Dancing, teaching, and having fun!
Our performance troupe is performing next week at the Emmanuel College May Ball! The first number we do is a girls ’20s charleston. It is really fun and high energy and we are wearing are new dresses. I love it!
April 2007
We went to Barcelona for five days with three of our good Cambridge friends. We were visiting a swing dance camp called Barswingona, we looked around Barcelona and we caught up with other dance friends from around the world. I had lots of fun dancing in Barcelona and here are some photos.
The dance floor was very large, very busy and full of good dancers (and a few too many who ‘thought’ they were THE BEST, but we ignored them).
One day we also danced on a square outdoors to live music.
During the day we went sight seeing and guess what we bumped into: a little jazz band playing in one of the main shopping streets. Of course we had to have a dance.
Everyone watching loved it, especially the funny Portuguese man who you see in the photo below. He walked up REALLY close taking footage and photos with his camera.
I not only ‘like’ dancing outside. I LOVE it!
I was reminded myself when a friend of mine took this photo of me at the Cambridge Lindy Hopper’s first ever Lindy Bomb! A ‘lindy bomb’ basically means you choose a place and time, you bring some fine jazz tunes, you invite your dancing friends and you DANCE 
Don’t ask me what I am doing in the photo. It must have been one of my famous improvisation moves. They are all truly amazing, original and like nothing else!
So, proven here, Lotte is in her element when:
She is with friends and family,
outside in the sunshine,
in a nice location, like a park,
dancing Lindy Hop!
YAY
So, when I work, I punt on the river. When I get visitors and I take a day off, I punt on the river! Me and the river are getting to know each other really well
These photos are from the performance and from one of the classes we taught The Lindy Hop scene in Budapest is not very big, but it has been going for years. One of the dancers there told me he has been to the Herrang Dance Camp (Sweden) 12 times! There are many good Lindy Hop dancers and also a lot of really good Boogie Woogie dancers.
I was very busy dancing and teaching, but here are some things I learned about the city:
* Beautiful, famous bath houses
* Nice people
* Big beautiful impressive buildings
* Many homeless people
* Wide streets
* Currency – 1 Pound=350 Florint
* Many big statues of Hungarian Kings and soldiers – Hungary has known many wars and revolutions and has never won any
* Nice food – Goulash, yummie
* Hungarian language – I tried REALLY hard for 5 days and only learned the words for ‘thank you’ and ‘little kiss’. The language is like no other language. I learned the first word because of it was very useful, the second word because it is an english word as well, but with a different meaning. Ask me in person to tell you what they are because the first one I don’t know how to spell and the second one I can’t write on my blog, or say out loud, without being very rude, haha.
Before….
…and after!
I look much happier after, don’t you think so? That was not planned. I think 20 photos later I just got better at taking a photo of myself and so smiling was a bit easier! But, I am also happy with the result.
March 14 – March 19 Lotte in Budapest
I was visiting Hungary to teach Lindy Hop. It was a great trip, with lots of nice dances and lovely people (3 American teachers plus me, 2 Finish students on exchange and everyone else Hungarian) in a beautiful city! Here are some stories. 
In this first photo I am having lunch. Very tasty pancakes and a huge cup of ice tea I just remember the man who sold them to me. Well, I remember his hands really. His hands were small with big fingers that looked like they had done hard labour all their life, because they were not the frail pink colour of many unlaboured hands in the world. Those hands rolled up the tiny thin pancakes.
My American friends could not believe he did that without wearing plastic gloves — which is custom in the States I believe. I did not care, because these hands rolled up my little pancake with so much care, they must taste good — and they did!
See below my ‘big-but-careful-hands-pancake-friend’!
I seem to have just found myself a job! After months of job hunting and job applications without getting anywhere I had an idea….let’s check out punting!
A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in small rivers or other shallow water. Punting refers to boating in a punt. The punter generally propels the punt by pushing against the river bed with a pole.
Punts were originally built as cargo boats or platforms for fowling and angling but in modern times their use is almost exclusively confined to pleasure trips on the rivers in the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge in England and races at a few summer regattas on the Thames. (Wikipedia)
Punting is a very popular leisure time activitiy in Cambridge and I have gone punting a few times already. Not as easy as it sometimes seems, but very fun and I always enjoyed it as you can see on the photo.
Now, this might be where you will find me most of the time in the near future– on the river Cam taking the tourists along the colleges, punting and talking away…. They refer to Tour Guide Punters as ‘Chauffeurs’.
First I have to pass a ‘test’ though, which I think just means taking my boss on a tour to see if I am good enough for the real tours yet. I will have to fill 45 minutes of tour talk AND, even more challenging, get this 12 person boat up and down the river in 45 minutes while I am talking, help!
So, over the next week I am studying 8 pages of information on Cambridge bridges and buildings and Cambridge University. I will also practise punting the 12 person boats. Those are bigger than the 6 people punt boats that I have been going on. When I feel ready I will do the test and my ‘Chauffeur’ career can kick off!
(I was told that my boss fell into the river 7 times in his first year. I will have to leave a spare set of clothes just around the corner at Matt’s office I think, haha!)
Just a week ago I performed in the show ‘Elemental’ – CUCDW Dance Show at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. I performed in a street dance number called ‘Wonders of this World’, which was really fun and also challenging as I was dancing this style for the first time. I really liked the choreography and only remembered it a week before the show. SCARY, but great experience. I think I will do some more of it this year.
In the photo we are in the blues dance section of the beginning of our Lindy Hop performance Berry Blues/Bottom’s Up. This was not as challenging for me as I have performed Lindy Hop before, but it was just as great to do as I had never performed Lindy Hop in a professional stage setting. WHoo hee.
Photos copyright Duncan Grisby, 2007.