04.26.09
Posted in Climbing, Lindy Hop at 1:37 pm by tesstess
I’ve ache in all my muscles today. Yesterday we climbed for 5 hours, and then direct after I danced for 3 hours. Intensive day.
We went up quite early, 8 is early for being saturday, and went to to Chateaudouble, a climbing site in the Var, one hour by car. Just before the site we stopped in a small village to take coffe and croissant in the sun, feeling the village atmosphere. I had forgotten how nice this site is, first a small walk in the forest and then full south with view of forest and the village.
We started with a long route, devided in three. I’m not anymore scared to go in first so Anthony started, then I climbed up to him and went first in the second route, then Anthony climbed up to me and continued doing the third one in first. All three was in 5c and I found them easy and beautiful. We did 7 routs in total, I found all expect the last quite easy, Anthony says I improved a lot lately, makes me happy. I don’t notice it, I mean I don’t feel better, it just feels like the routs got easier. The last one we did was a very physic 6a+, I made it in first but I had to fight a lot, lots of bad words in swedish.
In the late afternoon I met up with Gwladys and Louic at the the ce room in amadeus and we practiced lindy. The goal was to test to teach with Gwladys, using Louic as betatester. Don’t remember if I wrote it already but I’m planning to start a ce club in Amadeus, teach lindy hop and organize to go together to different camps around in france. We decided the name of the group to ’swing&soul’ because we plan to not only dance to swing but also to more modern music, it will open up to interest more people. So yesterday it was Louic who taught us what parts of the basics that are hard. I only taught medium, advanced and acro classes before, never the pure beginners, it’s really a different methodology, but very interesting. We’re soo looking forward to teaching a group!
03.15.09
Posted in Garden, Lindy Hop, Every day life at 9:42 pm by tesstess
Well, I cannot show you a lot of flowers, they’ll come later…
But I got 34 tagetes (oeillets d’inde).
Today I attended a small workshop in Acrobatics held by Olivier & Natasha. I was lucky that there was a girl who couldn’t come so I could borrow her guy. We learnt ‘over the back’ (armkastet) and ‘la hanche’ (höftkastet) (don’t know that one in english). Well, I knew them before, but since I love acro I couldn’t resist the chance to practice them again. They taught the techique of ‘over the back’ a bit differently to what I’m used to, more round, always interesting to try different approaches. I tried to take some pictures but none of them turned out very well.
I promised mum to show my new friend Gwladys, with whom I went with to Grenoble last weekend, with whom I’ll go on all lindy camps we can afford and with whom I’ll try to start up a small lindy club in Amadeus.
03.30.08
Posted in Lindy Hop at 8:51 pm by tesstess
I’ve been in Spain for the first time in my life. It was a little bit like the first time I was in France, in Paris, and had so tight with time that we ran around to all famous to-have-seen things and then ate at McDonalds. This time I spent my first day as a Tourist, had time to see Park Guell with the Gaudi houses, and then I didn’t see anything more. I didn’t even see the big cathedral!
This are my tourist friends, and also my flat mates during my stay. Torbjörn, Kalle and Katarina. Then the other Torbjörn came to live with us one day later. It was so nice to live with swedes, talk swedish and laugh at swedish jokes.
It started of well and we found the famous chair. It is in mosaic and goes around all this open place. Hard to see though under all tourists.
Torbjörn was a bit sceptic at first, but at last he followed the stream of tourists up at the top, and see how happy he became!
And we took all the same photos as all other touritsts.
This is Barcelona. And this is all I saw of the Cathedral and the sea.
More Gaudi stuff. Incredible those houses.
Well, there is one more thing I didn’t do these 5 days: sleep. Sleeping is a waste of time.
This is what I did: Dance courses (half Lindy Hop and half Authentic Jazz): 18 hours. Social dancing at night: ca 14 hours, and then yes I did some sleeping, but only 14 hours. In four days.
I was most tired the first day, then the dance gave me energy. It’s really like a drug, dancing. Even when I came back to work I was speeded for two days. Totally crazy.
It seems like people who are dancing every week are more tired than the ones dancing every fourth month (like me).
I don’t have so much pictures from the other four days, I was only dancing all the time. Anyway I’ll show you the few ones I got:
Torbjörn and Ingrid practicing on the course material just after a course.
Swedes trying to find shops which are open when we want to buy food, which is not when the normal barcelona population wants to buy food. Luckily we found a small store selling biological food, even if very expensive.
One of the nights there was a “group theme”. So we all dressed out as ship broken sails men. We had a lot of fun. At the dance floor it was easy to spot the swedes, they (we) were everywhere! And it was extra easy to see us since we and one other group from scotland (who came in kilts) were the only groups who had realized the group theme dress-code.
