I love Lindy Focus. Ever since I cried to the Jonathan Stout Orchestra playing Auld Lang Syne as we left 2018 behind, it’s been the only place I want to spend New Years. Every year, I show up with the weight of the year on my shoulders, tense and cynical and discouraged in my own dancing, and over the course of the week, Lindy Focus wraps its arms around me, warms me up and leaves me feeling inspired, valued and loved.

This is the only event I feel this way about, and of course “Lindy Focus” doesn’t make me feel that way—that’s the work of the musicians (in particular this year: Chloe Feoranzo’s Women in Jazz and Jonathan Stout’s Charlie Christian late nights, Keenan McKenzie’s Modern Classics night, and Stout’s NYE not-technically-Kitchen Sink but still very Kitchen Sink-feeling night), the organizers (Jon and Sam, and Chisomo, and Kemper and Aliceann, and Cindi, and ESPECIALLY Elizabeth and Bryan and everyone else on the kitchen staff, etc, etc, etc) and the friends. 

The rest of my warm fuzzy Focus feelings I can contribute to those wonderful side-of-the-floor, or staff meal, or hotel room, or hallway interactions that feel so unique at Lindy Focus: everyone is full of year-end reflections and feelings and so everyone is a little more willing to tell you what they’re thinking than usual. I always try to write down and cherish some of my favorite of those moments, and while I’m not going to share those here, at the very least if you’re from the Baltimore/DC area your name is probably going in there.

Lindy Focus is also where Helen and I get inspired for the following year—last year we were so bursting with ideas that it fueled our whole 2025. We did so much!! And with no better bridge, I want to toot our horns about what all we did.

Teaching locally

We love teaching around the Bay Area! This year we started teaching at the Woodchopper’s Ball: we got to teach a beginner series during Pride Month for them, and we taught a whole new group of intermediate students for two months. 

We also got to teach plenty at our first love, The Breakaway. Our February lightning-fast three-week performance class was a highlight, but of course nothing beats season 2 with the Oaktown Hella Hoppers (more on that later). I also got to teach my dream turn technique class late in the year.

Lastly, we finally got to teach at Wednesday Night Hop, which I hadn’t done since 2019! Coming back since the pandemic started, we’d sold our car and I had been working Wednesday evenings for years, so it never worked out. Until it did! We got to teach a 50-person Charleston class, which is one of THE most fun classes to teach.

Apart from weekly classes, we also taught a January workshop for our local students, which we used as a test run for our later workshop weekend with Andy and Andrea. It went so well we’ll definitely do it again this year! And at the beginning of February, Paul Riding brought us up to Sacramento with Calvin to do a workshop with Rags 2 Rhythm. That group would go on to produce Helen’s and my favorite student team routine at Camp Hollywood that wasn’t ours. Paul described it to us in the car on the way to lunch that day and I got hyped just hearing about it. It did not disappoint!

Trips

We planned a trip to the eastern seaboard, which after we eloped became our de facto honeymoon. We went to Philly, where we got to stay with and get to know Nick Cruickshank and his lovely wife(!!!) Maddie, hang out with Kate and Mike, see the old Jazz Attack venue right before they moved, and teach and DJ for them! Then to New York, where frankly we were too busy doing New York stuff to dance, then to DCLX, the other greatest event of the year. Then we stayed afterward with the wonderful Nicole Chausse in Baltimore so we could go to Mobtown on Monday with no stress. It was truly a honeymoon built on the generosity of the national lindy hop scene, and we could not have had more fun.

We made our yearly trip to the Uptown Swingout/the Minnesota State Fair, where we got to revive our Flyover Country piece, and then went almost straight from there to Camp Hollywood.

In November we went to Chicago to hang out with Kerry, John, Bryan, Val, Maddie, and Bryce, a weekend of the fun kind of work. And then…Lindy Focus!

Events we produced

I’ve already written about how we became organizers this year, but it’s still pretty nuts to me. This year we started a biweekly practice and learned a ton. And of course, we hosted Andy and Andrea, which was a dream (I wrote about that here). More to come on this front in 2026—we’re very excited!

