Stockamöllan

Will do a longer post this time with some various photos. I drove to Stockamöllan, situated between Eslöv and Höör. In the car with me were Anton, Anders Mannesson and Anders Malmberg. We had a good laugh! When we arrived at the sports field, we put up some tents. Ali (Anders Lindgren) also showed up with the big military tent in which loads of people were to sleep.

We then went to the festival site, really nicely situated by a pretty river. Gunhild Carling and her family were the hosts, and we saw alot of great jazz and swing, Ulf Johansson and Jan Lundgren as well as a lot of Gunhild herself in all her splendour. We came back quite late to the camp site, crammed seven people into my Golf for the 5 minute car ride, and set up a camp fire when we got back. It was cold out.

On Saturday the courses started. I was in Intermediate level. The courses were all held by members of the Harlem Hot Shots. Their founder, Lennart Westerlund (from Västervik, yay!) is a very cool man. He went across the Atlantic in the 80s, met up with people who had done the lindy hop a long time ago. They became quite obsessed with the thought of skipping everything they'd learned about jitterbug and rock n' roll dancing, and just starting from scratch with this dance. In short, they brought it over here in the 80s and it revived like nothing else, in the early 90s. I spoke to him after our first class and told him Tom Koerner said hello. Quite cool, he knew of him and Debra very well. Anyway, classes that first day were: Swingin at the Savoy, a bunch of quite easy moves that we knew from before, Harlems Special (best class ever!) I did it by mistake, it was meant to be for the advanced group. We did a routine with a cool jump in it. One of the dancing friends, Olle, told me: "Perfect!!" I was very excited about that. We went back to change, then came back for social dancing. Then we looked like this:

I found the blouse in a second hand store for 100 kr, totally awesome and vintage. I felt during the night as if I could do faster and faster songs, as time went by, by applying some small changes and tricks to the dancing.
Today, Sunday, we had 3 hours of lessons: Jig walks, foot work variation and at the end of it all, Lennart from the Harlem Hot Shots told us his facinating story, and how he brought the lindy back from America. He is also the founder of, and in charge of Herräng Dance Camp.

Ted arranged breakfast in the mornings, and on Sunday we had breakfast outside, quite nice!

Well, needless to say, we went back for more social dancing today before heading back home.

When we went back, I had a few cool fun girls as well as Anders M in the car with me. We went back around 10pm and my legs are aching like mad.