Today I went to the social organized by YCN section of NY chapter of USA Dance. Thanks to Diane for donating so much fruit for the party. Fruit salad is the perfect food for a dance social! There was a great turn out of people from local colleges who are members of their ballroom teams and clubs. For once, the dancefloor of a social at Dance New York was dominated by young people!

...can be found in the hallways:


You will see what I mean if you compare this video to this photo.

Scenes taken from

Viennese Opera Ball 2005 Quadrille Ball 2005 Petroushka Ball 2004 New Opera Ball 2004

During the Easter Parade a photographer from REUTERS took a bunch of pictures of Kerrie and I dancing. The photo that was submitted to various news agencies is below. Help me out and recommend it by clicking on the 5th star below RECOMMEND THIS PHOTO inscription! You must have a Yahoo ID to vote.

The URL to the above page is:
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060416/ids_photos_ts/r390552444.jpg

The new DANCENYC.INFO website. Click Here

I have been maintaining the website dancenyc.info for almost two years. Boy, time flies! The purpose of the website is to have a comprehensive calendar of all partner dance events in the New York City and surrounding areas so that a quick trip to it could tell you what's going on on a given day. I implemnted my own calendar feature, but it was lacking an important features - recurring events support. I had to copy and paste the data for recurring events manually.

So instead of re-inventing the wheel and implementing my own recurring event support, I decided to use Yahoo Groups calendar feature. There is already an existing Yahoo Group devoted to the dance events in New York City and Long Island. It is called Social Dance Society. So I decided to link my well established and easy to remember domain name dancenyc.info to the weekly view of that Yahoo Group calendar. So going forward I will enter the events in that calendar and encourage others to do the same.

There are some advantages and disadvantages of this change.

Disadvantages

• To view the calendar you to have a Yahoo ID. But obtaining the Yahoo ID is free and with it you get tonns of other userful services by Yahoo. I think everyone should have it!
• The pages are no more cluttered with Yahoo ads and other features of the Yahoo Group
• It is no longer possible to filter by dance style, attire and keyword. But you can still use the event search feature of Yahoo calendar.

Advantages

• A powerfull recurring events feature of Yahoo Calendar can now be used. No longer you need to repeatedly enter recurring events.
• Because of the recurring events support the calendar will be more complete.
• Yahoo Group has existing user base so more people will use the calendar.

But overall I am happy with this move.

Mara is one of my favorite people to dance with at the weekly Hustle Party at DanceSport held every Monday. She has great style, incredible flexibility, and she can improvise like no other without me having to lead her into every single step. Finally today I was able to ask her friend to videotape us: Still Captures

Every Monday DanceSport dance studio hosts the best hustle parties in town. Here is a video taken at one of the parties:

If you are interested what it looks like to dance in a hat, click on the photo for some video clips hat dancing. Having long arms helps not to knock the hat off my partner :)

Went to the Crane Club today for swing dancing. It was my first time going there and I liked it. The dancefloor was not big, but there was room to dance outside of it. Live music was provided by Todd Londagin Combo which included the piano, bass, drums, and trombone. There was a separate room with couches and arm chairs and wall pictures from the 1920's. At around 12:30 AM they had a burlesque show the photos from which I will not put up to keep my website rated G...

Photos

Video:

Today from 3 to 7 PM Central Park had a Saturday Afternoon Fever as the sounds of Disco came out of the Bandshell where DJ Bobby Morales had set up his sound equipment. Instead of a bunch of rollerbladers and skateboarders, the area in front of the Bandshell was occupied by the Hustle dancers showing of their best moves in front of the crowd of spectators. You can see the video clips of me dancing with the Hustle addict Amara here:
There are also still captures from the first clip here.

