality out in your dancing. We’ll briefly discuss the emotions present in selected songs, but the majority of the class will be spent dancing simple yet impactful ideas. I’ll provide tools I’ve developed through both social dancing and numerous classes, and also look to the students for some of their interpretations so they can define their own dancing style

Thursday, March 11

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:46:01 +0000

Hello, hello!

We’re kicking off our guest instructor/DJ month with Andrew Smith (http://www.andrewsmithdance.com/), from Portland, Oregon! Andrew’s taught at Blues Union before, in addition to teaching at several national venues and local venues in Portland. This week, he and Julie Brown will be teaching the following classes:

Solo Movement (Intermediate, 7:30-8:15)
Through various improv exercises, learn how to emote in your dancing. Practice listening to the sentiment of a song and conveying that in your body through solo movement. This class covers isolations, rhythms, and musicality.

Vintage Ballroom Blues (Beginner, 8:15-9:00)
This class introduces you to Ballroomin’ — originally a slow dance done by Lindy Hoppers at the Harlem Ballroom — that has become a nationally recognized and appreciated styling for Blues dancing. The styling is ideal for dancing to vintage jazz and New Orleans blues music. The class will look at quintessential elements of Ballroomin’, such as walking, turns, posture, and aesthetic lines.

Afterwards, he and Julie will be DJing for us from 9:00 to 11:00.

As always, the lessons on their own are $5, and the dance on its own is $5. Both combined… are $10!

Thursday, March 4

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:55:43 +0000

This week, come to Blues Union for our very own Blues Clinic from 7:30 to 9pm, followed by four fantastic DJs from 9pm to 11pm!

This week, our DJs are Gui and Ogden for the first set, followed by Khrysti and Amy for the second set. They will lift you up! They will not leave you low! Oh no.

Also- a special offer! If a dancer brings a newbie to the lesson, the dancer and their friend only have to pay for the lesson ($5)- the dance is free!

We’re all pumped after this past weekend with Sweet Molasses Blues; we hope you’re ready for some more dancing as well!

Thursday, February 25

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:33:11 +0000

This week, Blues Union kicks off Sweet Molasses Blues! Come for two great classes with Paul Mandel and Amanda Gruhl:

Crazy Counterbalance!
Ever wonder how to create those lovely stretches advanced dancers have? Want to make those counterbalance moves look and feel great? This class will show you how to incorporate weight sharing into your social dances in closed and open. And if we have time, we’ll throw in a few unusual positions!

Blues Connection
The basis for all great partnered dancing is connection! This week’s beginner blues lesson will focus on how to establish connection, make it feel great, and use it to lead and follow your partner.

DJs will be special guests Jennie Shortway (NJ) and Tina Davis (TX)!

Crazy Counterbalance!
Ever wonder how to create those lovely stretches advanced
dancers have? Want to make those counterbalance moves look and feel
great? This class will show you how to incorporate weight sharing
into your social dances in closed and open. And if we have time,
we’ll throw in a few unusual positions!
——————–

——————–
Blues Connection
The basis for all great partnered dancing is connection! This week’s
beginner blues lesson will focus on how to establish connection, make
it feel great, and use it to lead and follow your partner.

Thursday February 18

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:33:06 +0000

February is our month for working on connection in our intermediate classes! Last week Julie and Shawn focused on connection in close embrace, and this week Gui and Jenn will be going to the other extreme and focusing on connection in open position and breakaway. Maintaining solid, comfortable connection through open position requires a lot of practice and knowledge of momentum and balance, but the big payoff is that you have the most freedom of movement available to you of all of the frames. It’ll be a hard class, but it’ll be worth it!

In our beginner class, we’ll be focusing on the Blues aesthetic. What makes the dance you’re doing Blues dancing? How do you get that 2-AM-in-a-Mississippi-juke-joint look and feel without traveling for a couple of hundred miles and downing a pitcher of beer? We’ll be talking about your posture, your attitude, and your movement and how they all interact to create a solid dance.

Our intermediate classes run from 7:30 to 8:15, and our beginner classes run from 8:15 to 9:00.

Finally, you can look forward to DJs Gui Cavalcanti and Amy Kucharik bringing it to the dance floor!

Thursday, February 11th

gui — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:17:15 +0000

Hello, hello!

This month we’re going to have a class description for both the beginner class and the intermediate class! Check out what Shawn and Julie are teaching this week:

Intermediate (7:30-8:15): This week, we’ll focus on closed position and close embrace. Learn our favorite tips for leading and following in closed/close, when we like to use this type of connection, and some neat ways you can use this connection to do cool things.

Beginner (8:15-9:00): New to blues? Want to brush up on your basics? Come to the beginner lesson to learn the basics of blues dance, as well as plenty of moves to get you traveling around the room.

