Mr. Jonathan’s World

There is no class or dance this Friday because it is Black Friday and I doubt many people are going to feel up to dancing after hitting the malls. I am however both teaching and DJing at Longfellow’s Club JoEllen this Sunday for the second week in a row. I still have lots of new music to play from the Living Legends Of Dance last weekend. I hope to see you all out dancing…The following week I am the DJ doing the closing shift for the Club JoEllen Holliday Party…Thats 3 in a row for me…its like I hit the lottery!!!

Next week I really will share with you how and why the “Free-Jay” proved to be as good as what they paid for him and how because of Free-Jays Promoters slowly changed the music that was played at events and how they turned music into money!

 Saturday Night

$15
7:00 Lesson
8:00 Ballroom Dance w/DJ Brenda
DNE School of Dance (up stairs)
78 Princeton St
N. Chelmsford, Ma

Sunday Night 

$10

6-6:45 2-Step lesson w/Mr. J

6:45-7:30pm WCS w/Mr. J

7:30-? California Mixer w/Mr. J

Longfellow’s Club JoEllen

524 Minuteman Dr off of Boston Post RD

(Rt 20) Wayland, MA

Leadership is the manipulation of energy. 

Following is the embodiment of energy.

Connection is the tie that binds the two together.

Mr. Jonathan

www.MrJonathanIsMyDJ.com

603 475 1391  

Dance on! 

In 2007 I was in love with West Coast Swing music! I would spend my free time on Napster and iTunes looking for new music. If I had an extra $10 I bought an extra 10 songs. Night after night I would dig through song after song longing for the next big hit. The only issue was not one promoter would hire a “wedding DJ” to DJ a swing dance. At that time I was in the rotation as one of the DJs at Longfellow’s Country California Mix nights, but even they would not let me play their swing nights because I had no experience in the very fickle swing world. Something just had to be done.

Dance Boston was hosting their annual swing competition the summer of 2007 and I had just purchased a brand new Bose tower that could handle 500 people. I offered the use of my sound system in exchange for letting me DJ. The music that I collected was so good, in my opinion, that I just knew I could build a name for my self if I could get it in front of an audience. That summer I was part a select group of people that inadvertently played a big role in the demise of swing music at swing events.  Because some of us where wiling to DJ in exchange for building our resumes, we, “The Free-Jays” gave swing event promoters something better than a happier audience. We gave them a greater margin on their events. 

Next week I will share with you how and why the “Free-Jay” proved to be as good as what they paid for him and how because of Free-Jays Promoters slowly changed the music that was played at events and how they turned music into money!

Swing dancers owe a great deal to the Moving Pictures Expert Group. With out them the MPEG-3 or MP3 would not exist and DJs would still be buying Vinyl and CDs. Although CDs are much smaller than vinyl records, DJs that played CDs in the early 2000’s still had to buy the entire album to have the one song that everyone wanted to dance to. Music changed extremely slowly from the 50’s through the late 90’s. When MP3’s came out, a DJ could download the one song he needed for little to no money. New music became the norm and dancers were never happier! 

The barrier to entry for DJs prior to the late 90’s was tens of thousands of dollars and it took years to amass a collection of music that made you worth hiring. DJs saw it as a point of pride if it took several hours to set up their systems because it meant they had more music than everyone else. It was obvious why they charged what they charged and promoters were willing to pay extra to get the guy who took the longest to set up and break down because he was obviously the best. 

Starting in 2000 the barrier to entry was only a couple of thousand dollars and a computer that had a CD burner. DJs could “swap” music and burn the songs to a CD. This made set up much simpler and faster and beyond that it allowed DJs to carry WAY more music of value at once. Instead of having CDs that had one or two songs on them that dancers wanted, they could make their own compilation disks that held 15 songs each. Every song on each disk could be a winner! 

If we fast forward to 2007 a DJ could get started for about $1000…$500 for his equipment and $500 to buy 500 of the most important songs. Just about anyone with a laptop could amass enough music as a dancer to eventually be a DJ at a dance event. Which is what I did! Next week I will share how a revolution was started in Boston that was nearly the down fall on this dance in the North East.

Thursday – Saturday Swingin New England is in town and is a googol search away!

I am not holding class as I will be down south for “The Living Legends of Swing”

Sunday Night 

$10

6-6:45 2-Step lesson w/Steel

6:45-7:30pm WCS w/Steel

7:30-? California Mixer w/Steel

Longfellow’s Club JoEllen

524 Minuteman Dr off of Boston Post RD

(Rt 20) Wayland, MA

Leadership is the manipulation of energy. 

Following is the embodiment of energy.

Connection is the tie that binds the two together.

Mr. Jonathan

www.MrJonathanIsMyDJ.com

603 475 1391  

Dance on! 

