You know you’re addicted to dancing when you’re willing to drive two and a half hours in LA traffic, sit in a sweltering studio/auditorium for 6 hours, sweating under heat lamps galore, and sitting in chairs until JUUUUSSTT before your butt goes numb (then they’d thankfully announce for us to get up and dance for the breaks, only to repeat all over again), all for the sake of dancing and upholding the spirit of dance.

I drove up to Hollywood yesterday after working a half day at work to help film a pilot for a POSSIBLE new dance TV show, “The US Open Swing Dance Challenge.” It’s really awesome that Ron and Tyoni Martin’s brainchild has finally come to life, and it’s very inspiring to know that they’re making such a huge effort to bring our somewhat underground community up and out into the sunlight where everyone can be aware of it.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been at a dance competition at a hotel somewhere and people would wander in and be dumbstruck by how COOL West Coast Swing is. Usually the first thing out of their mouths is something along the lines of, “Oh my god this is so amazing!” The second thing is either “I never knew this even existed!” or “I didn’t know people did things like this!” Hopefully this pilot can be picked up by a producer so that WCS can finally get some great exposure. We like new blood :-D

We were asked to dress up very nicely (“cocktail”), and were seated at small tables surrounding the central dance floor. As the audience, our role was to sit there, look pretty, clap when appropriate, cheer when it’s good, and get up and dance in between performances so that we can show that the dances can be done socially (a mix of WCS and Lindy music was played… I figured I’d spare the world my 5 year old Lindy and just participate in the WCS numbers). 3 of the couples performing in the mock competition were WCS dancers, and 3 were lindy dancers. Sorry WCS dancers, you guys were GREAT, but the Lindy dancers WERE AWESOME!!

Actually, all of the performances were awesome. Way to go, Benji and Lacey. You’re radicool!

Kudos to all the juniors who were there at the studio from 6AM until late at night helping out set up and cleanup. You guys are troopers! You all looked awesome, too. Lauren, you looked 23, you were so gorgeous!! Josh, I’ll say it again: Your mom is Supermom. Sorry for trying to break my elbow on your nose…… Lacey, I WANT THAT TOP!!!!!!!!

Eventually I’ll get some pictures up, but I had to use a *GASP* disposable camera because I was a genius and plugged my digital camera into the charger, but didn’t plug the charger into the wall. Oops.

Thanks goes out to Geoff for passing his cell phone around the dinner table so people could talk to me and keep me awake while driving back to San Diego… I’m still trying to get that mental image of Benji maniacally sprinkling sugar “snow” in Lauren’s hair while singing “Jingle Bells” in the middle of a crowded restaurant out of my head…. May I never have to listen to Buddy sing his rendition of “Happy Birthday” over the phone for a fake birthday ever again…. My poor ears :-D