New & upvoted
Quick takes
Recent discussion
Room transfer (for room reserved at an event rate)
- Don't cancel, because it'll no longer go back to the block and the rate will be lost
- Instead add new person to reservation, then have them switch the billing info to theirs through that same reservation management page, I think (y'all will have to figure out what way makes you most comfortable to do that)
- Remove yourself from reservation
- Fin (edited)
- Why: I've been told the hotel "doesn't like it" when you try to go through them to switch the reservation, hence this quiet way of doing it.
WCS convention in SF Bay Area - https://boogiebythebay.com
Hotel
Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport
Amenities:
Microwave: there is one on the atrium floor
Fridges: rooms have "drink coolers" by default (which don't go as cold as normal fridges). You can request an actual fridge, but there is a limited supply of those
Food
Competition
Intermediate and above get Spotlight Finals
In Novice you get semi-spotlight (3 couples at a time)
I collected stats on how long it takes for dancers to move between WSDC divisions in their primary role.
The shortest time between someone's first novice point and first all-star point is 8 months (Jesse Vos). The next fastest is 12 months (Melissa Rutz, Samir Zutshi, JT Anderson). (There's actually someone with 5 months, but it looks like a clerical error—before and after their supposed all-star points, they compete in several novice competitions.)
Below is a plot of the distribution of times between first novice point and first all-star point. The dashed line is the median time, and the dotted lines are the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentile times.
Below is a table of summary statistics for the plot, where "25%" means "25th percentile".
| Stat | Mean | Std. dev. | 1% | 5% | 10% | 25% | 50% | 75% | 90% | 95% | 99% |
| Time (years) | 5.16 | 2.64 | 1.33 | 1.93 | 2.42 | 3.25 | 4.67 | 6.44 | 8.50 | 10.25 | 14.03 |
Though the median time between first novice point and...
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List of (non-obvious) things that we generally don't do in West Coast Swing. In particular, things that other dances do, but we don't.
- Don't bounce
- As West Coast Swing evolved from Lindy Hop, it lost its characteristic bounce. Instead, it acknowledges beat with other forms
Also sometimes referred to as "critical timing".
The idea behind the rolling count is that between the beats (1-2-3-4...) we can imagine smaller "subcounts" that are typically called "and" and "ah", and associate certain actions with them (see below).
ThisThe counting then becomes 1-and-ah-2-and-ah-3-and-ah-4...
The exact timing of "and" and "ah" depends on the music and the personal style.
Typically, the actions associated with counts (1, 2...), "and" and "ah" are:
- Count: the foot strikes the floor. The amount of weight that is transferred immediately depends on the personal style, and is usually between zero (no weight transfer) and 50% ("split-weight").
- "and": transfer of the the rest of weight.
- "ah": the hip release, the preparation for the next step, possibly a
stub, please expand on it!pivot.
Rarely an additional "eh" moment is identified, making the count 1-eh-and-ah-2-eh-and-ah-3... The function assigned to this additional moment varies.
I come from a background with a strong culture of "thinking in public". This means openly sharing learning experiences and insights - working with the garage door up.
I believe this practice is crucial for promoting growth and making knowledge more accessible to newcomers.
In contrast, the West Coast Swing community largely lacks this culture of collaborative inquiry. I believe that adopting aspects of “Thinking in Public” would greatly benefit our community.
What would "thinking in public" look like in the context of WCS?
Learn in Public
The aspect of thinking in public that I believe would be most immediately relevant for the majority of readers is "Learning in Public". You can think of it as tracing the trail of learning.
After you've learned or understood something - share your understanding - in a format that your past self would have found the most helpful. Use media...
- Don't bounce
- As West Coast Swing evolved from Lindy Hop, it lost its characteristic bounce. Instead, it acknowledges beat with other forms of pulsing: leg extension, movement speed, etc.
- Don't raise hands above elbows
- In West Coast Swing, the connection point is kept low, generally by allowing hands to fall down with the gravity. Hands above elbows is a sign of artificially and unnecessarily holding them up.
- Don't autostart on 1 (as a follower)
- Don't expect the follower to go on 1 (as a leader)
gonna remove that section for now! (you can recover actual text from the history of edits of the page fyi)