Southern Belle Swing Bash

This past weekend Phillip and I attended the Southern Belle Swing Bash in Atlanta. it was my first time attending an event designed specifically for followers, and I did walk away with some things to work on in my dance.

Atlanta in September is so very beautiful. Crisp in the morning, warming up in the afternoon, and cooling off just in tome for evening dances. It was perfect to slip outside at the night dances and enjoy the fresh air. It is hellacious to drive in the ATL, but I loved downtown and the cafes. We had a delish breakfast at the Crescent Moon Cafe, and I was able to get my venti Pumpkin Spice Latte before the morning classes.

I loved some of the settings for the classes, Agnes Scott College in beautiful, but no A.C. is a very bad idea for such hard swinging work. I was dripping with sweat after the first class, and it just got worse as the day went on. The Georgia Tech Ballroom was a better location for classes with parking and A.C. I would have liked to see a dance at Agnes Scott perhaps, the cooler night air would have chased away the grody feeling a bit better.

The classes were interesting, but having male volunteers made it a bit difficult for us followers to work on our dance. Not every lead was intermediate (which was one of the stipulations for attending) thus we as follows couldn't really focus on us, we had to worry about the lead yanking us around. And as the leads were volunteers, the naturally was a shortage. Too many follows had to step out of the rotation for lack of lead, and as I paid a pretty good amount to attend, my expectation was to dance the whole rotation. I signed up the day registration was offered. I even brought a lead. As an organizer, they could see the lead/follow ratio, and yet allowed too many follows with not enough leads. Disappointing.

The instructors were great. Peter Strom and Frida Segerdahl are amazing dancers. This marks the second time I have taken from Frida, and she still amazes me. Seriously, click on their names and watch some vidoes. Serious bad-ass dancing!

All in all, a good event that has the potential to get better. I had some of the best dances ever at the Saturday Night dance, so see you in November at the Atlanta Varsity Showdown!!