chimerically

Wow -- someone combined cultural studies and ballroom dance in this book, published last November. (Guess I can't do that for my dissertation. ;~))

( Chronicle of Higher Education review )

The Amateur International Standard community, of which I am a part, doesn't have the same characteristics as Latin (the super-dark fake tanner) or of Pro-Am, but I do wonder what she says about it. Certainly I sometimes feel like the ballroom community is very alien and insular, and as a social scientist I can't help but try to deconstruct it.

Someday I'll post about how much I love my classes and what else is going on in my life. Someday. This isn't just a dance blog, really ...

For those of you in the area, I'll be giving a showcase with my new ballroom partner at 10:30pm on Saturday, February 24, at the Allegro Ballroom in Emeryville. More information at http://allegroinvitational.com or http://allegroballroom.com.


my dance partner and me

Also, I'm helping the other SBDT officers organize this year's Cardinal Classic on April 7. We're flying in a world-class ballroom dance couple, Blackpool Professional Standard semifinalists Linas Koreiva and Ieva Pauksena, for a showcase -- I'd come just for that if I were you, but as added incentive, I'll also be dancing at that along with one of the best amateur standard couples in the United States and lots of other great dancers. There'll also be a silent auction, ballroom vendors, and even private and group lessons with Linas and Ieva. More information at http://cardinalclassic.sbdt.org or http://stanford.facebook.com/event.php?eid=2236253309.


Linas and Ieva

Hope to see you at one or both!

It's nearly two and I'm not tired and for once I have no urgent assignments to finish, so perhaps I should write a bit about how my life is going. I haven't updated in -- how long has it been now? -- well, either mid-summer or the end of spring, depending on what you count as an update. In that time I've passed the quarter-century mark; moved to Palo Alto; started blues dancing; tried hanggliding and waterskiing; participated in a wedding (as a bridesmaid) at the Grand Canyon; performed with a lindy hop troupe; finished up my internship at Yahoo! Research, helped write two papers for CHI, and started classes at Stanford all in the same week; mobilized my incoming PhD cohort to collectively buy a printer, provide cheap snacks, and have a social email list like my last two departments did; bought and built a fancy new desktop computer for data storage and processing; started competitive ballroom dancing again with a new partner and won second place in a recent competition; went backpacking with first-timers stellae and zestyping; presented at two conferences (one with dag29580863!) ... in short, I've been insanely busy and that's why I haven't been posting, even though I have millions of things I want to write about.

Despite the prevalence of social-sounding events in that list, what has been consuming most of my time is classwork. I'm loving my courses down here, but they really do keep me busy every spare moment with readings and assignments. I've found my Theory of Communication class, though focusing more on psychological measures and political communication than I (currently) do in my research, fascinating. We've discussed emotions and cognition, attitudes and persuasion, verbal and nonverbal communication, interpersonal and mass communication, and political communication, and will be talking about news, campaigns, and the Internet before the semester quarter is over.

I have two other classes which I am particularly enjoying, one on ethnography of virtual communities (taught through the anthropology department) and one on qualitative research methods (taught through the sociology department), which is a lot like a class I took at Berkeley except more structured. I have a list of at least fifty other classes I would like to take in the next few years, which of course I probably can't really do. I think I was at Berkeley long enough -- seven years altogether -- to exhaust most of the classes I wanted to (and was allowed to) take, except for the new and exciting one-time offerings through SIMS the iSchool. It's great to be in a place with a different (though similar in many ways) intellectual tradition and a whole new set of course offerings and opportunities. I have so many sociology and anthropology classes that I want to take that I may end up getting PhD minors in both (if I'm allowed), and maybe even getting a Master's in sociology along the way. The inimitable Jean Lave gave me the names of about twenty professors who she really likes at Stanford, and their course offerings all sound fascinating. I'm having trouble keeping the number of units I want take each semester quarter (eventually I'll get used to the new nomenclature) below the maximum.

My advisor Fred is fabulous, though he's been very busy this quarter promoting his new book -- which I guess is just as well, because I've been preoccupied with classes myself. I really look forward to interacting more with him and with others in the Communication department and beyond, though. And I'm also excited to do what I can to help forge more ties with Berkeley's iSchool, something several of the folks in Communication are interested in doing but lack the time to actually implement.

