Teacher Lineup Verified!
We are very excited to welcome Dave Madison, Haley Smith, Mike Legett, Josh Boroff, Devona Cartier, Don West, and Tina Davis! Learn more about these fabulous people below.
Also, Early-Bird Registration will open October 18th - just a few weeks away!
Teacher Bios:
David Madison and Haley Smith
David and Haley have been teaching Blues in the Bay Area since the beginning of the Bay Area Blues scene. They were also honored to teach a blues class at the infamous Herräng Dance Camp. They've consistently placed highly at Blues contests across the country. Their love of teaching comes from transferring the fundamental essence of Blues to their students. Their classes are high energy and have a playfulness and interactive nature that is infectious. Explaining and demonstrating are not enough, Dave and Haley have the lofty goal of wanting every student to walk out of the class with a mastery of the material.
Mike Legett
Mike the Girl is known for both her love of connection and for her strange name. Her dancing was born and raised in Knoxville, but in 2006 she moved to Atlanta to pursue a dual career as mad scientist and dance junkie; she delights in exploring Lindy, Charleston, Bal, Blues, Molecular Bio, and Tango. She has performed Charleston and Blues from one coast to the other, and she enjoys Jack-and-Jill comps as an excuse to social dance when everyone else decides to sit down. For Mike, perhaps the only thing more rewarding than dancing is teaching; she combines an intuitive understanding of connection with an analytical speaking style to give her students technique, but also strives to challenge and inspire her students to push themselves further into the music.
Joshua Boroff and Devona Cartier
Devona first began swing dancing, at the age of eight, as a Carolina Shagger taught by her dad in his North Myrtle Beach kitchen. While in college, pursuing a dance degree, she took her first Lindy Hop class in 1998, and her first Blues class in 2000, both in North Carolina. She moved to NYC in 2001 and resides in Brooklyn. In her daily life she is a well respected Pilates teacher. Recently she has taken top prize in Jack and Jill Competitions at Down Home Blues(SF,6/06) and Jammin' the Blues(DC,8/06). Joshua grew up loving music and moving to it. He took his desire for movement and put it into fencing, which he competed in and taught for ten years. He learned Lindy Hop in '98 at Beantown and started his infatuation for Blues dancing in early '03. Wanting to know more, he began following in order to learn how to blues dance. Eventually he got into micro-blues and developed a style for which he was known. Now his tastes have grown into more vintage style movements, driven by a hard backbone of Delta blues. Joshua and Devona began dancing together in 2003. They have a unique style of dancing to blues music that incorporates vintage blues dances with their own personal style. When they dance, they want to express the rhythms, styles, feels, and tones of the music, varying their style as the music changes. They teach not because they can or because they are good dancers, but because they feel they can offer something unique; they want to share what they love about blues music and dancing. In their classes they place high importance on getting the message across clearly to the people at hand, adapting as needed. Their classes include demonstration, feedback, lots of music, and most importantly, practice (see it, do it, do it again, try this, do it, do it, do it). They have taught most recently at the MezzJelly weekend in Raleigh NC and placed in the Blues Division finals at Rhythmic Arts Festival.
Don West
Don West has been dancing since 1997 and teaching since 2000 in Dallas. He's been in a number of dance troupes including Smiley's Lindy Hoppers, Uptown Swing and began his own troupe called the Madcap Maniacs and is now the creative director for the ACME Swing Co. He was also the 2000 American Lindy Hop Jack and Jill Champion in Connecticut as well as first place winner in several local competitions in Austin and Houston. Don's teaching style focuses on technique and communication in social dancing, and wants nothing more than to share his love of the dance with you and for you to enjoy yourself on the dance floor.
Tina Davis
After years of dancing, DJing and organizing in the Lindy Hop and Blues scenes in Florida and Texas, Tina is dipping her toe into the teaching world to spread her love of dancing to the Blues. She is currently teaching with Keith Shapiro for the Austin Swing Syndicate, taught at Austin Blues Party with Don West, and recently spread her love for Blues at Blues Boot Camp. Tina likes to emphasize to students sound fundamentals, the basics of rhythm, and love of the music. But most of all, dancing has just got to be fun.
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http://www.entertheblues.com
