Breanna Perry
Breanna loves pretty much everything about pretty much every vintage jazz/vernacular folk/really old/swing-era dance there is, ever. Goofy animal dances? She loves 'em. Swingin' out hard and fast? Just try and stop her. Messing around with chuggy charleston patterns? She can't get enough. Melty and stretchy blues dances, long-legged peabody, fancy-footed balboa, she enjoys all of it. And one of her favorite things is when she gets the chance to share all of those favorite things with other people, and then see her favorite things become their favorite things! In classes, she's known to focus on technique in a nerdy way, such as comparing dancers' arms to triangles' hypotenuses or trying to air-graph movement intensities. Breanna's absolute favorite, though, is when all that "correct" stuff can be tossed aside and everyone can just throw down and jam together comfortably! (Especially if it involves things like rolling across the floor or accidentally tripping over your own feet and turning it into "styling", things she is known for.)
Breanna continually works on her dancing by learning from dance instructors all across the United States in a wide variety of styles, and by competing whenever she has a chance, doing well in her fair share of those competitions.
Yossef Mendelssohn
Yossef moved to Nashville for work in August of '06 and was lucky enough to be right by the premier swing dance studio of the day, Vintage Rhythm. He finally got around to starting lessons in January, and since he knew hardly anyone and had nearly nothing to do, he kept on taking all the lessons he could for several months. At some point, Aba and Reuel got sick of seeing Yossef all the time and closed the studio down.
After about half a year of taking constant lessons and not doing much outside of class, Yossef realized he should start dancing socially. Then came travel to other dance scenes, workshop weekends, exchanges, and camps. After a stressful first stab at competition as part of the short-lived Whitey's Cindy Loppers, he started entering competitions regularly, winning his first-ever Jack and Jill and placing in some other beginners' competitions before being shoved into the cruel world of intermediate and advanced.
Since his humble beginnings, Yossef has aspired to add more titles to his name than just "dancer". "Competitor" came fairly quickly, then "DJ", and in October of '08, "teacher". "Organizer" came in early '09, and he's searching for a place to go from there
Yossef not only enjoys the usual suspects of swing dancing (Lindy Hop, Charleston, and Balboa), but also the precursors, the pre-swing (or "silly") dances like Peabody and Collegiate Shag. He's also generally excited about most non–Jitterbug-Stroll choreographed routines and line dances.
And talking about himself in the third person.
Thanks to everyone who came out for the dance and also for the workshop. We had an awesome array of people from out of town, (Knoxville, Nashville, Atlanta, Tucson, and more). The dance was great. Miss Tess and the Bonton Parade brought some great sets and had then entire crowd moving. There was fast stuff for the single step, east coast, and balboa dancers, middle stuff for the lindy dancers and slow stuff for the blues dancers.
