DanceHop: Dance Events, Dance News, Dance Videos, Seattle Dance
Dancehop blog: events, news, lifestyle, lessons, video, and more

Here’s the second interview, with Jim chow, who runs the Seattle Salsa Meetup, and runs the Belltown dance studio. The audio wasn’t great so I just did a transcript. Let me know if you guys prefer audio or text. Lots of videos and content, so check out more after the jump:
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We’re constantly looking at ways to create the best experience for dancers on dancehop.com, are currently looking to streamline the events page. Here’s a sample:

I think we can tighten it up with by moving the X Dancers | X ratings up a bit, but overall how does it compare with the dancehop events page currently?

Here’s a pic of Orville swinging some lovely ladies in acrobatics at SPACE in Greenwood.


I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit at SPACE, I felt welcomed and enchanted by a combination of blues and the crew dressed in acrobatic costume awesomeness. It’s a great collaborative environment, with art on the walls, girders above the dance floor for acrobatic gear, and a major emphasis on dance fusion.

We ended up skinny dipping in Greenlake, and hitting one of the local diners around 3 AM, where 10 or so people converged.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to interview Michelle Badion, a Seattle dance paragon, and community builder. Michelle has been teaching dance for 20 years (Salsa, Tango, and Swing) and has some great stories to tell in this interview. Click below to hear her perspectives on beginners, why we dance, community, teaching, and a fun story about Carlos Gavito:

You can check Michelle out at MichelleBadion.com. Let me know what you guys think, are there any questions you’d like me to ask Michelle, or future interviewees? After I heard the audio quality, I tried to fix things up a bit, and the next interview will be a step up in quality.

I wanted to showcase a few more pics that I enjoyed, you can check out the whole set on the Flickr photo stream.

Here’s a new Flickr submission:

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Yesterday was more abundance in action. For those of you out of the loop, I’m buying dinner or lunch for people who might have ideas for DanceHop until June 15th.

I had dinner with my friend Walt, a great Rails developer and PM. We had an interesting and productive conversation at Tom Douglas’ Greek inspired restaurant, Lola. Here’s what we ate:

King salmon kebab

Oyster mushroom kebab with anchovy paste

Halibut main course

Charred asparagus with stewed diced garlic tomatoes

Goat cheese pastries with honey, mint, and almonds

It’s surprising how generous other people are when you yourself are generous. It’s the law of attraction in action. Our conversation helped hone my focus for the next few months on what value DanceHop will be providing.

It all relates to a goal I’ve had: increase the number people dancing every week in the US by 20%. This means focusing on people who love mentoring and sharing dance, and helping those that want to learn. I’m going to be thinking a lot on how to help new people get their feet on the floor, as always, your ideas are welcome.

This is coming from Jamieson, a salsa dancing friend of mine in SoCal. I’ve got 18 great pics of his from his online gallery. Here’s one of them:

There’s too many great ones to show up here at once, but this did inspire me for another possible title for the fourth category (get recognition) which is “Strut your stuff with your friends”. Here’s another good example of this:

As always, your opinion is highly valued, either here on the blog, or on the Facebook Fan Page!

Vladimir Estirin, of tangoafficionado.com, recently submitted some great photos the DanceHop competition. Now we’ve got a flavor of tango for DanceHop! With so many great submissions, I’m thinking of adding a fourth category, “get recognition”.

Possible caption: ARRR you able to get the word out?

There’s more where that came from, as you can see from the Flickr page. One thing that’s challenging about all of these great submissions is trying to figure out what ideas to get across, and who should win.

I meet with a men’s group twice a month that practices the teachings of The Way of the Superior Man, by David Deida. One major focus is having a purpose, and making space for the purpose on one’s life.

When I talk about DanceHop to them, I always discuss how I want to help dancers. I’ve never once mentioned wanting to be wealthy, just having the freedom to be where I want, when I want, so I can dance with people everywhere, and get people connected.

One of the men called me on this, saying that the point of going into business is to make money. He suggested a practice:
In order to get right with the fact that I enjoy wealth, I must spend $100 cash every day, beyond normal bills, for the next two weeks.

My poor Jewish heart! I balked, but eventually agreed that it makes sense for me to feel what it would be like to be even more successful than I am right now. So here’s my offer to you, dear reader: come help me spend this by letting me buy you dinner I firmly believe that spending can be an act of creation, and in this case I want to feed the relationship with dancers like you.

Last evening I put this into action by having dinner at Zoe in Belltown with my friend Rachel, who I haven’t seen in the last couple months. She has a great mind for marketing and design, and is an awesome networker. Even though I had just planned to have a great dinner and nothing more, she has already come back to me with some great value. Hmm, this experiment reminds me of Keith Farazzi’s Never Eat Alone, a great book with a ton of tips on building relationships.

So I found a design I liked, modified it, got great feedback from Nicole, and we’ve got a flyer produced by EricB. This will be the 4×6 paper flyer until we get a nice glossy photo out. We’ll probably print this on orange paper, same color as the bouncing ball. Any feedback?