I spent most of this past weekend attending Lollies and Lemonade 2019 in Auburn, Alabama. This was a 3-day Balboa workshop with some incredible instruction, amazing music, and wonderful dancing. Here’s an overview of my experience from this event.
For starters, Balboa is a type of swing dance that features a close embrace style connection between partners (similar to a hug) and small, quick steps; these make it good for dancing to fast songs. While many Lindy hop events have opportunities for Balboa (some of them even have entire rooms dedicated to it during the late dances), there are also Balboa-centered events. Lollies and Lemonade is the first of those events that I’ve attended. At the time of this writing, I’ve been doing Balboa for just under a year, and I’m sure that experience made the event much more enjoyable for me.
There were only 3 of us going from Jacksonville, Florida, so we decided to carpool instead of driving separately for 6 hours. We left around 3:45pm Eastern Standard Time on Friday afternoon, switching drivers somewhere in Georgia as we wanted to share the workload. Apart from a few brief stops, we drove straight through until we got to the Clarion Inn & Suites where the dances were held. Since we changed time zones once we got to Alabama, I think we got there around 9pm Central Standard Time, about an hour after the main dance started. As soon as I walked into the ballroom and saw everyone dancing, I knew I’d have a great time. I connected with my host, danced a lot, drank some lemonade, and had a blast that night. Although the late dance lasted until 2am, I left with my housemates around 1am to get some sleep.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get much sleep that night. For some reason, I was wide awake when I went to bed. I hadn’t had much sugar or caffeine 4+ hours before trying to fall asleep, so I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the excitement of my first Balboa event, being in a new city, and spending the night in an unfamiliar place that kept me up. After we all woke up, we talked about a variety of subjects as we ate breakfast, shook off the sleepiness, and gathered energy for the day’s activities. When the time came, we grabbed our stuff and headed to the first lessons of the weekend.
I chose the “Fresh Squeezed” beginner track, which was in a ballroom at the Auburn University campus. I got to the university with plenty of time to spare after parking and finding the right room. Robert David Jemian and Cari Westbrook were the instructors for the beginner track. They started us off with the basic Balboa pattern, posture, and partner connection before letting us dance together for a bit. The participants’ skill levels varied from complete beginners to near-intermediates, but everyone did well throughout both days of instruction and had a good grasp on most of the material. The instructors did a great job communicating a lot of important concepts that helped us execute the moves; I had a lot of lightbulb moments where things began to click for me in ways they never had before. Except for a long lunch break and a few shorter breaks during the lesson, we spent most of the afternoon working on a lot of Balboa and Bal-Swing moves: ad libs, paddle turns, Lollies, toss outs, outs and ins, and so on. I was glad to be at least somewhat familiar with almost everything they taught that day as I’m sure that prior experience came in handy during the classes.
After the first day of lessons, I spent a few minutes practicing with my unicycle in one of the university parking lots before heading back to the house. We relaxed for a bit and then got ready for the main dance that night, stopping at a Vietnamese restaurant beforehand. As was the case with the other big dance workshops I’ve attended, I felt that my dancing was overall better on Saturday night than it was on Friday night, with much of what I learned from the lessons sinking in as well as improving my basic pattern. I danced with some of the people I had first met on Friday evening, a lot of people from the beginner track, and several I met that night. I was glad to see and reconnect with several people I had met at other big weekend workshops and smaller dance events.
There was a competition during the main dance and a lot of incredible couples participated. I’m familiar enough with Balboa at this point to recognize a number of moves and notice when I’m seeing something new to me even if I can’t tell exactly what’s going on. The most fun activity for me that night, though, was the silly competition. This started during the late night dance and consisted of “Leonard Says”: in the style of Simon Says, Leonard D’Lemon, the Lollies and Lemonade mascot, would come up with moves for competitors to do while supporting a lemon between themselves. When there were only 5 couples remaining, they added a second lemon. After that, they took away the lemons and had the follows wear blindfolds; after they got down to 2 couples, the leads wore blindfolds as well, and spotters kept them from running into each other, the audience, or anything else. Shortly after the winners of both competitions were announced, we left to get some much-needed sleep for the final day.
I had correctly predicted that I’d sleep better the second night. All the energy I expended in Saturday’s activities and the lack of sleep from the previous night helped me fall asleep faster and stay asleep for longer, so I felt more refreshed when I got up that morning. As with the previous day, we spent some time talking and waking up over breakfast before heading out for the morning lessons. In the beginner lessons, Robert David and Cari gave us time to recall what we had learned the previous day and then showed us some new stuff: swivels, an exit from swivels, the come around, and some optional variations that follows could try if they wanted. During the lunch break, I ended up going to Chipotle with a few other dancers from the beginner track; we took our food back to the university since we were short on time at that point and talked about the event, our dance scenes, and a few related subjects while we ate. The post-lunch class was much smaller than it had been for the previous lessons, so we had more time to talk about what we’d learned, things we still found challenging, helpful stuff, etc. The instructors ended the final lesson with a recap video as they had done the day before and gave us plenty of time to dance with each other, ask them for help, or just hang out and chat before the farewell dance started. I danced a bit, said goodbye to those who were heading back home, and then went back to the house to finish packing and make sure I had all my stuff. Then I headed to the hotel and went inside for the farewell dance.
Although the dance ran from 4pm-8pm, we left around 6:30 since we wanted to get back to Jacksonville before it got too late. I danced with several familiar faces as well as some people I had only met that day. I felt my dancing was better than Friday but not as good as Saturday. The slight soreness, tiredness from the late nights, and information overload was really getting to me by then, but I still had fun. I thanked my host for the fantastic hospitality and said goodbye to him and several other people I’d hung out with that weekend. Then we all piled into the car and started for home, stopping along the way for some food and gas and listening to a lot of swing and Disney music. Once we got back to Jacksonville, we unpacked our stuff, said our goodbyes, and parted ways.
Lollies and Lemonade 2019 was my third big weekend dance workshop and my first Balboa workshop. Except for one song in which I danced Blues, I danced nothing but Balboa for the entire weekend. Most of the songs were too fast for me to comfortably dance Lindy hop and I figured that immersing myself in Balboa would improve my dancing. Whether or not it did, I still had a lot of fun, benefited a lot from the lessons, and got much more comfortable dancing Balboa socially and asking people to dance. Plus it was amazing to see a room full of people dancing Balboa and having a great time. Thanks to the AU Swing Dance Association for putting on this event, the instructors, all the dancers who came from far and wide, and everyone else for such an amazing and unforgettable weekend. I loved this event and I can’t wait to go back next year.