🎶✨ REGISTRATION OPEN: Blues Dance Workshop with Kenneth Shipp ✨🎶
Get ready for an unforgettable weekend of blues exploration! Join us on May 11-12, 2024, for a blues dance workshop with Kenneth Shipp, coinciding with San Diego’s renowned Gator By The Bay (Zydeco, Blues, and Crawfish Festival) for a dance experience like no other. 🕺🏽💙
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🔎 Details:
- 📅 Date: May 11-12, 2024
- ⏰ Time: May 11, 1-5:15pm. May 12, 1-3:45pm.
- 📍 Location: N1 Studio, 4100 Bonita Rd, Bonita, CA 91902
- 📅 Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/8EqcAhZCT
🎟️ Registration:
- Full Workshop Early Bird Opens: February 1st
- Full Workshop Regular Registration Opens: February 15th
- Individual Day Registration Opens: March 1st
- Full Workshop Late Registration Opens: April 1st
- Individual Day Late Registration Opens: April 1st
- Individual Workshop Registration: At the door only (as available)
▶️ Video Playlist:
ℹ️ Instructor Bio:
Kenneth Shipp hails from St. Louis, MO as an instructor who grew up dancing hip-hop and DJing breaking comps before jumping into blues. He has spent the past few years passionately studying the family of blues idioms, incorporating his nerdy personality along the way. Kenneth’s life experiences inform his dancing and teaching style so that students walk away with a better historical and contextual understanding. With every class and practice, he’ll encourage you to approach social dancing with coolness, relaxation, or in other words “Chill The F$%& Out.” When he’s not dancing, you can likely find him ranting about the latest blockbuster movie, game, or nerd convention, or desperately trying to dismantle toxic institutions.
🗒️ Class Descriptions:
Saturday
But Okay Really? What is Blues Dancing?
1pm-2:15pm
This class is basic in that it will teach and reinforce the basics of Blues dancing, but it will challenge how you define or categorize what a Blues dance is, whether you’re just starting out or been doing it for years. We’ll tackle what fits within the family of dances, how to get your body moving closer to the aesthetic of Blues dances, and being comfortable adapting across partnerships.
Close Embrace Roots
2:30pm-3:45pm
The majority of Blues dances use close embrace as a starting position to build into other movements or to share small moments together across a total dance. We’ll discuss how that happened historically, what benefits there are to initiating every dance from this position, and how to make it more comfortable for everyone.
Do The Zydeco and More
4pm-5:15pm
In preparation for the great Zydeco music playing during the festival, we’ll cover how the genre relates to Blues music and what moves you can use from the Zydeco dance and your own family of Blues dances. Lastly, we’ll also cover what makes it different from other rural / country Blues dances like Piedmont or Mississippi Hill Country.
Sunday
Blues and Its Many Forms
1pm-2:15pm
What do you feel when a Blues song comes on? How do you describe it? What does it make you want to do with your feet? Your arms? Your whole body? Rather than break down the music theory in various Blues music genres, we’ll practice being descriptive in what we’re hearing and then work on ways to move to those ideas.
Texas Shuffle For All
2:30pm-3:45pm
If you like stretch, momentum, and shuffling your feet, this Texas-influenced, California-born slot dance is just for you. We’ll cover how this dance differs from most Blues idioms, fun tricks and moves you can create with your partner, and how to borrow stretch ideas you may already know from other related Blues or Swing dances.