Melbourne and MSF

I just got back on Sunday night from a week in Melbourne. I was there from Saturday, 3 March to Sunday, 11 March. I have mixed feelings about my trip to Melbourne. Overall, it was great. Let me say that first. It was great to catch up with my friends, great to see a new city, I enjoyed eating out there, meeting new people, and great to be dancing. But I'll go into why the trip wasn't 100% enjoyable as I progress in this post.

So I went down to Melbourne on the Saturday, with my lovely flatmate Megan driving me to the airport, and getting picked up by the amazing Pommy Dan in Melbourne. That night, Dan drove me around town and showed me some of the more major landmarks, and we went to China town for dinner at this dodgy ass Shanghai dumpling place down one of the alleys off the main China town strip. The food was fantastic! I wasn't even hungry, but I managed to eat so much food, and we both ate to the point that we were pretty stuffed, and for the 3 dishes it only came up to $20. What a bargain. I have to say that that style of place is one of my most favourite places to go out to eat. Dodgy, nasty, but tasty. I stayed with Dan until Wednesday, and still being sick from the previous week, I didn't do too much wandering around, but went into the city on Monday and Tuesday to get a feel for the city, catch the tourist bus around town, and do a bit of shopping.

Oh I skipped something! Ben and Helen's wedding! Man I think this is going to be a bit of a mammoth post... Their wedding was lovely. Really it was just such a lovely day, it did look like it might rain for a while, but it held out, and Ben finished the wedding ceremony by flipping Helen upside down on his hip a la swing style. Very shmoooth. I was impressed (and rather amused). The reception was held afterwards at this really lovely old style place. I don't really know how to describe what kind of architecture it resembles, or is, but it was very stately, and in a similar kind of vein to a lot of the old houses that I saw in Melbourne. The food was really nice, and everything was just lovely. I really couldn't fault the whole event. It makes me think about what I'd like to do for my wedding*. This wedding was an extremely sober wedding though. No out-and-out drunkenness. Which is how I think I'd like to differ when it comes to my wedding: I want prolific and out of control boozing at my wedding.

Anyway I got to catch up again with Ben and Helen later in the week, which was good because I hardly got to speak to them at the wedding. I miss them both so much!!




Second half of my trip I stayed with the marvelous Scottie and Ainslie. They have such a nice place, and is in a good little location close to town. Andy arrived the next day on Thursday. On Friday Andy and I went out to St Kilda beach, and had lunch on St Kilda pier (probably one of the worst meals we had in Melbourne. Pasta was undercooked, wine was crap, service was ordinary), walked past Luna Park, and had a coffee and some sweet pastries at one of the cafes along a cafe strip. This is a little on the schadenfreude side, but I had a lot of satisfaction after finding out that the Luna Park in Melbourne is older than the Luna Park in Sydney because Andy had been taking the piss out of me since we had arrived in St Kilda for me thinking that Luna Park in Melbourne was anything significant. Oh the pettiness - but I was highly amused.

Now on to the Melbourne Swing Festival.

This kicked off on the Thursday night officially, with the Disco Party that they had at the regular Thursday night Swing Patrol venue of CBD. It was a good night, although was slightly marred by some bad cabbie experiences beforehand. Ainslie said she'll be on the case though. She's hc.

Friday was the Battle of the Bands ball. It was ok. Actually I couldn't get into the social. The music was consistently very fast, and there was little chance to get into much of a dancing groove because of the amount of interruptions in the form of little performances throughout the night. I was proud to say that for the duration of the ball, I maintained a higher ratio of beers to dances. Not bad hey. I don't think I've ever managed that before. Afterwards was the after party though, which was notably excellent. That's where the real dancing happened, and I have to say that I had a fair few very excellent dances. It's been a long time since I've had so many really good dances.

Actually I feel like making this entry briefer. It's all a bit much. So cutting a long story short, Saturday was the competition night: Dan and I didn't get to the finals for the slow division; Drew and I did, but we didn't place. I have to confess it was a little disappointing that we didn't place, but I think I know what was going wrong. At the moment I'm cutting back on doing any practice, but I'm keen to start it up again as soon as I can get myself a car. Drew's such an awesome dancer, and I think I'm very lucky to be dancing with him.

On Friday, Andy lost his wallet on the tram. Silly Andy.

Sunday, workshops I think were better than the Sunday. Andy and I decided to skip the morning session, and only do the afternoon. I was kinda glad about that, because I found Jo-Jo Jackson's "teaching" to be crap. I'm not going to mince my words here, but she didn't teach AT ALL. All she did was do a move, and then tell us to do it. And if you didn't have at least 2 solid years of lindy experience, plus a reasonable exposure to jazz, you would have been screwed in the class, and totally demoralised about not being able to follow the classes at all. During the charleston class, she did next to no charleston, and did mostly jazz steps. I wasn't impressed. The Saturday workshops with Andy and Nina weren't the best either. But they definitely made up for it in my eyes on the Sunday. On Saturday I found that they didn't pay attention to the class and what was going on at all, and were only just going through their teaching routine. But on Sunday, they seemed to pay more attention to the class, and Nina said some of the most brilliant things from a followers' perspective that she could have possibly said: leads, give the girl some space. Let the follow finish her movements. Stop overleading her.

It made me so happy.

Hanna and Mattias were just brilliant as per usual. I love Harlem Hot Shot style swing. It's so much more raw and traditional, and lacks the pretentiousness that a lot of the more contemporary styles of swing have. It's more honest in a way. The last session was aerials. That was great actually. I'm of the opinion that the best people in the world to learn aerials from are members of the Harlem Hot Shots. They just know their shit like noone else when it comes to aerials. And doing the performances the way they do they really need to. So getting their technique firsthand as to how to do it is really sensational. I did the aerials session with Drew, and it went reasonably well. We'll need some more practice with it, but I reckon we'll be able to get them down pat in not too long.

So I'm going to leave it there.


* Assuming that I get married.