After some hours on the dance floor I had to change clothes. The jazz course which I was taking was showing the routine we learnt during the day. This routine was a sensual one, and I was not feeling very sexy in my salesman outfit. The mini-show went good. It was so fun to be on stage again, I really miss it. More than I thought I could. I often dream at night about Jump Session and showing. Well well, life goes on.
This is how the dance floor looked in general.
And this is me after my 18 hours of course. Tired body but very happy mind.
The last night I didn’t need to go to sleep since there were no courses the next day. The big dance floor closed at 2am, and then we managed to get a ride with a spanish guy to the after party. This place was more like a big living room than a dance hall and it felt like everyone in the whole camp wanted to go. It was hardly possible to move at all in there, the temerature and humidity was so high that the floor got water on and it became imposible to twist, and if you saw two square decimeters free on the dance floor, that was the time to do a swingout. At six a clock the floor was better and the space bigger. I had many really good dances.
It’s funny now when I have started to know a bit the european dance people as well, not only the swedish ones, and you see the same people coming to workshops. It’s a different frienship. Sometimes you don’t even know their name, you just know how they dance and that’s enough.
At some point that night we were worried about how to get home since the underground stopped at 2am. Well, at 6.30 in the morning the problem was no longer there since the morning traffic already had started.
After 2,5 hours sleep it was time for “lindy in the park” and all gathered and danced on a square to live music. I had lots of energy and could have continued many more hours. Don’t ask me what the people in the front are doing.
Slutet gott, allting gott. I’m already longing for the next camp!
11.21.07
Posted in Lindy Hop at 11:15 pm by tesstess
Two weeks ago I finally found someone who would drive to Grenoble the weekend of the camp. The train was not going good times (hm, and in the end not running anyways because of the strikes). So, I tried to sign up for the courses even though it was full. It was even over-full. But I decided anyways to go and dance in the evenings (I had won them in the Jack’n Jill competition on the PSF camp), and do some shopping and looking at the city at daytime.
Lately me and Anthony have actually been thinking about moving somewhere else in France two-three years from now. Grenoble is one of the places we think maybe could fit us with mountains, nature and dancing.
Katarina came from Montpelier, and we slept in the same place, at the home of a couple of dancers. I’ve never seen so good taking care of guests! We was indeed very happy to be able to stay there.
Friday evening dance was great fun. It was wonderful to dance again. Fun also to recognize some of the French dancers. Maybe it will feel like home in the future, like I felt in Sweden when going around on different camps and seeing the same people coming again and again.
Saturday morning just before the courses I got a place for the courses. Puh. I was happy to not have to walk around all day in Grenoble, I would have got lost after 200 meters, and also, the city is one of the most ugly ones I’ve seen. Too sad. Don’t know if I would want to live in that place. However the mountains around was impressive.
This is the beautiful view from the place we were staying at.
But look at thees ugly houses! They were so dirty that I got the feeling that if I touched the facad I would be black. Apparently this is a very polluted city in summer, since the bad air stays between the mountains.
The teachers of the camp were all really good. I learnt a lot. Here is Katarina and some others training to do twists holding on to the wall. Very fun to look at. It is at sunday afternoon and I had to much ache in my body to participate.
There was also an advanced acrobatics class that I took with Farid. We did the pancace acro, and it worked surprisingly good after so short time, we don’t even know the dance style of the other! I really love aerials, I think it’s one of absolutely best and funniest things I know. I must make sure to do the comp and show next summer in Herrang to do more!
Saturday evening we ate spagetti Bolognaise and tasted the whine I had brought as gift. But blah, I had forgot that it was a sweet wine. A very good wine indeed, but not at all drinkable to meat. Luckily enough Katarina had brought some chokolats and we had them and the wine for dessert, so it was a happy ending of the dinner.
The dance on Saturday didn’t start good for me, I was not at all in the mood, and the floor was impossible to spin on, which really destroyed my dancing. It was first later in the night, when the floor was dirty enough to be able to turn without getting stuck, that I found the dance again and I had several really good dances.
Even though I only slept four hours per night I was so full of energy the whole weekend. The dance really makes me happy!
10.28.07
Posted in Parties and dinners, Lindy Hop at 11:58 pm by tesstess
Hi. Sorry I didn’t write for a while. Work is more stressing now, and I have hobbies on evenings and weekends.
The land and house searching has been down since the last (and first) house we looked at.
We celebrated the 30th birthday of Anthony middle of September, as well as our first year together. It was a big feast, with lots of people. Everyone brought meat to eat, and after that evening we ate good meat for one week.
Then we made a wine route, this year we repeated the success of Bourgogne. The reason we went back was that year 2005 which just came out, was an exceptional year for the wine from bourgogne, and we came home with 60 expensive but very good bottles. You have the best photos on my photo page.
This is freedom, and a good view.
