As per the request of one of the DanceNet readers, here are copies of the past ramblings of the DanceNet Webmaster.
I got an inquiry from someone who wanted to know if I had information on dancing in South Carolina. This person apparently used a public terminal at the Framingham library to browse the web and send mail.
One: Don't use a public account to send mail and then expect to receive personal mail. The reply bounced back; I hadn't noticed the return address that said "donotreply".
Two: If you don't see the information on my website, that usually means that I don't know anything about it. Sending me mail asking for that information anyways will not change that fact. I personally do not have the time to chase down information from people who don't send it to me. Since I make no money off this website, I wouldn't be inclined to do so, anyways. For those of you who are looking for information on other states, I do have a collection of information for most of the states (try the "Outside New England" page). Do pay attention to the fact that I've never been to most of those venues, houever, so I won't know much about them. Most of those listings come from people in those states.
"Wow! Way cool", I thought. Naturally, my ego made me run out to buy an issue.
The front of the magazine said, "Top *120* websites in Boston". Hey! What happened to top 20? And the list isn't numbered; it's really a list of useful sites for finding information in the Boston area.
Oh well. I suppose beggars can't be choosers. This, I believe, is the first time this website has made any printed list so I'm happy about that. Congratulations to Ken Kreshtool's Gotta Dance for getting Honorable Mention.
Congratulations to Roger and Claire on the 13th Anniversary of the Watertown "IC" Dances. It's a tribute to their dedication and hard work that they still get the best musicians in there every month and they can still pack them in with dancers.
Ain't it cool how Eight To The Bar puts out so much energy that even not-so-hot songs will still fill the dance floor. This past Saturday was their turn at the IC dance and the place was filled to capacity. A good time was had by all. Be sure to go and check out Jet Set Six next month!
Oh, now I remember what I wanted to talk about.
One thing that's causing some small measure of stress in the dance community is the booking of visiting teachers over the same time periods. Some dancers are concerned that they won't be able to take classes from a particular teacher because they had already made plans to take workshops from another visiting teacher. Promoters are obviously concerned because this just divides the revenue that encourages these teachers to show up at all. At the same time, some of these teachers are only available at certain times.
Unfortunately, there's no established way to organize the scheduling of visiting teachers to avoid conflicts. To some extent, this website offers some reference for upcoming workshops, but it only works when the promoter sends the information and that's usually late in the scheduling process. The dancers may look in the calendar and see who announced first, but they don't know who was really first.
The only suggestion that I can offer at this time is to send me information on *possible* workshops and I'll mark it on this website's Workshops page for reference. If I get too many false reservations by one promoter, I can either leave out their preliminary announcements in the future or tell other promoters not to count on it.
I've known Susan for about 6 years now and have only realized a couple of years ago that she was a fairly prominent dance teacher in the area. (I don't know that many dancers' last names!) During the time we've danced socially, she's never tried to impress me with her status as a dance teacher. Now knowing how good a dance teacher she really is, that's impressed me even more.
Susan Sheppard has her own studio in northern Massachusetts and has been teaching *all* kinds of dance to children as well as adults. Watching her practice Irish Step Dancing (what you'd see in Riverdance) brings a whole new meaning to "dance teacher". She has been involved in choreographing for other local dance teachers and is in high demand inside and outside the state. She has been seen supporting local dance venues by teaching the usual round of beginner lessons, but I think these dance venues could have helped themselves more by recruiting Ms. Sheppard to hold *classes* regularly at their dances.
However, the characteristic that got her invited to be a sponsor of this website is that she's a pretty nice person. That encourages me to give my personal support and endorsement for her dance business.
I got to go swing dancing at the Gulfport Casino, a community center in St. Petersburg, Florida this past week. Wednesdays is Swing night (Tuesdays is Latin night) in this community center that has a *great* dance floor. The crowd is very mixed with people from ages 15 to at least 70. The music was excellent, with a wide variety that included non-traditional swing dance material that others should consider playing. Requests are handled politely, with every attempt to find the music. They even played the CD that I had. The dance floor is probably about the size of the IC dance with only a fraction that hall's normal attendance so there's *plenty* of dance space.
A word of warning: eat dinner before you get there. I do *NOT* recommend what passes for a diner across the street.