Performances

This was truly the year of performing for us. We sought out and said yes to basically every performance opportunity we could. We did so much I actually don’t want to go through them chronologically, but by type:

Teams for others

Fresh off Focus, we had actually already planned to teach a February performance class. We only had three weeks to teach it before it was performed at Swingin’ at the Savoy, so we picked a short song and used what we’d learned from being Anthony and Irina’s practice coaches that year: we choreographed a strong chorus that rewards repetition, had a couple tough challenge moves, had one or two formation changes, but otherwise kept it simple.

Of course our biggest project was the second season of the Oaktown Hella Hoppers. We worked from April to August on our Camp Hollywood team—rehearsals began in May, and our team worked their asses off on a much more difficult routine than last year’s. I’ve already written about that, but suffice to say: I couldn’t be prouder of our work on this year’s Hella Hoppers; it’s probably the proudest I’ll be of anything for a long time.

Teams by others

We had the special opportunity to perform for our friend Johann’s benefit concert this March, which meant we got to learn a very sweet, low-key, deceptively difficult piece from our friend Ed Paddock. Ed is such a crazy good choreographer, as anyone who has seen Twilight Aristocracy knows.

It was also fun to put together the video project in Chicago—with that many heads together, you’d expect the process to be a mess, but everything came together shockingly smoothly. We built it up with one chorus from a favorite Skye and Frida routine and one with a bunch of stuff we’d been noodling on over the weekend, and it was a very sweet little peek inside all of our heads.

At Focus we were involved in two pieces that weren’t ours. The first was Laurel and Andrea’s staff routine, which we were SO STOKED about when we got the email. Learning that piece and bringing it to the camp was one of my favorite things I’ve done at any Lindy Focus.

It was also our second year as Anthony and Irina’s performance track practice coaches. I learn so much about managing, teaching, and choreographing for a mixed levels team just by watching them work, and it’s so fun spending that much time with one group of students in the practice sessions. 

Our showcase

I’ve been bothering Helen to do a routine with me basically since we became friends in 2018. It’s just nice to know we can do it, and it won’t be our last! We choreographed a first draft for Johann’s benefit as a proof of concept, then cleaned it up for Camp Hollywood. I’m proud of how we did, and the feedback we got on it, but we never need to do anything that frantic again!

Live music

We choreographed to live music twice this year, and I found it a really interesting challenge. I grew up dancing in a studio environment, and all my choreography has been to recorded songs. Without the certainty of each note, a lot opens up—a freeing and terrifying prospect. I found that it took some pressure off of each step being exactly the right thing, and made me much more willing to embrace a phrase-long idea, repetition, and rhythms that stood on their own. 

Our piece with Flyover Country, the silly name we gave to our half-Bay Area, half-Minnesota team of us two, Kevin Weng, Bryan Soto, Maddie Rode, and Val Kochubei, was a true collaboration, and I’m so proud we got to perform it to two great bands: Sean Krazit’s Juniper Jazz Band and Naomi and Her Handsome Devils (who learned Castle Rock for us, thank you!!!). 

This year Helen and I put together a routine for Focus that met a few loose goals: getting our friend PJ Ryan (you may know him as a rockstar balboa dancer, but those in the know from before the pandemic also know he’s a wildly talented lindy hopper) to do some Lindy hop, presenting something to live music (so fun to do as part of Viktor’s project last year and with Flyover Country), and to work with some friends we’ve never worked with before: Tom Yi, Sam Pincus and Isabelle Maricar. We love a project as an excuse to hang out, and mission accomplished: it was so nice to have time set aside to hang out with those three.  

Our routine, which remained nameless until the last minute, faced some unforeseen challenges, but everything turned out for the best. After the performance, we saw Jon Tigert in the hall, who told us he firmly believes in a “pressure cooker choreography environment,” and of course he’s right. 

It was a great excuse to meet and get to know Chloe, who entertained all of our annoying questions and gave us the perfect song to build from, and who turned in a seriously special night of music. It was also, as mentioned before, great to work with Tom, Isabelle and Sam, dancers whose work we love and who we love as people. Much of the choreography from that piece was either by PJ or very PJ-influenced, and many of the best moments from it were suggested by Tom in the hours before we went on. Isabelle, Helen, and Sam’s spotlights all brought what we love about them. That piece’s goal was to bring the party, and we definitely did that.

There’s a lot I’m thinking about going into 2026, but this glorified clip show is plenty for now. What did you get up to last year? Sing your own praises! Happy New Year!