Backwater Blues
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Class Content

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Image © Devon Rowland Photography

Mike Legenthal 

UAH ​Ballroom A Front

Enhance Your Dance!

Mike is thrilled to bring you her expert instruction and will personalize content to fit your pod's interests and fundamental dance goals. 
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Image © Devon Rowland Photography

Dan Legenthal

UAH Ballroom B Back

Taking your Stride to the Next Level

Whether you're new to stride or have been developing within this idiom for a while, Dan will guide you to grow in your dance. He'll help you develop your partnership and truly enhance your vocabulary in this driving Ballroomin' Blues idiom!

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Photo credit - Jerry Almonte

Julie Brown

UAH Ballroom B Front

Ballroomin' Dances at the Savoy

We talk a lot about Savoy Walk in our scene, but that's not the only ballroomin' dance done to blues at the Savoy Ballroom! Join Julie as she steps you through several dances present there, and let's explore the Savoy more deeply together!
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Bobby Green

UAH Ballroom A Back

An Introduction to GrAystone

Bobby is one of the world's top dancers and instructors in GrAystone. This Ballroom dance originated at the GrAystone Ballroom in Detroit, and is danced to Slow Jazz, R&B, Soul, and..you know what? I'm just going to let Bobby tell you everything you need to know about this dance in his class!

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Photo credit - Ben Hejkal Photography

​Laney Barhaugh

UAH Ballroom C Front

Finding the Cool in your Solo Dance

Among all your partnered instruction, we've taken a class out to develop your solo jazz dancing in your own body. Laney will guide you in a study of chill in solo jazz dance, and bring you confidence and calm to your own dance.



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Photo credit - Ben Hejkal Photography

Krystal Wilkerson

UAH Ballroom C Back

Let's Work on our Communication

What data are you transmitting to your partner at any given time? What are you feeling in return? Let's take some time to feel out how tone, connection points, and lag affects our partnership and how much nuance we can communicate within our partnership!

Dr. Christi Jay Wells

Lunch & Learns in UAH Ballroom B Front

A half-century before Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” early short sound films (“soundies”) often featured a similar format: a short film with a plot driven by the expanded performance of a hit song. Our Backwater Blues lunchtime learnings will feature screenings of two 1929 soundies critical to jazz & blues history: “St. Louis Blues” featuring Bessie Smith and “Black & Tan Fantasy” featuring Duke Ellington. Both were directed by Dudley Murphy and feature a number of important black musicians and dancers of the late 1920s.

​Dr. Christi Jay Wells, an internationally recognized expert in black music and dance culture of the 1920s and 1930s, will screen these films for us and provide in-depth historical information about the songs in these films and the diverse 19th and early 20th century sacred and secular black musical traditions they emerge from. We will also learn about how to understand these films as expressions of and commentaries upon black urban life at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
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  • Home
  • Contact
  • Volunteer
  • Schedule and Venues
    • Class Schedule
  • Contest
  • About
    • Code Of Conduct
    • Music
    • Instructors & Staff
    • What to do in town
  • Register