Aside from classwork, I've also become quite involved in several dance communities around the Bay Area. A good friend in the Stanford Ballroom Dance Team invited me to be their teacher training coordinator, so I set up a program for them at the beginning of the quarter. A fellow Yahoo! Research intern introduced me to blues dancing over the summer and I was hooked, and am now helping with R.A. Blues, a blues dancing venue in the South Bay. I've also been helping Julia Minson with her Mad Hot DanceSport program, teaching elementary school kids how to ballroom dance once a week and choreographing their end-of-year cha-cha/swing medley performance. (Stay tuned for more about this -- this will probably be Dec. 9, and the more who attend, the merrier.) Finally, after a four-month break, I've started dancing competitively again, this time with a Googler who recently moved up here from Southern California. So far it's going great -- though it was really important for me to take a break from ballroom dancing to rehabilitate myself, I've found that I have really missed it. Other kinds of dance, though they all share features, just can't make me as euphoric as International Standard danced at a high level. *contented sigh*

Well, there's a lot more to write -- I have a dozen outlined or half-written posts in my blog.txt file. But it's now approaching three and I'm finally starting to feel tired, and I have to get up early for physical therapy tomorrow (Stanford's health center is SO AMAZING! You Stanford students who complain about it don't know how lucky you are), so for now I'll sign off and leave my midnight railings and political rants for another day.

I'll be teaching a seven-week "Swing Essentials" class at Stanford this July and August (a reprise of "Swing Essentials" classes I've taught over the years for UCBD). Feel free to join! It's a beginning class but I hope to cover a lot of ground. You'll learn the basics of East Coast Swing, Jitterbug, (ballroom) Jive, Lindy Hop, and West Coast Swing, and how to use the same concepts and moves in all the styles. The cost is $30/students, $60/nonstudents for all seven weeks (a steal!). No partner or experience is necessary! You can preregister online, or come to one of the first two weeks of class to register at the door (come early!).

I'm teaching with my colleague Simon, a great blues and lindy dancer, who has been very involved with Friday Night Blues in San Francisco. He brings a very different perspective to dancing and teaching. While most of my training has been formal and competitive, his training has been on the social dance floor (though he's also done swing performances) and he's a very "intuitive" dancer. He has a lot of teaching experience too, so I think we'll make a great team (even if we don't always agree :~)).

As part of the class, I highly encourage students to attend outings to local swing clubs. The best (if not only) way to really learn swing (and all dance, in fact) is to get out there and do it. These outings will also serve as an introduction to the local swing community and to other swing resources. I'll coordinate the details of these outings through the class mailing list. (If you're in the class but not on the mailing list, email me and I'll add you: ljswingmorganyaorg.) Note that most of the optional outings are to Swing Central. This event draws a big crowd, and repeated visits give everyone a chance to get to know a particular swing community. But going every week, and also visiting other swing clubs in the area, may be too much of a time commitment for some students, so I've prioritized the outings into official ones and optional ones. I'll also show up 30 minutes before classes 2-7 to answer questions and review steps from last week, and recommend that students attend, since we don't have time for much review in class.

In the true spirit of collaborative learning, I'm "open-sourcing" my proposed syllabus, which I also hand out to students at the beginning of the class (and again in revised form at the end, based on what we did cover). I do want to focus on teaching the technique and the "feel" of swing dancing more than the memorization of specific moves (but I also want to keep everyone moving during class!). I'll revise this post as the syllabus changes. ( Syllabus behind the cut ... )

I've had trouble sleeping in my room, between streetlights and morning light coming in my windows, so today I made window shades. Two yards of blackout fabric, two wooden dowels, four three-inch nails, and a dozen staples make two shades for about $7 each. Better than the $33 price quotes online! I just need to add some string to raise them. My housemate helped me saw off the dowels and cut the material, and in turn I introduced him to Cheese Board pizza.

Next I have to figure out what to do about the noise ....

I've almost finished organizing my room, aside from books and wall decorations still in storage, and the occasional heap of stuff on shelves or the floor. I found that my bleach leaked, burning holes in my new corduroys and in my paper globe, and making interesting patterns on my favorite pair of pants ... but it could have been much worse.

I danced with a potential Standard partner for a couple of hours today. He seems headstrong and prone to impatience, but he's very good. Unfortunately, he has had a partner for a couple of months now, though he says I'm a better match for him. Hopefully we can work something out; I haven't had any other leads, so to speak.

Well, this is a somewhat boring entry ... I'll post more of my controversial class notes over the weekend. :~)

Results of silly personality tests:


Ichi - "That one with wisdom"

I'm either an Accountant (last night; can't remember the acronym and can't re-create it), an Administrator (Submissive Extrovert Concrete Thinker), or a Mastermind (Submissive Introvert Abstract Thinker), depending on what I put for questions that I feel ambivalent about. Interestingly, if you don't fill in anything you're a mastermind.

I have design taste like fanlain, apparently: Introspective, Sensitive, Reflective; also somewhat Down to Earth, Well-Balanced, Harmonious.

That's all, folks!