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About Mystic Blues
Attention to all Shoreline Swing dancers: On 17 May 2009, Shoreline Swing's Sunday dance will be held at the Italian-American Citizens Club, 322 Mitchell Street, Groton, CT, as part of Mystic Blues smoke-free weekend. Please note the change of location! The beginner East Coast Class will still run from 7-7:30 pm and the DJed dance will follow with music by Wil Reed and Kevin Woods
Back for its final year, Mystic Blues 3 will tantalize and tease you with its amazing teachers, DJs, workshops, and dances. One of the most "user friendly" weekends, workshops are later, breaks are longer, so you will be able to do everything on the schedule rather than choosing between dancing, eating and sleeping. When not in the classrooms, there is fabulous music being provided by our DJs! On Saturday night, we have Joshua Fialkoff and the J-Street Band to get our feet moving. They played last year and so wowed the dancers we had to bring them back for more!
This year Mystic Blues is joined by the talents of Tina Davis and Bryan Spellman (Dallas, TX), Emilio Estevez and Mike "the Girl" Legett (Philadelphia, PA), David Graybill and Noelle Gray, along with Mary Christensen, all of CT. At the decks, Tina Davis, Bryan Spellman, Emilio Estevez, Mike Legett, Julie Brown and John Brooks (Boston, MA), Sapo Andja (Montreal, Canada), Javier Johnson, Chris Oksanen, Wil Reed, and Kevin Woods (CT) will be playin' the Blues.
16 Hours of Workshops Over Two Days: Mystic Blues invites you to take workshops with nationally recognized Blues instructors as they cover beginner and intermediate/advanced blues! Learn the basics, find your hips, and start styling!
For all levels of dancers! (Each track will have four classes/day)
Click HERE To view the Class Schedule
Quick History on Mystic Blues: In 2005, Allena Tillman-Brown was introduced to Blues dancing at Herrang Dance Camp and upon returning the States started looking for events and local venues to continue learning how to Blues dance. To her great dismay, there was nothing local! Taking baby steps, she began throwing late nights (Oriental Blues and Bonfire Blues), but too few of the local dancers knew how to Blues. After traveling to a few more Blues events, and after long hours talking with friends, she decided to approach Shoreline Swing and ask if they would take a risk on her and a new type event. Allena explained that she wanted to not only bring in great teachers, but that she wanted to showcase teachers and DJs from this area in hopes of building a Blues scene. Thanks to their belief and Allena's desire to bring the Blues to Mystic, the first Mystic Blues took place in May 2007 and was themed around one of Mystic's most well known sites, Mystic Pizza. While Julia Roberts was a no show, Greg Avakian and Laurie Zimmerman, Ogden Sawyer and Amanda Gruhl, Bryan Spellman and Meghan Betsch, and Joshua Boroff and Devona Cartier taught the first Mystic Blues workshops starting from the very beginning with solo movements and by Sunday afternoon, the single track was taking Performance Blues. Late nights were held at Allena's house and the rest of the dances were in conjunction with Shoreline Swing's regular schedule. It was an amazing success with dancers driving and flying in from Canada and across the States.
When 2008 arrived, Mystic Blues was ready and had expanded to two tracks, beginner and intermediate/ advanced, to accommodate a more skilled set of dancers. The event took on a Men in Black theme from the happenstance of M. II. B. being written on a napkin. Once again Greg and Laurie, Ogden and Amanda, came to teach along with Amira (Melanie Grimes), who taught Isolations via the Belly Dancing Method, to a fantastic bunch of dancers. Dancers came from California, Texas, Washington, Canada, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New England. In keeping with the original idea the focus kept being brought back to "local". This event came off amazingly well even with a bout of Lyme disease!! Thank you to everyone who stepped in and helped!
Here we are in 2009, and Mystic Blues is on once again. The line up is amazing! An Under the Sea theme has been selected to highlight the fact that Mystic is famous for both its Seaport and Aquarium. However, do not expect to see any singing crabs! Allena has decided this will be her last year running Mystic Blues, but has plans for more events focusing on Blues, and who knows... given a year off, there could be another one!