The Blues Room, August 5. Brought to you by Empire Swing

Hey everyone!

First thing’s first: It’s getting a bit confusing, wondering who among our interested subscribers is also on our facebook group (MadBlues Dance), and/or on the Empire Swing group. Since our events are now officially run through Empire Swing, they should be your first port of call from now on, in looking for event information. To save some people getting multiple notifications, and to save us having to write them, we’d like to ask that everyone who wants to keep up to date with our blues events in Brisbane to subscribe to the Empire Swing (empireswing.com.au) newsletter. We’d also like to encourage facebook users to join the Empire Swing group, as future Blues Room fb events will be posted through that group. We’ll still keep this blog running and maybe post odds and ends for interest’s sake, but please don’t rely on it for event information. If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to email or message us on facebook.

Ok, having said all that, for anyone who hasn’t already caught wind of it, we are holding the next Blues Room social dance/class night next Friday, August 5th at the St Andrew’s Anglican church hall at 89 Fairley St, Indooroopilly. Details are,

7pm Intermediates class
8pm Beginners class
9pm-late Social dancing to Brisbane’s finest blues DJs

Pricing:
Social dance: $8 or free with class(es)
Beginners class: $8
Intermediates class: $14
Both classes: $20

Bring your friends, even if they have no dance experience!

All welcome, so spread the word and bring your friends!

 

BLUES ROOM Friday 24 June (***NEW VENUE***) brought to you by EMPIRE SWING

Dear Bluesy Dancers of Brisbane,

We are proud to announce that we will be running The Blues Room officially under the Empire Swing banner, beginning this week. This will help bring the event to a wider community of dancers and make blues more prominent on the Brisbane partnered dance scene. 

Plus, we have a great new venue and a new pricing structure!

VENUE

Channelling the gospel spirit that infused the blues from its earliest days in the deep South, we are moving to

St Andrew’s Anglican Church hall

89 Fairley St
Indooroopilly
Queensland 4068

PRICING
Social dance: $8 or free with class(es)
Beginners class: $8
Intermediates class: $14
Both classes: $20

REMEMBER: BLUES ROOM this Friday 24 June

7pm Intermediates class
8pm Beginners class
9pm-late Social dancing to Brisbane’s finest blues DJs

All welcome, so spread the word and bring your friends!

Check out the Blues!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-002dJH5_A4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zktVBB9GfI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LQLxt83hQk

 

 

 

The Blues Room, Friday June 24 (NEW VENUE!)

Time	24 June at 19:00 - 25 June at 00:00
Location	St Andrew’s Anglican church hall 89 Fairley St, Indooroopilly Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

More info

********NEW VENUE!********* Come and get your blues on at Brisbane’s monthly social blues dance night! 7pm Intermediates class 8pm Beginners class 9pm-late Social dancing to Brisbane’s finest blues DJs Pricing: $8 Entry Intermediates class $12 after entry ($20 total) Beginners class included with entry, so bring your friends, even if they have no dance experience! All welcome, so spread the word and bring your friends! Questions? Message us on facebook or email madbluesdance@gmail.com

On hold while we look for a new venue

Hey blues dancers!

We have been a bit quiet lately so I thought it’d be good to send out a quick update.

Ash and I have had a great time teaching advanced blues and lindy hop classes for Empire Swing (empireswing.com.au) over the last month and it’s been awesome to have some of our regular blues students join us. We will be teaching again next Thursday night (see the Empire site for details) and then will be taking a break from weekly teaching for a while. HOWEVER, we are very keen to keep monthly blues socials running, starting again in June. We are currently looking for a new venue and, as it happens, we may just today have found one. Watch this space for further updates and watch the MadBlues Dance facebook group for our next event post. The likely date for next month’s social is SATURDAY June 18 but that’s yet to be confirmed. Also, we are looking at possibly having LIVE MUSIC for the first event at the new venue, by one of Brisbane’s top bluesmen! We’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, put your feet up and enjoy some time off. Brisbane’s blues pulse will be ticking again in no time.

rew.

