Swing Out Shanghai & The Shanghai World Expo
// November 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // China, Chinese, Dancing, Shanghai, Shanghai, Travel, Uncategorized
Currently writing from Yangshuo, one of the most unique and beautiful little towns in all of southern China. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to write since leaving Shanghai two and a half weeks ago. I’ve now been back in China for 3 weeks, so I thought I would sit down and reflect a little my first week back since leaving in August of 2009.
I landed in Shanghai on October 13, 2010, around 1:30 pm Beijing time and proceeded to have the absolute smoothest travel experience of my life. I honestly couldn’t believe how well things went – my bad even came up just as I walked up to the baggage pick up. I got through customs with almost no wait, picked up a SIM card in the airport, called my friends Bruce and Julia who were hosting me in Shanghai, and hopped on the metro to their place. Everything seemed so familiar this time, and despite a year of living in the States, I immediately jumped back into Chinese. Bruce and Julia were a big part of that smooth transition too, because in addition to providing a very comfortable setting to get over the jet lag, they were great company and overwhelmingly helpful in every way. 5 stars to L’hotel Julia!
The very next night, I went dancing at the Melting Pot, and there is simply no better way to get over jet lag than to stay up late dancing with old friends who I haven’t seen in over a year! It was a huge reunion for me, and it began an unforgettable 9-day dancing streak. The next night (Friday) officially began “Swing Out Shanghai,” the city’s first ever international swing dancing event. Two years before in a bar in Hong Kong, the idea for the event was first hatched, and two years later it finally came to fruition. For the next two days, it was non-stop dancing in Shanghai. The opening dance was at C’est La Vie restaurant, followed by Saturday afternoon at Hengshan Park in the French Concession, then later that day at the Music Hall Court, then that night at the House of Blues and Jazz, and then finally the last dance at the Melting Pot Sunday night. Friends from Beijing, Singapore, and Taiwan all came to the event which doubled our numbers and really made it a full blown lindy exchange.
As the chief DJ and music coordinator for the event, I was in charge of keeping the dance floor full, and my team of DJs really pulled through throughout the whole weekend (huge thanks to Akiko, Sam, Brian, and Chad). The event ended, but then Monday night we were dancing again at the usual Monday night dances in Shanghai, so it sort of just kept going…and going, and going, and going, and…
…and then the Shanghai Expo performances began, called “Swing For All”featuring the Hong Kong Big Band. It was Hong Kong week atthe Bao Steel stage, so the week was dedicated to a multitude of Hong Kong performers, which included the band and us, the dancers. The band gave two performances on both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Throughout the show, the dancers social danced down in front of the stage to the music, and a select few gave a few special choreographed performances as well. At the very end, we did a jam to “Sing Sing Sing,” and the very last performance the crowd rushed the stage and cheered and clapped along with us. It was by far the most fun I’ve ever had during a dance performance, and one of the most unique dance performances of my life as well. I was so proud of all of the dancers and musicians there and so happy to share a small piece of the happiness we all experience when we are dancing with the local Chinese people. Photos and videos of both SOS and Swing for All can be seen here.
So then it was Thursday, and once again we danced at the weekly Thursday night dances (day #8 of dancing if you’ve been counting). And then it was Friday, and a few Shanghai dancer friends and I decided to visit the Shanghai World Expo. After all, we all had our VIP “performer” passes that were still good, so we figured we should make use of them and try and get into as many country pavilions as we could. In order, we went into USA, Peru, Columbia, Brazil, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, Germany, and finally Spain. The whole thing was quite arbitrary – we just started walking and asking who would let us in as VIP (only Chile denied us…freakin stiff Chilean door guard). Over all, I was so glad we did not have to wait to get into any of the pavilion, because none of them were worth more than 30 minutes. Some were better than others (Germany, Canada, Spain), but in general there wasn’t much to see or do that was truly amazing. It was kind of like a lousier version of Epcot without rides. The most fun we had was when Akiko and I crashed the Argentina pavilion by totally faking some Argentine Tango (see video below). Right in the middle there was a large open space, so when they started playing tango music we started doing really smooth swing, and kind of pulled off a tango-esque feel. By the end, hundreds of Chinese had circled us, snapping photos right and left. They all seemed to think we were part of the show (in fact one of the actual Argentina workers asked us afterwards what style of tango it was because had never seen it before!). We finished the night by crashing an outdoor concert at the Australian pavilion as well where we danced right up in front of the stage.
After it all, I headed back to Bruce and Julia’s then caught a train to Hangzhou first thing Saturday morning and began my 3-week trip backpacking through China, which I am just now finishing up. It has been quite an adventure, and there will be a massive amount of writing, photos, and videos to come soon. I leave for Shanghai tonight and then fly to Taipei Thursday to begin my studies there for the winter. Still, it is only just now hitting me how significant the whole first week of dancing in Shanghai was historically. It was the first of its kind, and hopefully the beginning of much more to come. Maybe fifty years from now people will look back at the origins of swing dancing in China and write about us! Heck, we even made the LOCAL NEWS!
