Acrobatics at SPACE

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.

Michelle Badion

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:

This motivated me to take a few private lessons with Eugenia, and boy were they worth it. Her technique is very deep and precise, and she knows the body well. She’s a gyrotonic teacher trainer, which is a sort of more internal circular version of pilates.


It’s funny, the path of mastery is very deep. I think that Eugenia now is a superior dancer to Eugenia of 2004, and yet she was even then at the pinnacle of teaching and dancing. That’s part of why I love dance, and tango in particular: you can never stop improving.

I’m halfway through the trip and trying to focus on creating more memories.  Who knows what might happen in the coming days?

For coincedence watch 2009: I ran into Tyrone and his wife (non tango dancers) in Palermo (while shopping) a few days prior to taking this picture, at a tango practice at Villa Malcolm.  This city is crazy small.

Seeing Tyrone and his wife at Villa Malcolm

Afterwards, I headed to La Viruta (this would be around 3:30 AM or so).  Despite being close, it took me a while to find a cash machine that actually worked.  Viruta was pretty good this year, surprisingly.  Last year, it was 85% party music, and the quality of dancers was pretty abysmal, with a really mixed up line of dance full of collisions.  This year I felt more connected, and the tango started flowing really well for me around 5 AM.  Oh and I chatted with Willem Dafoe briefly. Things shut down around 7:15 AM, and I was astounde to see true daylight leaving the venue for once.

My two goals for this trip were to create amazing memories, and to get DanceHop going in the right direction.  I think that both are happening steadily.  I don’t know what next year (and next New Years) will look like, but I have the positive expectation that it will be even better.

Looking at the New Year, I feel like it’s an arbitrary date, excepting that it relates to the earth’s position relative to the sun, and other people care about it.  Still, it’s a fine time to reflect, and connect.  This trip has served to remind me of how large the world is, and how interconnected at the same time.

One idea that comes to mind is something I learned from Dan and Lara from Biznik, a Burning Man concept of collaboration over competition.  The dance community thrives when we work together, and often suffers when there’s infighting, particularly in places where dance culture isn’t fully integrated and there’s not real critical mass.  If a dance shuts down, some people simply leave the scene or get less involved, since it’s not worth it and there aren’t a lot of options.  It’s up to us to decide what matters to us and why, and what we can do about.

My New Year’s resolution is to fully express my love of dance and dancers, and spend my available time bringing what I can to the Seattle scene, and hopefully beyond. Here’s to seeing everyone growing together, and elevating the consciousness of our surroundings through dance!

There’s a certain foreigner / professional dancer tango circuit, and I’m definitely in the thick of it. Villa Malcolm has performances quite often, and a lot of “nuevo” tango, which native argentines view with curiousity, unless they get it.  Salon Canning is a bit more traditional and elegant, but still pretty young and foreigner friendly.

Earlier in the day I hit Tango Brujo, and took a physical conditioning class, which was a combination of yoga, tango, and modern dance.  Little did I know I would be the only man there, not that I’m complaining.  Still, I made a good effort to stay focused on the class, which was smart given that it was designed for women’s movement and flexibility, and I was a human puddle of sweat when it was done.  For anyone who bought a class ticket, there’s a 20%  discount on shoes. I’ve got a great pair of shoes that have jeans material on them, I’ll try to show a pic of it soon.

And now for a new feature, a gallery!