Featured DanceSpots

Friday, July 26, 2002, Midsummer Night Swing, Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center; Grupo Saveiro plays Brazilian Partner-style Samba, for dancers and an audience outdoors, surrounding the Fountain and onstage, under a cool, moonlit sky. Astoria-based Grupo Saveiro is highly popular in the New York Brazilian community and specializes in "pagode"­ a lively and joyful dance style featuring traditional instruments along with western pop instrumentation. The Samba lesson was provided by the Samba Society, led by Marcos Leite.

If you have ever danced Brazilian Samba, you will always remember the experience, of twisting and turning, to the most sensual songs in Portuguese, with either sultry or staccato rhythms and moods. Films of the Brazilian Carnival illustrate exotic and scant costumes, enormous crowds, and colorful floats and bands. The music created at Midsummer Night Swing by Grupo Saveiro displayed a mix of uninhibited and undulating music, and the dancers found an inventive manner in which to interpret these rare and varying rhythms. At times, large groups of dancers created rapid and syncopated footwork, almost unaware of each other or of the incongruous proximity of the Metropolitan Opera House. Members of the Samba Society assisted energized novices.

More about Grupo Saveiro

To contact the Samba Society, click here.

Saturday, July 27, 2002, Illinois Jacquet's 80th Birthday Celebration. Illinois Jacquet has been hailed as one of the five greatest jazz saxophonists in history, and, at 19, recorded with Lionel Hampton. Jacquet plays a big-toned tenor saxophone and has collaborated with Cab Calloway, Charlie Mingus, and Count Basie. He performed at President Clinton's 1992 Inaugural Ball and received the Award for Artistic Excellence from Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Swing lesson was provided by the Sandra Cameron Dance Studio.

The final night of Midsummer Night Swing 2002 was a perfect setting, crisp and cool, with throngs of dancers throughout the Plaza and Lincoln Center. Swing was the original concept of this summer tradition and Swing it was, with some extra dances as rewards for a magnificent ovation for Illinois Jacquet and his sixteen-piece band. Various musicians were featured, drums and horns, but the overwhelming attention was centered on Jacquet, who, at 80, did not miss a beat and performed with sensational aplomb. There were the "regulars", those dancers I have observed or known, year after year, always smiling, never aging, in endless ecstasy, with so few sixteen-piece dance bands remaining in New York. We look forward to Jacquet's 81st Birthday Celebration in 2003.

Illinios Jacquet Discography and other information