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| Photos by Elisa Peterson, St. Louis. www.elisapeterson.com |
Last weekend a year and a half of planning, observing, and implementing culminated into the first annual Nevermore Jazz Ball & St. Louis Swing Dance Festival. For reasons I'm still trying to discover for myself, this event, which in scope and scale started out as no more than an under-the-radar regional event, was just terrific. And please don't get me wrong--this is not a shameless plug for what will definitely be a second year coming--but a summary of the decisions we made as organizers, and why many of them worked well for us, and may work for other dance events.
Selecting Live Music
Having as much live music as possible for social dancing was never a question for us as event planners. I'd say that this is a fairly common principle for many lindy hop and jazz dance events across the nation, but where we differed is that 75% of our music was by local musicians, many of whom make their living in another profession. I can't think of a better arrangement, especially because the 25% of musicians that were out-of-town made up New Orleans' reputable Meschiya Lake & The Little Big Horns, our headlining group. Meschiya and the band went above and beyond to provide the energy and exceptional musicianship they are known for across the globe, and this played a primary function in attracting out-of-towners to an otherwise unrecognizable live music line-up. We are indebted to this group. We also owe our local musicians the utmost acclaim: Tommy Halloran's Guerrilla Swing, The Sidemen, and Miss Jubilee all rose to the occasion to provide superb dance music. By hiring many local musicians in addition to our name band, we were able to have quality and affordability, as well as harbor a longer lasting relationship between the musicians and dancers, which is something every scene should strive for.
Instructors and Classes
We didn't want workshops to overwhelm the schedule. So we took a minimalist approach that could deliver info to large amounts of people of different skill levels. Peter Loggins and Mia Goldsmith were our first choice from the beginning because of their talent for teaching all-levels classes and for their holistic perspective of jazz partner dancing, which makes many different styles and techniques available on the social dance floor (AKA blowing lindy hoppers' minds). In addition to presenting their style of lindy hop, they offered topics such as one-step and two-step, which make up an invaluable skill set for any social dancer. John Bedrosian, a St. Louis-native and swing dancer since age 6, gave our classes a unique local flare. With nearly 200 students, John taught St. Louis Shag, a local territory dance that he grew up dancing socially. Watching the styles of dancing shift during the weekend as people experimented with the new-found knowledge was particularly rewarding on Sunday night, when a small group of die-hards did the shag song after song. Including Mr. Loggins, who's fond of the dance and has been spreading it to Europe.
Saint Louis and Local Personality
One of our most steadfast preoccupations with this event was to keep everything in the city, and in historic venues, to the best of our ability. We found it very important not to have "The St. Louis Swing Dance Festival" 30 miles outside of St. Louis, and I think this principle served the event extremely well. The Casa Loma Ballroom, an art deco palace in South City St. Louis with original 30s charm and expansive maple dance floor was probably the best possible option for our event. It had old school atmosphere, great floor, and limitless space. There were other more affordable and logistically sensible options, but as a historical landmark, and one with specific significance to jazz dance, the Casa Loma added a unqualifiable element that a generic dance studio simply cannot. We also made sure to refer people to local restaurants and St. Louis mainstays, not chains, to encourage people to further experience the event in a way that couldn't be experienced the same way any where else. And, of course, the city itself was a unique player in the production of our event. We not only featured our idiosyncratic architecture and music history landmarks through a Friday morning walking tour (many thanks to Michael Allen & Kevin Belford), but also attempted to plunge our attendees into the very fabric of the city for the duration of their visit. Many people got a taste of the city's personalities with the dance event as a starting point.
*I will happily note that two events in particular inspired us to do things the way we did. Cowtown Jamborama has always had a hometown/homemade feeling of hospitality that gives it a particular charm. The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown, since it has been in New Orleans, has unequivocally incorporated the unique characteristics of the city's culture to make it unlike any other event in the world. To the extent that our resources allowed, we used these models within the context of Saint Louis to make our hometown and our neighbors as significant as the music and dancing.
People: Attendees and Staff
No matter what you do as an event organizer, whom you attract to participate in the event is going to serve to be define the experience. We were extremely fortunate to have local volunteers and local and out-of-town staff who filled in the gaps left from first-year event planners (look at me!) to make this event a success. I also feel particularly pleased with how everyone reacted to the charm of the venues and cityscape, which are things we particularly strove to showcase.
Another quality of our event, whether intended or not, which made the weekend memorable was having flexibility. Our contest coordinator Oscar Hampton was able to make impromptu changes based on what he thought best, and our MC Jon Tigert . . . well, let's just say he's a great improviser. Having this quality also allowed for spontaneous happenings like this--Tommy Russo, a 95-year-old jitterbug singing with Meschiya Lake's band:
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