Swing Out I

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
-- Eric Hoffer

Sunday, December 27, 1998

I'm writing from the Dance camp I've been looking forward to for about six months!

I drove from Seattle, by myself, Saturday, leaving after a McDonalds lunch. I felt vaguely guilty at not offering to drive someone, but I really only managed to clean out my car enough to get my stuff in. It's been a while since I drove on a Washington State Ferry, since my sister's birthday in 1997. Something about being on the ferry really makes it like you are taking a voyage!

It was a pleasant drive through a wintry rural landscape. The Olympic Peninsula is where Betty MacDonald wrote "The Egg and I," but the movie version (it was the beginning of the Ma and Pa Kettle saga) just put it in a stereotypical countryside, and didn't show any of the Pacific Northwest atmosphere. I didn't stop for any antiques or touristy stuff, though, even though the town of Port Townsend is a very popular vacation spot -- lots of gift stores and bed and breakfast places. There will be time for some of that later this week, I think!

Due to my neurotic promptness syndrome, I arrived at Fort Worden just as registration was due to be open. Of course, they weren't, quite. Paul Franklin enlisted my help. I walked around the dorm with him, helping to put name tags on the doors of the rooms. "I wouldn't have thought this was a two-person job," he said, "but it's really more efficient to have someone hold the sign up, and someone else stick the tape on."

Fort Worden, where the camp is being held, is now a state park that is used as a conference center. It's an old military base that has apparently also seen duty as a women's reform center. The accomodations are spartan, but at least I have my own room!

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People arrived one by one, with a few busloads thrown in. I was gleeful on seeing all my dance buddies, and meeting the new folks. I even went walking through the dorms to see who was staying where, noting the nametags on the doors.

They needed help in setting up the main dance venue for the opening night dance, so I went along. Five of us squeezed into my buddy Sterling's car, and teased him about the squeals from the fan belt. The largest hall we have is at the county fairgrounds, about half a mile from the base. Walkable, but not a fun walk in this cold, damp weather, in the dark. We'll be carpooling back and forth throughout camp. It didn't take long to get tables and chairs set up around the edge of the hall.

After a dinner in the cafeteria, we went to the Theater for an orienttion meeting. Announcements, introductions of the instructors and camp staff, and then it was time to head down the road to the dance!

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I made an effort to dance with all the new (to me) leads that I could. There are folks here from Japan, California and Oregon (of course), Chicago, Colorado, and lots of other places. Perhaps a third are familiar to me from the Seattle scene. Former online journaler Darren Holloway is here! He's an experienced ballroom dancer, but a beginning lindy hopper. We went dancing together in Seattle last April.

Also here is Jim Lane, whom I met in August. He's a founding member of the Savoy Swing Club, but has been away from it (but not from dancing) for a while. He said he didn't see many familiar faces. When he started, he says, he was on a first-name basis with every lindy hopper in the Northwest! But now there are a bunch of new folks on the scene.

Around eleven, my cough medicine was starting to wear off, so I drove back to camp and dosed myself, then rested for a short while. I wanted to try out the after-hours dancing, which didn't start until midnight! So I read a chapter in one of the books I brought, David Brin's Heaven's Reach, until it was time.

It was bitterly cold and windy, but I only had to walk a block. We were dancing in the old USO club on the base, and it was still very cold inside the building! I danced the first few dances with my jacket on! Since it was a small group, I felt free to dance with my Seattle buddies, as well as the new folks that were there. Hep Jen was DJ'ing, of course!

It's great fun dancing with unfamiliar partners. It challenges me, and forces me to concentrate on what they are doing. Of course I should be doing this all the time! I think I got back to my room around one fifteen, and was asleep by two in the morning.

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Today was the start of the formal part of camp, since it was the beginning of the classes. I'd signed up for level two, an intermediate level, which was big enough that we have to split for most classes. The schedule is arranged so that each section will have class with all the instructors.

Because Sweden was the place where the lindy hop revival first took off, there are a number of Swedish instructors at camp. They all speak English and are very good dancers and teachers.

There were two classes in the morning, then lunch, then a lecture on music theory and jazz, then another class. There was an optional late afternoon class, but I skipped it to go into town to try to find the internet cafe. I did succeed in finding it (this wasn't so easy in the dark and the rain) but they are closed all day on Sunday! I'll try to go there tomorrow.

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