Brisbane Blues Festival – Sat May 14 – The Tempo Hotel

Come along for a dance! The bands kick arse, some great blues music to be had.

Time: Saturday, May 14 · 3:00pm – 11:30pm
Location: Tempo Hotel, Fortitude Valley, 388 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Australia

What started as an annual gathering of local blues fans has now turned into one of our River City’s most eagerly awaited musical events. Each year hard-core fans as well as a surprising number of people new to the blues attend the festival. They all come along to enjoy a day of music that can touch your soul as well as make your body move.

This year the festival has found a new home at The Tempo Hotel in Fortitude Valley and its ideal location in the heart of the Valley’s Entertainment Precinct as well as its close proximity to large amounts of free public parking, busses, trains, taxies and planes make it a perfect choice. The hotel formerly known as Bar 388 and Dooleys has a great musical tradition and this event will help add to that legacy.

The event’s two stage format will continue with the Main Stage area featuring some of Brisbane’s best blues bands laying it down while the Downstairs Stage will feature superb solo artists.

Doors open at 2:00PM

All day admission is only $25 and tickets will be available at the door on the day.

This year featuring: The Dillion James Band, Johnny Hucker, Mason Rack Band, Tim Gaze, Mick Hadley & The Atomic Boogie Band, The Asa Broomhall Band, The Mojo Webb Band and Blind Lemon.See More

Website: http://www.brisbanebluesfestival.com/

Easter Blues! (with intermediate and beginners classes!)

THE BLUES ROOM: Come and get your blues on at Brisbane’s monthly social blues dance night!

7pm Intermediate class

8pm Beginner class (included with entry)

9pm – Late social dancing to Brisbane’s finest blues DJs, right in the heart of the city

Time: Saturday, April 23 at 7:00pm – April 24 at 12:00am

Location: MAD Dance House, Levels 2-4, 99 Elizabeth St, Brisbane, Australia

Pricing: $8 entry, $12 intermediate class after entry ($20 total), beginners class included with entry

So bring your friends, even if they have no dance experience! All welcome, spread the word!

 

What is Blues dance? Blues is a fun, creative and soulful dance that’s all about expressing your style by sharing movement with a partner. It’s about moving and connecting in a way that’s simple and just feels amazing. Born at the same time as blues music itself, in the American South around the turn of the 20th century, blues dance has roots in both tribal Africa and classical Europe. It has made a worldwide comeback over the last ten years, taking on influences from other styles like lindy hop, west coast swing and Argentine tango. The great thing about Blues is that it lets you do things your own way. There is no basic step. Learning the dance is about learning how to move, connect with your partner and express what you hear in the music. Blues can be slow, fast, sexy, playful or whatever else you want it to be. Above all, it’s about having a good time! Our classes give people a relaxed and social environment for learning the movement, connection and musicality skills that let them have the most fun out on the dance floor, creating every dance together with their partner from the ground up.

Check out the Blues!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-002dJH5_A4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zktVBB9GfI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LQLxt83hQk

Switching from weekly to monthly classes

Blues dancers of Brisbane!

We are proud of the solid, core community you’ve built with us over the last three terms of weekly blues classes at MDH. Thanks for all your support! Teaching at a fully-appointed, inner-city venue like MDH carries significant overheads and we’ve decided that it makes more financial sense to switch from weekly to monthly classes. You’ve been giving our monthly social nights great support, so we’ve decided to keep them running and teach both an intermediate and an absolute beginner class at the start of each social dance night. Here’s the new format:

7pm Intermediates class

8pm Beginners class

9pm-late Social dancing

Pricing:

$8 Entry

Intermediates class $12 after entry ($20 total)

Beginners class included with entry.

We’ll get started with this new format THIS Friday and we’d love to have you there! If you have any thoughts or suggestions about the new format, or ideas for something else, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Best bluesy wishes,

Drew and Ash.

 

Classes, weeks 4-5

Well, hello! Welcome to the final class review/preview for this term!

