A Proud Sponsor
2008 Comments on bluesSHOUT! by Damon Stone. When Heidi Fite
approached me about helping run the competition segment of Cheap Thrills
2005, I was thrilled. Then when she unveiled the plans to start a traveling
Blues dance event based primarily around social dancing and competition,
I was very excited by the concept and leapt at the chance to help shape
what I felt was going to be a seminal event for Blues dance.
Heidi, Charlie Fuller and I all agreed that the first event needed to be in St. Louis, as their former home, the home of Cheap Thrills (the event which spawned and inspired bluesSHOUT!). The three of us just as quickly agreed the second event needed to be in San Francisco. Not only were two of three board members living there, but San Francisco had been a hot bed for Blues dancing since before there was a national Blues scene.
The San Francisco Blues dance festival, Down Home Blues, was growing at a rapid pace as more dancers wanted to get deeper in touch with the roots of Blues dance in an immersive environment, and was the natural sponsor for bluesSHOUT!'s San Francisco appearance. It would allow San Francisco and the Down Home Blues regulars to take part in the best Blues competitions around and for bluesSHOUT!'s regulars to immerse themselves in the roots of Blues dance, Down Home style.
Our goal was to take the unique aspects of both events, BluesSHOUT!'s hot competitions and hours and hours of social dancing and Down Home's immersive experience in tracked progressive small classes, and fuse them into possibly the "don't miss Blues event of the year"... I think we succeeded with flying colors. Take a look at the schedule and tell us what you think.
2008: Comments on bluesSHOUT! by Charlie Fuller. He's dying to say something...he just hasn't yet.
In the meantime, read our comments from 2007 and find out more about what bluesSHOUT! is all about.