Category: News

Thursday, December 3

We’re back this week!  And we’re back with a vengeance: first, everyone is welcome to come to the drop-in Blues Clinic, where some of your favorite instructors are prepared to help you work on whatever you want to work on!  As always, no partner is required- just come in ready to play around and stretch yourself.

Next up, we’ve got an earth-shaking DJ Battle.   Julie Brown goes up against Gui Cavalcanti (with his new and improved battle station), and then John Brooks and Amy Kucharik sound the war drums!  Blues Union’s going to have to get down.

Lesson and Dance: $10
Dance alone: $5

Off For the Holidays- Thanksgiving

Hey, folks! Everyone’s going to spend the holidays chowing down and relaxing with family and friends, so we won’t see you this week at Blues Union on Thursday, November 26. We’ll miss you, but we’ll definitely see you next week for the DJ battles, won’t we?

Oh yeah, we will. 🙂 Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 19

Julie Brown is bringing us a class that she taught at the renowned Blues Muse workshop down in Philadelphia!  Joining her this week is Paul Mandel. (Psst. It’s his debut as an instructor at Blues Union!)  These two are going to show us how to make it hot in simple, subtle ways with Creating and Filling the Space:

There is an incredible amount of space in blues music. It’s slow, it’s stretchy, and full of tension and release. In this class, we’ll be working with some subtle forms of expression that you can use to really stretch the music and fill the space there. This class will give you several excellent tools to help you respond to the music and add texture, variety, and subtlety to your dancing.

DJs John Brooks and Khrysti Smyth will be reigning over the floor and turning Dance Union into a whole thing. You’re gonna like it.

As usual, it’s just $10 for great instruction plus the dance, or $5 for the dance alone.


Thursday, November 5

Here we go!

This Thursday we’re pulling out all the stops and throwing down our once-a-month bash.

To get things started, we have a Blues Clinic from 7:30 to 9:00! We’ll have Gui Cavalcanti, Jenn Martinez, Shawn Hershey, Amanda Gruhl, Julie Brown and Sara Gaynor all in one room giving you personal feedback on your dancing. That’s right – most of Boston’s Blues instructors in one room, working together to help you dance better for an hour and a half! Feel free to bring complete newcomers to the clinic! We have more than enough instructor horsepower to make sure everyone gets up to speed and has a great time.

All of that for the bargain price of $5? Come on, you know you can’t resist.

And then, my friends, then we have the DJ Battle. You know how this goes – one DJ lays down a fantastic song, the other has to follow with a better song, the first has to follow with an even better song… and so on and so forth until the dance hall is rocked off its foundations. This month we’re bringing our up-and-coming DJs into the fold – Gui Cavalcanti and Amy Kucharik will be laying down some heavy-duty Blues for the first hour, and Julie Brown and Alex Abdoualev will be knocking us out with some wall-shakin’ trad jazz for the second hour.

And again, all that for $5. Whaaat? $10 for the lesson and dance, $5 for one or the other but not both.

If you come to one Blues Union a month, make this it – we’re going to rock Dance Union like it’s back ain’t got no bones.

Update for this Thursday…

Alright folks. Time for a hilarious change of plans.

Sadly, Jenn could not extract herself from tech week, and will not be able to make the lesson. HOWEVER, we have something extra special instead. Gui Cavalcanti and Kevin Sihlanick will be throwing down a Dissection of the Blues. Kevin will be rockin’ his harp, Gui will be rockin’ his bass, and the dynamic dueling duo will be taking you on a tour of how Blues music is built. They’ll investigate rhythm, chord progression and more, while discussing how your dancing reflects these fundamental structures (and how you can take advantage of your newfound knowledge of these structures to rock out harder on the dance floor!)

Come for the dissection and stay for the witty reparte as a couple of the Olin boys take you on a tour of the Blues.