Intermediate Blues Workshop Weekend With Dexter Santos & Heidi Fite

Crossroads is extremely excited to be bringing you a weekend of intermediate blues workshops and dancing from two national-level instructors, Dexter Santos and Heidi Fite! Dexter & Heidi have taught workshops at events and in scenes all across the country, and have also taught in Canada, Europe and Asia! We're absolutely thrilled that they will be here in August to help Crossroads up our blues game! Five Intermediate Workshops will be held on Saturday, August 1st. Workshops can be taken a la carte for $15/each, or register for the whole series for $60! Space will be limited and pre-registration is strongly encouraged. Some scholarships are available. Please contact Kristin for details. -- Schedule: 11 am - noon The Movement, Shape, and Feeling of the Pulse This class will touch on vocabulary, musicality, and isolation technique but primarily focuses on using the aesthetic of the pulse and how to change its movement, shape, and feeling in your dance. This class is designed to make you think about your dancing starting with a simple base movement and adding "variants" to change its expression. 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Turns and Dips in Blues Dancing: Building Better Leads & Follows This class aims to build better leads and follows by increasing awareness through your connection and improving the lead and follow dynamic. In this class, we'll examine how the lead can properly "suggest" different types of turns (through body leads), how follows can have a choice on how they do a turn based on the lead's lead (or lack thereof), and then add "call & response" to make your turns more exciting and fun. We'll also examine dips: how to do it properly (from the simplest to the fanciest) through your connection, posture, and balance. 1:15 - 2:00 Break 2:00 - 3:00 Slow Blues Learn to take it easy and get the most out of your dancing when a slow song comes on. You'll soon understand that keeping it simple is the key. Learn how your frame, connection and intention of movement when combined with simple steps is all you need to dance slow. We'll add a bit of musicality and styling to top it off. Nice and easy does it. 3:15-4:15 Movement Quality: Creating Lines Learn about using your kinesphere to make artistic choices about your dance as well as using your connection with your partner and your movements across the floor to create lines in your dance and give it more visual appeal and improve your quality of movement. 4:30 - 5:30 Call and Response through Riffin’ Learn about call and response and the role it has in Blues music and how you can take that aspect of the music and apply it to your dance. We'll practice call and response through riffin' - a collaborative approach to solo dancing with a partner. It's about creating variations and building on each other's movements. We'll take turns talking, letting our partners speak, and see what we can create together. At the end, we'll get to show off our new riffin' skills. -- Dexter and Heidi will also be available for private lessons Thursday - Sunday this week! If you really want the advantage of a great opportunity to really push your dancing to the next level, private lessons are a fantastic way to do it! Contact Kristin Walker for more details on private lessons or to sign up for one! -- Bios: Dexter Santos (Seattle, WA) When Dexter Santos discovered Blues dancing in 2005, he found himself immediately drawn to the rhythms and sounds of the Blues. Something about the music - it's emotional depth and range, the varied subjects and stories, the gut-wrenching and the hip-shaking, the gritty and the smooth - gave Dexter's dancing new inspiration and direction. With a background in Ballroom dancing and Lindy Hop, Dexter has studied and collaborated with the best Blues dance teachers and dancers making him one of the most sought-after and admired teachers in the national and international scene. As a teacher, Dexter aims to inspire dancers of all levels with the possibilities that Blues dancing has to offer while preserving its roots, identity, and art form. Dexter teaches classes locally in Seattle and also travels the world, having taught in four continents, spreading his passion and joy for Blues dancing. Dexter's classes are known to be inspiring and fun, and are favorites at nationally and internationally renowned exchanges and workshops such as bluesSHOUT, Austin Blues Party (Austin, TX), Down Home Blues Festival (San Francisco, CA), BamBLOOZled (Washington, D.C.), Rain City Blues (Seattle, WA), Steel City Blues Festival (Pittsburgh, PA), Mile High Blues Festival (Denver, CO), Fallin' In Blues (Grenoble, France), Bluesweet (Seoul, Korea), and Drag The Blues (Barcelona, Spain) among many others. When he's not teaching or performing, you'll find Dexter 'cutting his teeth' and refining his skills on the competition floor. Since the very first bluesSHOUT in St. Louis in 2007, Dexter has won first place in numerous Blues dancing competitions around the country and has won the title of Ballroomin' Blues champion at bluesSHOUT 3 times (2007, 2008, and 2010). At bluesSHOUT 2010 in Austin, Dexter won all four partnered competitions: Open Jack & Jill, Strictly Jook Joint, Strictly Ballroomin', and Champions Division. For more information about Dexter, visit his website at dextersantos.com. Heidi Fite (San Francisco, CA) Heidi began dancing and teaching Blues dances in St. Louis in 1999 and has been dancing, teaching and performing ever since. An early promoter of Blues dancing, she founded the first national Blues dance workshop (Cheap Thrills), which has since transformed into the nation's largest Blues dance workshop and competition weekend (bluesSHOUT!). Now busy raising a family of four daughters, Heidi no longer runs bluesSHOUT!, but she continues to travel the world teaching Blues dance as a living tradition, with a rich history and an exciting future. From local classes to international workshops to historical research and documentation of the dance, she is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Blues dancing. Her classes are inspiring and challenging, but Heidi's focus on the underlying principles and fundamentals of the dance allows her to break down the most difficult concepts and moves, making them easy to understand and incorporate. Heidi is able to communicate and instill in her students a love of dance and a dedication to the learning process. Most importantly, her classes will put some serious 'boom boom boom' and 'aw haw haw haw' in your dancing. More Info below.