Dawn Xiana Moon: Intelligent folk pop with influences from jazz and traditional Chinese music. From Chicago.

Randomness Archives • Blogroll Me! • Atom XML Feed • RSS Feed

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

The Underground World of the Lindy Exchange

Have you ever stood and stared at it, lindyhopper? Marveled at its beauty. Its genius. Billions of people just living out their lives... oblivious to the exchange world within their cities.
--from the Matrix-themed Oxford, Ohio Exchange website

Last weekend I was in Chicago for the Windy City Lindy Exchange. So what is a lindy exchange, you ask? Imagine an entire weekend doing nothing but swing dancing with a more-than-slightly-obsessed group of dancers from all over the country (or world--there were a bunch dancers from Canada at this one, and I know Paris is hosting an exchange soon) and crashing with people you've probably never met before but who are willing to host you simply because they too have become addicted to the dance. In a word: incredible. I danced for around 25 hours in three days in venues as diverse as the University of Chicago's gothic Ida Noyes Hall, an unimpressive blue-floored and green-walled club, and a dancer's two-floored apartment and discovered that I'm not as hooked on dancing as I thought I was--I met a guy who moved to San Francisco specifically because it has the best lindy scene in the country and a number of people who bought apartments because of their hardwood floors (i.e. a good dancing surface). And so many of them seemed to know each other. Apparently it's also not uncommon to go to an exchange not knowing anyone (these are adventurous people).

So now I have great memories dancing in the aisle of an IHOP (I lindy hopped at IHOP!--say it, it's funny) and dancing on concrete in front of a grocery store (after the Late Night on Sunday we wanted to make crepes and needed ingredients--we had a few minutes to kill since the store wasn't open yet). And I caught an exhibition on Sunday by some beat-boys and -girls who were ineffable; they spun on their heads, held themselves up by their arms, twisted their legs, and made all of the swing dancers look like wimps who wished they could hip hop. But yeah, I'll be going to more exchanges. You know it's bad when you start traveling to appease your addiction.

^ Top | 7:02 PM | | |