Yes – tango and dulce de leche. SO MUCH dulce de leche. But for me Buenos Aires was also about great people, Blues and Swing dancing.

I was visiting the city to see my good friend Lilaj and had the opportunity to teach a couple of solo blues workshops while I was there. This was my first time teaching my own solo workshop outside of Israel. I was a bit nervous about teaching my own material in another country, but once I met the students I knew we would have a good time. The fact that they didn't laugh me out the room when I made an attempt to speak in Spanish was a positive start to the day.

The first workshop was about classic solo blues movements, which we put together in a routine so we could practice them in a fun way. The second workshop was about finding inspiration in unexpected places and using your own creativity to find new movements. The creativity workshop is my favorite one to teach since we get to be silly and enjoy ourselves while making interesting discoveries. I’ve taught this kind of class a few times and always learn from it too, as the students tend to have new ideas I haven’t necessarily thought of myself. I like having the two workshops together, as we start from the vintage classics and then move forward to modern ideas. Click to continue reading –>

I landed back home from Stockholm on the other side of 2015 and can't wait to tell you all about the magical Snowball!

I'll start with why I ended up going. First of all, it's known as one of the best events out there. No questions about it, if you get the chance to go, book it. You don't even have to keep reading, just go block out those dates for 2015 right now. Second of all, I had just decided to leave school. I was in a masters program for dance movement therapy and realized it wasn't the place for me, at least not for the moment. That could be a topic for a whole other post if this was a different kind of blog, but we're here to talk about swing outs! Anyway, I chose to use the opportunity of having some time available to hop on a plane to the most sparkly place I could think of. Snowflakes, fancy dress-ups, over-taxed champagne, confetti, gigantic blonde people… What else could a girl ask for?

Oh yeah, LINDY HOP! My goodness, there was some spectacular dancing at Snowball. Click to continue reading –>

Photo by Light eX Machina

Photo by: Andrew Miller

Winter is not my favorite season, but I still look forward to January every year because I can't wait for Feelin' Blues here in Tel Aviv. I feel so lucky that an international event of this caliber is walking distance from my house!

Needless to say, I've been to the festival every year (2015 will be its 4th time around), and it somehow manages to top itself every single time. I imagine this year we'll have private unicorns as rides to the parties, otherwise I don't know how they're going to do it again.  If you'd like to hear what last year was like, you're welcome to read my post about it.

The parties at this event mean business and go all night long. Click to continue reading –>

Dancing in the ballroom. Credit: Eric Bobrie – For Dancers Only

It's been a while since I got home from Swing Castle Camp, and I'm still mildly disappointed when meal time comes around and there's no elaborate buffet awaiting me. I also tried to get people to start addressing me as "her majesty" when I got back, thinking that might help me ease back in to real life. It didn't take hold as I would have liked.

As you can probably tell, I was thoroughly spoiled at the castle. I'd love to tell you all about it, although I'm a bit late with this post. It's too good of a story to pass up on.

I wrote excitedly about the camp before going, but it managed to exceed my already high expectations.  Aside from the regular reasons I was looking forward to this trip was, honestly, a chance to get away from what was happening in Israel. All summer long, we were surrounded by horrible news, violence and sirens. By the end of August things had mostly calmed down, but the aftermath was still felt everywhere. I was fortunate enough to have the possibility to take a break and leave the country for a bit. Click to continue reading –>

When your scene starts having too many Swing events to keep track of, it’s a wonderful thing. Here in Israel, we’ve gotten to the point where you can go dancing practically every night of the week, and even have a choice between different events on the same night.

This got me thinking that we should have one place that organizes it all so that people could easily find out where they could go dancing. New York has one, as does Barcelona, why not Israel? Click to continue reading…