Mr. Jonathan’s World

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Super Leading meets the Anti Follow

In the attached video the two dancers are engaged in a very high level of Jack and Jill competition. Jack and Jill’s are competitions where neither dancer knows who they will dance with nor do they know the songs they will draw. Every move is lead and followed on the fly and in real time.  Notice how good this follower (Mary-Anne)is…notice how well she follows…on your 3rd or 4th time through you may begin to see why she is considered by most to be in the top 3 of ALL time. Watch how her hips drive back at the start of every pattern.  At no point does she jump ahead or barrel past her leader (Kyle). Her skill set is completely centered around patiently waiting for her partner to commit to his pattern with his whole body before she goes. Every step she takes in every single pattern is his to do with as he pleases…In fact I would argue that she does not “follow” at all. She “checks” every action that her leader makes with an equal and opposite reaction and the results are impossible to over look. 

We are going to visit this concept at our next dance and lesson on February 15th:

Next Friday:

February 15th

$10

7:30 Lesson “Super Leading meets the Anti Follow”

8:30 Dance

This Sunday:

$10

6:30 Lesson (Two-Step)

7:30 Dance 

I am teaching and also the DJ

John Festa is coming back for our Dance on March 8th…Mark you Calendar and I will have details for you in the next couple of weeks.

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Field Trip

John Festa

John Festa

Control is a tough concept to master. We must first learn to control ourselves before we control others. Then we find out that true control of others stems from how much control we have on our selves! This is one of the many “Take-Aways” from John Festa’s workshop at DNE Last Month. There is a reason why he is my favorite instructor…He not only has the control over himself, his partner, and then himself again…He can explain how he does it, why it should happen, and how we, his students, can accomplish such feats! He is teaching just over the Mass boarder in RI this Saturday (details below) You owe it to your self to experience his class every time you can. Some of us are meeting at DNE for 7pm and caravanning down via car pooling. Reach out to me if we should be expecting you to be part of the trip.

LOCATION:
K of C The Bouffard Council
15 Bassett Street
North Providence, RI 02904

7:45pm Registration open & warm up
7:00pm-8:00pm 
Instructor JOHN FESTA 

BEGINNER
DESIGNER TECHNIQUE FOR BASICS
Did you know John is the owner of Intimacy Issues in NYC? Among his other issues lives your messy basics! This champion has class and style and will drizzle your basics with quality of movement using your lower body muscles. Your lonely basics will get tightened up like a corset in only 1 hour!
8:15pm-9:15pm 
INTERMEDIATE
THE WHIP HAND BY THE WHIP MAN
Look it up! Someone who has “The Whip hand” is in a good position because they can make other people do what they want. John is known as “The Whip Man” for no other reason other than he IS (Oh, and he loves control!)! In John’s world, there is a fine tuned finesse that is owned by the glorious whip and he will sell you on it! This workshop will change your lifeless whip forever! 

9:15pm-12:00am 
Extended dancing! All West Coast Swing
DJ John Festa 

This Sunday:

I am teaching the 2Step Lesson at Longfellows
524 Boston Post Rd.
$10 
6:30-7:30

7:30-10:30 Country California Mix

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

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Emergency Coverage Tonight


I Got the call to cover Larry Mongeau for his Workshops and DJing tonight:

West Coast Swing Workshops with

Mr. Jonathan

  

7:00 – 8:00 PM Musical Hits and Accents 

8:00 – 9:00 PM Moves that go round

9:00 – 12:30 WCS dance party with Mr. Jonathan

  

 Workshops

$25 for both workshops and the Dance

$15 for “Moves that go Round” and the dance

  

$10 includes beginner lesson and dance

$10 dance only

Larry came down with a bad case of the flu and can not make the class. He called and asked me if I would cover, which the answer is always YES to Larry. Come down and have some fun with the music and begin to see dancing from a different side of your brain!

This Sunday:

I am teaching the 2Step Lesson at Longfellows

524 Boston Post Rd.

$10 

6:30-7:30

Then I am DJing the dance afterward

7:30-10:30

Next Saturday:

I am driving down to RI for the John Festa lesson and dance. If you want to tag along I need to know in advance. He has the music and the moves so plan on a great time!

  

  

Leadership is the manipulation of energy.

Following is the embodiment of energy.

Connection is the tie that binds the two together.

  
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Confrontation 2

I know that I promised to deliver the dirt on the events leading up to my retirement. Since I am not retiring and after a heartfelt conversation with someone that I consider to be a wise friend I feel that I should focus on the Love side of swing rather than the “War” that rages behind the scenes. In the end I will be judged on how I lead my life, how I inspired people to follow the road less traveled, and how I turned the other cheek not how I spilled the beans and blew the whistle on swing music haters. In the end love will prevail so I feel that I must focus on fostering the love that I have for this unique and universally appealing dance. 

