Baby Can Dance

If you look into the archive of this blog, or read Minstrelsy to Music Videoes, you'll notice my enthusiasm for the potential of dance on screen.

Last spring I was delightfully invited to be involved in the making of the music video for Carsie Blanton's "Baby Can Dance."

[I was invited on board to co-direct by Matt Paley of film production company, St Eliot & Co. Back in highschool I introduced Matt to Devon Sproule. Seven years later, he's making movies for the release of her latest album.]

Co-Directing "Baby Can Dance," I served as Lindy Hop enthusiast and researcher, as well as dance-film geek. It was super important to me that the video, blessed with the dancing gifts of some of Lindy Hops finest, really dig into what makes Lindy so addicting, energizing, gritty, and swell. Thus, running around New Orleans for four days with three sets of dancers, fliming hours of footage, all to be distilled down into improvised vernacular dance at it's finest. Improvised. Another day, maybe we'll get to make a longer film that explores some more of the stories and sounds of Lindy Hop's relatively recent magnetism to NOLA. But for this project, for Carsie's catchy song, I hope that both the grit and the glitter of these dancers individual personalities, as well a whiff of the New Orleans itself, shimmies she wobbles so good it can't be contained by a box on your screen.

Also, check out another dancer-made Lindy video creation by a bunch of other cool nerds.