INTERMEDIATES

• Last week

We put some more polish on the routine we’ve been building this term. It was great to see people ‘filling in the gaps’, smoothing out movement and sharpening their timing. This week, it’s time to move on and finish off the choreo!

• This week

We will add the final phrase to the chroeography and then work on putting it all together and polishing it all up. If you’ve been working on this with us all term, this will be the grand finale! But newcomers are most welcome too; the material we present tonight will be new for everyone!

BEGINNERS

• Last week

We focused on microblues: rolls, wiggles, pops, shimmies, levels; all the fun ways to share movement without actually taking any steps. That stuff can be quite challenging to begin with because it involves lots of body awareness and fine control that takes some practice.  But, great work with getting started! Now, just take it out onto the social dance floor and practise, practise, practise! (The next social dance is coming on March 18; check out ‘The Blues Room’ on facebook!)

• This week

We’re going to finish off the term with SOUL! We will show you how to take the movement, pulse and connection that you’ve been learning to blues music, and apply it to other musical styles like  soul. It’s gonna be high energy, funky and a whole lotta fun, so don’t miss it!

 

Classes, weeks 3-4

Hey everyone!

INTERMEDIATES

• Last week

After putting together the bare bones of the routine in weeks 1 and 2, last week we set about polishing things up a bit. In particular, we emphasised moving smoothly through the space in between steps, without rushing between ‘puncutation’ points in the dance, like changes of direction or the starts/ends of turns.  Blues is about enjoying the journey! We also spent some time in class working on making the movements within our own bodies bigger and more expressive. We can work on partnered dancing all we want but eventually there comes a point where the only way to improve is to focus on how things are working within one’s own body.  There was an obvious difference between how things looked at the start of class, and at the end. So, well done!

• This week

We are going to start by running through the routine a couple of times, to sweep out the cobwebs. Then, we will push forward to the end of the choreography that we’d like to have down by the end of this term. From there, it will be a matter of practise and polish!

BEGINNERS

• Last week

We worked you hard; maybe a little harder than we’d intended! The idea was to give you some flashy moves. Things were a bit technical though, and that slowed us up a bit. It certainly wasn’t wasted effort though; it’s all essential stuff along the way on your blues journey! Thanks for working hard and getting some nice-looking thing happening out there!

• This week

We’re going to focus on ‘microblues’. Basically, that’s the stuff that happens while you’re not stepping around the floor. Body rolls, levels, pops, twists, wiggles and more! It’s the cool little movements that you share with your partner, to tease out the finer details in the music, and it’s a whole lot of fun!

 

Classes, weeks 2-3

Hey everyone!

We had a big week last week – record numbers at class and a great turn out the the Blues Room monthly social too. Regular blues has well and truly arrived in Brisbane. Thanks for your support!

INTERMEDIATES

• Last week

We kept building on the routine, which we’ve made our focus for this term. We got started with ragdolls, adding a bit of optional air-time. After that, a few steps forward, into a twisting dip, before an exit to a turn, a few steps down the line, a cross-step and another turn into the grand-finale move for the phrase, an assisted pivot-turn for the ladies. We didn’t get time to really polish up that finale, so we’ll get started with that this week.

• This week

We will consolidate the last two weeks worth of material, working on the finer details of movement and connection, and doing lots of practice to music. Let’s get this thing a bit more polished! Remember, we’re building this routine to get the most out of the journey, improving our dancing along the way, rather than just going through the motions to step through something that might look OK without necessarily feeling good. If we do our job right, hopefully by the end we might have something that both looks and feels good!

BEGINNERS

• Last week

We took the fundamental weight transitions and rhythms that were introduced in week 1 and added some nice connection to get things feeling juicy. Blues dancing is much more about feeling than it is about form. Great blues dancers will tell you they’d rather move less and feel more; it’s all about enjoying the journey of shared movement. That might sound simple but getting the fine tuning right is not easy! You did a great job though, getting started. Well done!

• This week

After all your hard work with the subtle fundamentals, we’re going to take you to the other end of the blues spectrum: flashy moves to impress your friends with. Dips, tricks and turns: it’s time to have fun and look awesome while you’re at it!