You have a choice this Friday:

1…Do something other than have the lesson of your life.

2…Have the lesson of your life!

More people went out of their way to tell me how their eyes had been opened this past Friday than not. Approaching dance from both sides of the brain is how I have always learned. Not until recently had I thought to teach it the same way. Ask around to the folks that you know who went…Everyone was smiling and enjoying the whole night!

For this Friday I am continuing in the same vein that we discovered last week…a teaching technique from my aunt who is an art teacher. She believes that both sides of the brain require attention in order for someone to truly become an artist. The two sides typically work like confronting personas in a multiple personality situation. There are certain techniques one can employ to let both side work as one. It is my believe that dancing is an art form therefore if you dance you are an artist and should be taught as one!

The technical half of your brain evaluates what you are doing and extrapolates the data. Right and wrong, black and white, good and bad all happen on this side of your brain. 

 The artistic side of your brain sees everything’s value in the form of energy. Life is captured as a series of very vivid 3 diminutional pictures. This side knows where to go and how to get there entirely by feel. There is no timeline, no right, and no wrong just energy coming and going.

Since you can’t teach the technical side of an art form to the artistic side of the brain nor can you force the number crunching side to be creative how do we get the information into our bodies using both sides? Both sides of our brains make up who we are and so both sides must be feed in order to process information optimally. 

We crunch numbers all day every day making the analytical side of our brain comfortable being dominant. While we are learning an art form this becomes a problem because that is the side of the brain where right and wrong live. How can we step outside the box if we have a little voice in our head yelling “WRONG!!!!” at every missed step? Our first mission is to strengthen the artistic side so that we can traverse from interpretation to evaluation safely and have enough strength to get back to interpretation. 

This lesson Plan is very similar to how we approached the dance last week with a tad bit more music/musicality thrown in for good measure…See you:

Friday, January 11, 2013

$10

DNE School of Dance

7:30-8:30 lesson

8:30-? Dancing

78 Princeton St. 

Chelmsford, Ma

This Saturday:

West Coast Swing Workshops with

Larry Mongeau

  

7:00 – 8:00 PM Musical Hits and Accents 

8:00 – 9:00 PM Moves that go round

9:00 – 12:30 WCS dance party with DJ Larry Mongeau

  

Larry’s Workshops

$25/2 $15/1 includes dance

  

$10 includes beginner lesson and dance

$10 dance only

This Sunday:

I am teaching the 2Step Lesson at Longfellows

524 Boston Post Rd.

$10 

6:30-7:30

Then I am DJing the dance afterward

7:30-10:30

Next Saturday:

I am driving down to RI for the John Festa lesson and dance. If you want to tag along I need to know in advance. He has the music and the moves so plan on a great time!

  

  

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!
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Confrontation

Confrontation

As several of you have noticed I took December off from teaching and running any Swing Dances. Truth be told I was planning on packing the whole thing up and “retiring” from the swing scene for a bit, but something happened to me that renewed my spirit and recharged my energy when it comes to swing in general…details to follow in my next few emails.

For this Friday I stole a teaching technique from my aunt who is an art teacher. She believes that both sides of the brain require attention in order for someone to truly become an artist. The two sides typically work like confronting personas in a multiple personality situation. There are certain techniques one can employ to let both side work as one. It is my believe that dancing is an art form therefore if you dance you are an artist and should be taught as one!

The technical half of your brain evaluates what you are doing and extrapolates the data. Right and wrong, black and white, good and bad all happen on this side of your brain. 

 The artistic side of your brain sees everything’s value in the form of energy. Life is captured as a series of very vivid 3 diminutional pictures. This side knows where to go and how to get there entirely by feel. There is no timeline, no right, and no wrong just energy coming and going.

Since you can’t teach the technical side of an art form to the artistic side of the brain nor can you force the number crunching side to be creative how do we get the information into our bodies using both sides? Both sides of our brains make up who we are and so both sides must be feed in order to process information optimally. 

We crunch numbers all day every day making the analytical side of our brain comfortable being dominant. While we are learning an art form this becomes a problem because that is the side of the brain where right and wrong live. How can we step outside the box if we have a little voice in our head yelling “WRONG!!!!” at every missed step? Our first mission is to strengthen the artistic side so that we can traverse from interpretation to evaluation safely and have enough strength to get back to interpretation. 

This lesson Plan is very unique and even more fun…See you:

Friday, January 4, 2012

$10

Lesson 7:30-8:30

Dance 8:30-?

DNE School of Dance

78 Princeton St.

Chelmsford, Ma

Leadership is the manipulation of energy.

Following is the embodiment of energy.

Connection is the tie that binds the two together.