The dance is perceived as too hard

Dancing in and of it self is not a hard thing to do. The next time you are around a three year old, put on something with a good beat and watch them move and groove. Their pristine little hard drives have not yet been corrupted by self doubt, self pity, or self consciousness. The only thing that little kid knows how do is move and groove to the beat that is playing. Even though we are secretly jealous that they can dance judgment free and we can’t, we still smile and tell them they are doing great…right? 

Competition can be such a good thing. It can drive us to new heights, help us to push the envelope, and winning helps to build confidence. I am not talking about formal Swing competition i am talking about the drive inside us that pushes a leader to be better than the leaders to his left and right or causes a follower to go for that extra spin when spinning isn’t in her wheel house. 

I would argue that the biggest hurdle I ever faced as a dancer was being able to look at my dancing and be proud of my self. Sure there is a “metric shit ton” (its a technical WCS term) of better dancers in the world than little old me. Each and everyone of them had to go through the same process though. No one can love your dancing if you don’t love it first. You can’t love your own dancing if you have not done at least something everyday to make it better. You can not be the best you can be without first putting in the time and practicing.

That’s right I just went full circle and brought it all back to practice. Although practice can’t really produce a perfect product because we are all human, it can produce the seed for justification of something that we all need in order to cross over that looming great divide into “elite” status….Pride in our own accomplishment!   

What makes this dance so difficult is that it requires more time than other dances to “feel” proficient. The “feel” part is different for everyone because everyone feels the need to practice for different amounts of time. If you can put in 5 solid, uninterrupted minutes of solo practice, per day, you will find this dance to be much more manageable!

 

Here is what is happening this weekend:

 Friday Night (beginner night…lots of basics and drills to take you to the next level)

$10

7:30 – 8:15pm Lesson

8:15 – ? Social Dance Practice

DNE School of Dance
78 Princeton St
N. Chelmsford, MA

Saturday November 8th

2 West Coast Swing Workshops

with

Kirsten Obermiller

7:00 – 8:00 All level –  Clear, comfortable, and connected: the secret to closed dance position for all levels

  

8:00 – 9:00 Slick syncopation and timing tricks: musicality prep for intermediate and above – Intermediate West Coast Swing

  

Intermediate Workshops $30/2, $15/1 includes dance

8:00 – 9:00 Beginner West Coast Swing Lesson with Mr Jonathan

  

9:00 – 12:30  West Coast Swing Dance with DJ Mr Jonathan

  

Beginner Lesson $10 includes dance

Dance only $10

Kirsten is one of my favorite followers to dance with…she is so worth taking lessons from that I am hiring her next month to teach for me at DNE! 

 

To reiterate, for this article only, an Elite dancer is someone who can recognize a patten quickly and be proficient at said pattern in a very short amount of time. Think back to your high school or college years when you took that first foreign language class. There were the kids that were good at remembering the information from that “cram session” the night before, and then there were the kids that learned how to think in the foreign language (when I was in high school spanish these were the dudes who impressed the spanish ladies on our class trip to Spain). Is learning a new dance so different from learning how to converse in a foreign language? 

The only way  to be proficient in anything you must to be able to think in that activity. The only way you can “think in swing”  is to put in your time by your self and master your footwork. Larry Bird once nailed 30 3pt shoots in a row at a shoot off in the late 80’s. He was the first Celtic on the court before practice and the last to leave after practice. Nobody worked harder off the competition court than he did and no one could make it look as easy as he did until Michael Jordan came along…the only man willing to work harder than Bird.

There are two ways to transition into that “elite” status “pay to play” or “blood, sweat, and tears.” I see people in the chat rooms talking about how if you want to get good you hire top pros and pay them for private lessons. That is certainly one way to go about it. The other way is to study your self dancing in the mirror. Be you own critic. Record your self dancing and analyze what you like and what you don’t. Watch YouTube videos of pros you think look like the dancer that you see your self becoming. Think about your dancing while you are on your lunch break. Listen to music that makes you want to dance…Live it…Breath it…and Be it! 

As a side bar if you pick the “blood, sweat, and tears” route you will never enjoy dance more than you will on your journey. Notice I didn’t say you will never enjoy it more once you arrive. There is no arrive! Its a journey you will be on for the rest of your life. However, nothing in your life will give you the same high as a great dance, to a great song, with a great partner…Nothing!

Coming soon to my news letter will be the “real” story behind what happened to swing music, why “Top 40” is being pushed back out, and when swing will see its resurgence…Stay tuned!

 

Here is what is happening this weekend:

 Friday Night

$10

7:30 – 8:15pm Lesson
8:15 – ? Social Dance Practice
DNE School of Dance
78 Princeton St
N. Chelmsford, MA