Lindy at last
A couple of weeks after I went to Aix en Provence (just above Marseille) to do lindy courses at Provence Swing festival. It was fun to see how Lindy is in france. Better than I thought. The style is a bit different, but it fits, me, I will learn their style with time. There was a Jack’n Jill competition starting on friday evening with final on the saturday evening. The rules is that you change partner. It was the first time I took part in such a competition. It started out quite bad on friday, first it was one girl two much (thirteen with only twelve leaders) and of course I got no man :-/ But to the second song, everyone switched partner and I had one. But he danced rock, not lindy. I don’t know rock, except that it’s a lot of six counts, and more like swedish bug with the hands. On the saturday evening I was surprised to hear that I got to the final. There were five couples and I got to dance with a guy I nevern danced with before, from Toulouse. They dance a bit different over there so I had a hard time to follow, I was concentrated to max. I thoght we would change partner again, but apparentely in the final you kee the same, so we shook hands, and presented us for each other. His name was Nicolas, and danced the medium tempo, and then the fast. That was hard. Later in the evening when they announced who won I couldn’t believe my ears, we had won!! Crazy. The other dancers were really good too.
Katarina was with me at the camp. She’s living in Montpeiller this autumn, to study french. It was so good to have her there, I was not all alone in the big french world.
There was also 10-15 guys from Nice and I began to feel as a part of them.
The end of a wonderfull day
This has been a relaxed day. Anthony was climbing and I walked around in the house and garden and did small things, cleaning the bbq here and putting up lamps in the living room there. I ate lunch in the sun, it was so warm. It’s time to sleep now. We’ve had Pierre and Delphine here for dinner, it was a fantastic dinner, with chicken in nuts. It cannot be described really. It was perfect. I love France.
07.30.06
Posted in Hollidays, Lindy Hop at 8:16 pm by tesstess
This week I have been in Herräng, the Lindy Hop Mecca. Except during four weeks in summer Herräng is a small, sleeping village an hour above Stockholm. Then suddenly thousands of dancers invade the place and makes it alive. To be there is for me as being in a totally different world, not connected to my everyday life.
Me and Magnus attended the camp the fourth week and did the “competition and show” course. It is the first time we do this course which focus much more on show and on aerials (acrobatics), but it is my fourth year in Herräng. I longed to get here again from the last day of last year’s camp.
The first day of the course the comp & show people has to be divided into two groups. I was nervous for this audition weeks before the camp. First they (the three teaching couples of the course) taught us a short routine which I think we made quite ok, but then came a solo charleston routine, which both me and Magnus had some troubles with and in the end we didn’t manage to get into the best group which we had hoped for. I was really affected by this. I had thought I would be disappointed, but not totally depressed for a whole day! I seem to be more of a competing person than I thought. What was good is that they taught the same material to both groups. Next year, I tell myself, then we will have practiced much more and we will be in the best group, so that I can get to know more good dancers and dance with them at nights. Of course I can dance with them anyway, it’s just to ask them, but it is so much more fun if it’s a wish from both sides to dance.
One class each day we did aerials on a big football field. This is what I and Magnus love the most, and this year we learnt three or four new aerials and got more theory on some we knew from before.
Here is what my schedule looked like most days:
09-10 Breakfast
10-17 Three or four classes a 1 hour and 20 minutes, and breaks in between where we had sandwiches and chocolate. One kilo of chocolate we ate this week, half a kilo each.
18-19 Dinner
20-00 Sleep
01-05 Dance
05-08 Sleep
This way I missed the evening meetings where the whole camp gathers and Lennart, who is one of the key persons at the camp sits at the stage and tells stories, shows old movies and people comes up on stage to perform or talk. It’s always lots of crazy things going on at those meetings. I’m sad that I missed them, but this year I really wanted to dance as much as possible. The dance floor is too crowded between ten and midnight and most often I have the best dances very early in the morning when most people are gone to bed and only the most lindy loving dancers are left.
Next year we’ll go for more than one week, so that I can focus on social dancing one week and on courses the next. Some people spend the entire four weeks in Herräng. I think people from abroad get a pretty strange picture of Sweden when Herräng is the only place they see. There are lots of people from the US, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and more. Everyone speaks English at all times. Sometimes it takes quite a while before you notice the person you’re speaking to is actually from Sweden and you don’t have to speak Swedish at all. I must say it’s much better than in France, because as soon as one in a big group of people are from somewhere else, English is the given language, whereas here in France as soon as there is more than three French people in the same group, the given language is French…
There was a pool at the camp area this year, Marcus and Ellen jumped in after some hesitation. I also saw couples doing aereals from outside the pool, into the pool which was really cool, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to catch them with my camera.
This year my entire body was acing after just a few days, and after four days I caught a cold and slept one whole night and did no courses the next day. This is normal at Herräng, I get it every year. Fortunately this year I got better again and could dance from one o’clock at night until half past nine the next morning of my last day. Then two hours later, after breakfast, packing and cleaning I managed to drive two hours of the way home before I got to dangerous and have to hand over the driving to the others.