Dancing on the concrete was not as good as on the conventional wooden dancefloor, but I appreciated all the space that we had. We could just move around all over the place without worrying about bumping into other couples. Most people who were dancing were the regulars who come to the Monday Night Huslte Party at DanceSport. David Padilla and Zula performed a Mambo routine and Miguel Marrero and Stacy Redler performed their Hustle routine full of fancy lifts that pleased the crowed of spectators. Anyone could participate in the event but most people preferred to watch rather than to dance. Perhaps hey were intimidated by the fancy moves of the hustlers. But this was not true for a groom and a bride who were passing by and decided to join the dancers.

This free event premiered two weeks ago. I hope that it will continue through the rest of the summer, since it's a good way to expose the world of Hustle to the masses.

More info in the main blog.

This competition was held at DanceSport dance studio and was sponsored by IHSC and Van McCoy Music, Inc. in recognition of Van McCoy for his contribution to hustle through his music. The competition consisted of two divisions - amature and professional. Each group had to perform a group dance, followed by a solo performance and finally another group dance. The 2nd and 3rd place winners received medals and the 1st place winners received plaques and free registration to the 4th Annual International Hustle and Salsa Competition held in Miami in April.

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Video Clips

Amature Division:
Raphael & Mihoko - group: Stream Download (3 MB)
Raphael & Mihoko - solo: Stream Download (3 MB)

Professional Division:
Group: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #1: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #2: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #3: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #4: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #5: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #6: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #7: Stream Download (3 MB)
Couple #8: Stream Download (3 MB)

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DCDI is the annual collegiate dancesport competition held at the University Of Maryland. This year it was a two-day event with plenty of dancing. Me and my partner Jaime got placed in 3rd through 6th place depending on the dance.

Here are the photos from the competition: http://ballroom.fotki.com/competitions/2003/dcdi/

More information about the competition: http://ballroomatmaryland.com/dcdi/

One more dance competition today. This time Stepping Out Studios invited all of their past 1st place Jack and Jill winners of 2003 to compete with each other at the Jack and Jill Grand Slam. Jack and Jill competitions are where you don't know in advance what partner you are going to dance with. The names of the partners are pulled out from the hat right before dancing starts. This time, not even the partner was unknown until the event, but so were the dances. Three random dances were chosen from the hat and they turned out to be Swing, Cha cha and Rumba. Me and my random partner ended up taking the first place.
I guess now that I got the total scholarship of $150 from the studio, I'll take some classes there.

On October 4 Stepping Out Dance Studios held it's 2nd Collegiate Big Apple Octoberfest. I did not plan to compete and just came there to watch. But before the competition started I was approached by one of the teachers there and she asked me to dance with this girl I have never seen before. Ofcourse I agreed and danced couple of practice dances. She was pretty good and we competed in Bronze Cha Cha and Rumba. The funny thing is that we ended up taking 1st place out of 4 couples. Well, some things are best done on a spur of a moment! Here are some photos and videos at the comp that I took with my camera. There was someone else taking pictures. I hope to get a hold of this guy and ask him to give me copies so I can see what I looked like.

Well, believing or not, I did it! For years I have been avoiding dance competitions, but finally I participated at the Rutgers University Dancesport Competition held on April 26. Me and my partner from the NYU ballroom team Katherine Herink did pretty well, considering we have not been practicing that much. We got the 7th place in International Waltz, 6th places in International Tango and Quickstep, and the 2nd place in “Mango” which is a “fun” dance – a combination of Mambo and Tango where they switched the music from one to another and you had to make smooth transitions from one to the other. Katherine and I competed in Bronze level. We did all dance types: American Smooth, American Rhythm, International Standard, and International Latin. The competition went from 8:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night! That was a lot of dancing! As much as I like social dancing, I have to say that dance competitions are fun as well. They give you a chance to really show off and look your best!

• Competition Photos
• Competition Videos
  (RealOne Player 9 required)

This was performance at DanceSport dance studio holiday party.

Screenshots

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Comical cha cha performance at the Valentine's Day party. This was a group performance class at DanceSport dance studio.

Screenshots

This was a student showcase that I did with my friend Ismerie at DanceSport dance studio. We choreographed it completely on our own and rehearsed for two weeks. The music is called "The Legend Of Babel" by DJ Dado.

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Screenshots