After the lessons, John Brooks and Micki Balder will be spinning the night away for us, and Amy Kucharik and Karen Dunham will be bringing food for us!

Hope to see you soon!

A Change In Format!

gui — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:16:38 +0000

Hey everyone! I wanted to let everyone know of a few slight changes in the Blues Union format going forward that we hope you’ll like.

We’re going to be shortening the intermediate lesson and increasing the length of the beginner lesson, so that they’re both 45 minutes. We’ll also be assigning a theme and a track to our beginner lessons, like we do with our intermediate lessons, in an attempt to get our beginners to the point where they’re comfortable participating in our intermediate lesson after a month or two! This means that you’ll now see beginner class descriptions in addition to intermediate class descriptions. It also means that the intermediate class runs from 7:30 to 8:15, and the beginner lesson runs from 8:15 to 9:00.

Starting this week, we’ll also be publishing a one-page brief description of Blues music and dancing opportunities in the Boston area! We’re trying to consolidate information to make everyone more aware of local events like drinking nights, house parties, workshop weekends and exchanges within driving distance (which we consider 6-7 hours max). Handouts will be available with the rest of our fliers at the counter. Feel free to submit events to the newsletter by using this internet form:

http://www.beantownbluesdance.com/submit-your-event-to-the-bluesletter/

In an effort to keep announcements short, we will be restricting speaking time during announcements at Blues Union to events which have either been submitted to the newsletter or have fliers on the counter. The deadline for submitting to the newsletter is 11:59 PM every Wednesday. Thanks go to Paul Mandel for getting this together!

And that’s enough talking out of me. Hope to see you all out on the dance floor soon!

-Gui

Thursday, February 4th

gui — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:15:05 +0000

Once again, my friends, it’s the first Thursday of the month. It’s time to do battle!

To get things started right, we have our monthly Blues Clinic where all of the local Blues instructors are invited to wander around the venue giving personalized feedback and instruction to everyone who attends. Students can come to the lesson with anything between no prior experience and an advanced proficiency at the dance, and will come away with individual things to work on in their dancing.

This week, we’ll be throwing something new into the mix! Each person who attends the Blues Clinic will be automatically entered into a raffle that will be drawn at the end of the clinic. The person chosen will then get a free private lesson with the instructor pair of their choice!

After all that excitement, we’re going to take it up ANOTHER NOTCH with our monthly DJ battle! This month we have Gui Cavalcanti taking on John Brooks in the first set, and Julie Brown taking on Tim Lewandowski in the second set! In case you’re unfamiliar, our battles have our DJs switch off every song – for instance, John will play a good song, and then Gui will play a better one. And then John will try again, and then Gui will play an even better one. And so on, and so forth. Our DJ battles bring out our best music and the most energy – you don’t want to miss it!

As always, the Blues Clinic is from 7:30 to 9:00, and the dance is from 9:00 to 11:00. The Clinic costs $5, and the dance costs $5.

See you all out on the floor!

Thursday, January 28th

gui — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:27:49 +0000

We’ve had a full month of awesome musicality classes. We started with Gui and Jenn goin’ to Chicago to pick up some sharp movements to hard-driving music, we swung by New Orleans to check out Julie and Paul showing off some slinky and sexy moves to growling trumpets, and this week we’re off to Georgia with Shawn and Amanda to pick up some silky smooth moves to the R&B stylings of Ray Charles, Aretha and the gang. They’ll round out our musicality at the tail end of the month, and with any luck you’ll be able to mix and match from all three lessons to show off to whatever kind of music we play at Blues Union!

After the dance we have a special treat! Julie Brown will be teaming up with Leslie Stevenson, a kickass DJ from Albany, to throw down some mighty fine grooves all night long. We’re going to be trying to get more out-of-town DJ sounds and teaching talent into the dance over the next few months, and Leslie’s DJing is a hell of a way to start!

The intermediate lesson runs from 7:30 to 8:30, the beginner lesson runs from 8:30 to 9:00, and the dance runs from 9:00 to 11:00. The dance and the lesson combined are $10, and the dance alone is $5.

Thursday, January 21st

julieb — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:38:57 +0000

Last week, Gui and Jenn showed you how to dance to some hard-driving, funky blues. Yeah!

This week, Julie and Paul will show you how to dance to the hot and sultry sounds of traditional jazz (think squeezy brass, like Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong). We will show you some smooth and sassy moves to bust out when the music gets slinky.

After the lesson, Tim and Alex will be DJing some jazz and mixing in some harder-driving blues, so you can get your groove on to both styles.

The intermediate lesson is from 7:30 to 8:30, and the beginner lesson is from 8:30 to 9:00. The lesson and dance cost $10 combined, and just the lesson or the dance cost $5 each.