Andrew Smith Dance

My travels have finally come to an end. After finishing with an excellent stay in DC, where I taught and DJed at Capital Blues, I returned home briefly before flying back out to Mexico with the family. I'm returning to Portland tomorrow.

Home, sweet home.

The adventures have been a blast, but I certainly look forward to being home again. I miss my friends and my scene in Portland.

My next dance trip will be to bluesSHOUT!. I'm in Austin from Thursday, April 15th, to Tuesday, April 20th. I'd love to work with anyone interested in taking a private lesson while I'm there. My schedule is wide open right now.

I'm glad I decided to stay in Pittsburgh for Tuesday night. With the help of Facebook and text messages, I spent my evening the good company of three other individuals. We went to a park, played on a playground, ate good food, enjoyed good conversation (such as whether it's illegal to deface money -- it is), and hung out until around 1:30 AM. Probably not a prudent decision, since I'm coming down with a cold, but certainly a fun one. You can rest when you're dead, right? My head was all kinds of messed up: one ear plugged that muted hearing, runny nose, sore throat, mild headache, and a beer that put me in the front of my headspace. Excellent.

Thanks to the wonders of NyQuil, I slept soundly until 10am. Five minutes later, I realized I had employed faulty memory (and faulty logic) when I thought my bus was leaving at 2pm. Hastily finding my ticket, I was dismayed to read "8:45 am" as the departure time. Whoops. I think I need to make a habit of checking the departure time the night before, rather than operating on a hunch.

It all worked out, though. I bought a new ticket (ouch) for later that day, met up with Christie for a pleasant lunch and afternoon beer, then caught the bus (where I'm now writing this post).

Now it's off to DC! Evidently there's some St. Patrick's Day celebration plans in the works. Hopefully I'll have the endurance to stay up another night with this cold.

After a two-day recess, it's back to traveling and teaching. I had the good fortunate to stay with a family friend in Frederick, MD, for the past couple days. It was a pleasure to relax, sleep comfortably, get some work done, eat well, and not move around much for a couple days. I grew up in Frederick, so we even visited my old home where I lived until I was seven.

I've returned to Pittsburgh to visit CMU and consider its graduate program. Most of the school activities end by the afternoon, so my schedule is open after that for teaching lessons and hanging out.

Trip up to Boston went marvelously. It began with a rough start where I had 15 minutes to shower, pack, and get out the door. With no time to eat breakfast, I was left to my own devices -- and my own food back -- to sustain myself for the next eight hours. Unfortunately, the best I could do was bread and peanut butter. By the time I arrived in Boston I was famished and desperately wanting greens. At least my body knows (in a general sense) what it needs.

I was uncertain whether I'd stay in Boston for Friday, depending on the number of private lessons I could schedule. Much to my pleasant surprise, a lot of people were interested in taking lessons, even without prompting. I think I taught six or seven lessons over 24 hours. It was rewarding to work with leads in the community. I don't get to do this often -- especially at dance events -- because I'm mostly soliciting privates to follows I'm dancing with. I was excited by the opportunity to seed good habits among leads to make our partner's experience more enjoyable.

I was impressed by how may people wanted to learn and refine their dancing. The class at Blues Union was well attended. I ran them through a variety of solo movements. By the end, their sways were beginning to integrate and their fish tails looked … fishy. Been a while since I taught that solo moves class, it's changed a lot since I did it in Portland. Incidentally, I think it made good advertising for my private lessons because it highlighted technical knowledge and movement quality, concepts that many students appreciated.

Friday evening (following private lessons) went quickly as we went to BSC for linty hop and then out for drinks after. Surrounded by good friends and good conversation, it's times like these make me wish our brains were better equipped to permanently imprint memories. Perhaps my favorite moment from that night (not taken verbatim):

Julie: (talking about a cheesy song being DJed poorly in the past, speaking sarcastically) "Of course, this song is excellent of its own virtue. In a vacuum, it's great."
Andrew: "Exactly, because in a vacuum, you can't hear it."

Physics jokes, FTW.

Now it's back to Pittsburgh to visit Carnegie Mellon University on Tuesday, then on to DC to teach on Thursday. It's hard to believe my trip is rapidly coming to an end: it's going so fast.

I’d like to open this post by saying that Philadelphia’s scene rocks my socks. For serious. I have not yet seen such a large group of excited, humble, eager dancers that want to learn and dance and socialize and be happy. They had around 30 people for the lessons at Powerhouse Blues, which made about 30-40% of those in attendance at the dance. Such a large portion of dancers that want to take lessons is truly impressive.

People here are not afraid to solo dance. Imagine that! It’s the first scene I’ve encountered where I lead a breakaway and people act just as comfortable in solo as in partnered. As I learn more vernacular jazz movements and the history of Blues dancing, I increasingly appreciate dancing in solo. It is, after all, the origin of Blues dancing.

Thanks to a warm reception in Philly (and interest in hanging out + taking lessons), I’m extending my stay here until Thursday, March 11th. Let me know if you’re interested in taking a lesson on Wednesday, as I’m currently free most of the day.