After months of anticipation, we finally met our dance campers (or campy dancers?) today. We started with a traditional initiation into the social dance world, the Shim Sham. To the uninitiated, the Shim Sham is a tap/jazz line dance that dates back to the 40s. Dancers all over the globe know this dance. If you walk into a swing club in Sweden and “Tuxedo Junction” plays, the whole room will get up and do the same dance. It’s like the first flash mob. It was pretty exciting to see a whole new young crop of dancers joining into that decades long, unbroken stream of dance knowledge.
We hit the pop choreography pretty hard. Not everyone signed on for the Gaga experience, but everyone rose to the challenge. Rueda, the partner switching dance, pushed them to their limits. But that’s part of what camp is about, finding your limits.
We had lunch in the park and then came back for some serious costume crafting and break out groups to work on tap and latin footwork.
The unanimous conclusion of the post camp faculty debrief was that we have a great group of talented kids. We brainstormed some ideas for the rest of the week and can’t wait to start all over.
