Stompin' The Blues

Anna and Alain are back at the Castle (Aldgate East) with more Chicago Triple at Stompin' the Blues tomorrow!

💨 We’ll have the aircon on full blast, making it literally as well as metaphorically one of the coolest places to be! 😎

🕖 Class 1 (7pm)
Playing with compression and stretch in Chicago Triple (there is a specific way). We recommend you take this class, whatever your level.

🕗 Class 2 (8:15pm)
Chicago Triple transitions. How to smoothly and comfortably transition between different modes within the dance

✨Social dancing from 9:15pm.
Come and dance, hang out, chat, connect and enjoy a beautiful evening of blues with us, with music provided by DJ Alain 💙

💧🪭 Don’t forget to bring water and maybe a fan if you’re travelling by public transport - it’s extra important to stay hydrated in this weather!

Join Anna and Alain at the Castle for Chicago Triple at Stompin' tomorrow! As part of our month on Chicago Blues music, we will nerd out on Chicago Triple, an approach to dancing the shuffle rhythms in blues music. The more you understand the few rules and many subtleties of this game, the more you will be able to make it your own and create your own style and variations.

🕖 Class 1 (7pm)
Playing with stretch and compression in Chicago Triple (there is a specific way). We recommend you take this class, whatever your level.

🕗 Class 2 (8:15pm)
Chicago Triple foundational nerdery: making our basics solidly bluesy, improving how our dance looks and feels, and allowing further exploration.

✨Social dancing from 9:15pm.
Come and dance, hang out, chat, connect and enjoy a beautiful evening of blues with us, with music provided by DJ Alain 💙

Stompers! For the next month we will be focusing on Chicago Blues. Chicago Blues has a long history, from the early 20th Century to the present day, and you’ll frequently encounter it both with live bands and DJs. Over the next five weeks, we will be giving you tools to interpret the music within your dancing. This week, join Anna and Ryan to learn how to identify and dance to Chicago Blues.

🕔 Class 1 (7pm)
We will be practicing variations that allow individual expression to the music.

🕔 Class 2 (8:15pm)
We will be using these to explore using call and response in your dancing.

🌟Social dancing from 9:15pm.
Come and dance, hang out, chat, connect and enjoy a beautiful evening of blues with us 💙

🚇 Don’t forget to check your travel plans during the strike. No service is expected on the Circle line, Piccadilly line, the Metropolitan line between Baker Street and Aldgate, and the Central line between White City and Liverpool Street. Service is expected across all other Tube lines. Buses, DLR, Elizabeth line, London Overground and trams will be running as normal but are expected to be busy.

Call and Response in Blues: Guitar, Voice, and Song — A Conversation with the Blues Episode 3 Soundfly helps curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it — subscribe now to ...

Join Anna and Ryan at the Castle on Tuesday to explore the funkier side of blues in the final instalment of Stompin’ the Blues’ Rhythms and Grooves series! Funk features frequently in more modern blues styles and has a fun, playful and party feel

Class 1 (7pm)
We’ll be looking at some of the shuffle rhythms and other basics and look at how to make them funkier while maintaining a cool blues aesthetic

Class 2 (8:15pm)
We will look at a specific dance called funky butt that works really well to this style of blues music and at cool moves that work within the framework of this dance

Social dancing from 9:15pm.
Come and dance, hang out, chat, connect and enjoy a beautiful evening of blues with us

BOOTSY'S BASIC FUNK FORMULA Bootsy describes and demonstrates his basic funk formula. Once you ...

🎶 Join Anna & Alain this Tuesday and discover how comfortable, grounded, and expressive slow blues can feel. 💙

By slow blues, we mean a specific rhythmic structure that gives dancers the freedom to improvise, connect, and create beautiful textures together. 🎶 In class, we’ll break down this rhythm so you can really hear it, feel it, and dance with it more comfortably.

🕖 Class 1 (19:00)
We’ll work on the horizontal “grind” movement pattern — an essential element of blues dancing — and explore simple rhythmic variations to make your dancing feel richer, smoother, and more musical.

🕗 Class 2 (20:15)
We’ll go deeper with these tools and concepts. If you’re not yet comfortable with the grind movement, we strongly recommend taking Class 1 first to review the fundamentals before joining Class 2.

✨ Social dancing from 21:20. Come learn, dance, connect, and enjoy a beautiful evening of blues with us!

🎧 As a little bonus, here’s a beautiful piece to whet your appetite:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4RKjCTIUIKNW2MLdjEIKJo?si=bcde1b231e61489e

Portrait of a Man Screamin' Jay Hawkins · A Portrait of a Man and His Woman · Song · 1987

Tonight we’ll be starting a new theme for the month at Stompin’ the Blues: Jukin’ Rhythms and Grooves. Each week in May we will focus on a different rhythm found in blues music and how we can groove to it.

Tonight Anna and Alain will focus on shuffle.

1️⃣ Class 1: shuffle basics - we will explore shuffle as a rhythm and learn a range of shuffle steps. Join for this class to dive into understanding the rhythm and to expand your shuffle footwork vocabulary.

2️⃣ Class 2: we will work on our ability to identify the shuffle in the wild and build on our existing movement vocabulary by adding some style and shape.

See you tonight at the Castle!

Join Anna & Ryan on Tuesday at The Castle for the next in our ballroomin’ skills and moves series at Stompin’!

In the first class at 7pm you will learn/ reinforce your comfortable and functional close embrace skills - including redirecting the partnership and smoothly disconnecting from and reconnecting with our partner during a dance.

The second class at 8:15pm will build on these skills, creating and redirecting momentum using catches and redirects.

The ability to change direction and to smoothly separate from and reconnect with your partner are essential for the more technical skills taught in the second class, so please come along to the first to learn/ polish up on those so that we can cover more ground and complexity in the second class.

See you tonight!