Dance: Stephen White WCS workshop weekend 4/21-22/2018

Like many other dances and clothes, West Coast Swing (WCS) dance shows changing trends and fashions.

[For example, if you watch "US open swing dance championships" video, you can see some of the "styles of the era" from 1983 up until 2001. (wonder if the video is still available somewhere?)]

Once upon a time the trend was agile, almost jive-like dance. There were dances with country or shag influence. Straight-up posture and clean dance was dominant for some time. Then ballroom-influenced, polished and slick dance came along. etc.etc. There has been a lot of varieties in the dance.


Now in 2010's, contemporary social and contest WCS include body rolls, body isolation, nonlinear-looking slot shape, syncopated steps, tweak in handling of the rhythm and step timing,....it has evolved to make the look of dance more fun, playful, and interpretative than tight-ass display of clean basics.

[I'm not saying it's good or bad. A trend is a trend, a change is a change. Whether the dance looks good or not is still very much depending on the dancers.]



This past weekend, the OKC swing dance club invited Stephen White from FL for a weekend of workshop and dance. (4/21-22/2018)

The workshops and party were great success, attracting a good size crowd from OKC, Dallas, Tulsa, Stillwater, Wichita, Little rock, Kansas City, Fayetteville, etc. If you measure an instructor with his/her ability to attract people and raise money, he was great at it. We had a big party on Saturday.

There was a workshop on Sunday (4/22/18), which is supposed to be for advanced/instructor dancers with invitation only (Thank you for invite, Ben Clemons).

The workshop was about "messing up your WCS", fun way to introduce playfulness and improvisational motions to your WCS.

The instructor Stephen White himself dances the playful style. He was good at teaching it.

We have seen intermediate WCS dancers whose body is always "dancing". In ballroom world, it is called overactive frame and is shunned. I personally don't like it, because it is monotonous and boring to watch soon. 

But the good playfulness is a display of freedom. It is opposite of monotonous and patterned. The somewhat unpredictable moves just start on the go, on the moment.


The method he was using was to introduce responsiveness to little "happening" during the dance and dance it, while (ideally) making it look good. 

It takes some body intelligence. (In my summary, not Stephen's), particularly important traits are physical flexibility for body isolation, open mindedness to adapt to mess-up and to recover, and sensitivity to the motions of yourself and your partner. 

Certainly it is a material for advanced/instructors. It was interesting, and fun.


I recommend his workshop.

[Party crowd]

Dance: Sunday milonga in Tulsa; what do you do to make your dance stand out?

Casa Tango in Tulsa is a place regularly holding milonga in the city. 

Mark and Karenna are the host of Casa Tango and the milonga. They have been playing the role of community hub for a long time. It is good to have dependable people who support Tango and have a place for milonga.

I went to their Sunday milonga on 4/15/18. It was from 7pm-930pm.


There were four people form neighboring college town Stillwater. The faculty Irene, teaching history of Renaissance, also teaches Tango for college students as her passion project. They were there for a "field trip" for beginning students. It was nice to see them.


It's been a while since I saw Irina and Sergio.

Irina and Sergio are professionals. The way they dance shows that.

In milonga/social dance, most people dance in a similar manner. Just go to a festival and see how people social dance. Simple steps. Walk, walk, ocho, a bit of molinette then sandwitch,....

A friend of mine, seasoned ballroom dance instructor, once said that "for social dance, you only need five patterns". I agree. The same can be said for Tango.

Tango has about six basic elements most used in social dance. Unlike Stage Tango-inspired common perception/myth, social Tango can be a simple dance. 

In other words, unless you give a thought on how you use the basic elements differently, your dance would look just as ordinary and uninspiring. Professionals work to make their dance stand out.


Then coming back to Irina and Sergio. Their dance looks different. They use pivots and rotational moves more often than most others, making the look of the dance much more complex. All these were executed smoothly in a nice flow. I was admiring their style.


Although they are busy raising their kids and not very active as dancer/teacher recently (so they said), having them around is great for Tulsa Tango scene.


There were several other people, whose introductions I skip here (maybe next time). 

It was a good party.

[Celebrating Birthdays for three people there]

Life: You'll lose it if you don't value it.

Principle #1: You'll lose it if you don't value it.

Principle #2: You focus on it and it will expand.


I read through three "Spiritual" books for a change in my reading. 

Curiously, the three books were preaching a similar concept; which basically says this world is something like the matrix, you attract what you focus and get whatever good or bad you desire.

Or if you are religious, you can quote "Ask and ye shall receive". Obviously, the concept has been around for years.

To some (great?) extent, I agree with the concept. Not only from fuzzy "spiritual" people's statements, but from the standpoint of market/capitalism, the concept seems correct, too. 

My trust on the concept is why I am picky about what I value and what I don't, and why I am choosy about opinions I listen or ignore.



At first I did not mean to mention ongoing Teachers' walkout in this state of Oklahoma. But this principle #1 applies there beautifully.

If you don't value teachers and their work, hence do not fund them, educational infrastructure will not be sustainable.

Lawmakers who do not value teachers and do not fund education will lose them from this state. 

It is that simple.

This walkout indicates that we are witnessing a breaking point of the education infrastructure in Oklahoma. You can determine whether the lawmakers and people value education in this state or not, shortly.

Science: my note on keto diet and cancer

There is an internal grant. Since the deadline would be 4/6, we were exchanging emails busily between offices to finalize the application for past a few days. Then, the sponsor changed the deadline to 4/23.

Duh.

Since there is no other change in the announcement, we will send it out anyway, 2.5 weeks ahead of new deadline.


Since I was busy for the grant writing, I had shorter time to prepare for journal club I am supposed to be presenting tomorrow 4/5/18.

So I picked a theme from previous small research project, "ketogenic diet and cancer". See, it turns out to be useful.


If you search indexed publications in Pubmed with "ketogenic diet" and "cancer" keywords, you get 193 publications as of 4/4/2018.

Some are reviews, some are original research.

Original research papers (excluding in virto and in silico studies) are categorized to; 

  Preclinical animal-based studies (usually with rodents/mice or rats)
  Human case reports
  Human clinical trials (small scale)
  Human randomized clinical trials (larger scale)
  meta analysis papers that analyze existing multiple papers to draw conclusion from a higher viewpoint

For human studies, there are still very limited number of publications for randomized controlled trials. Results in Case reports are hard to interpret due to the small size, so how much trust you put on them is tough call.

For animal-based studies, most are cohort studies. Within the limit of using animal model, the results are more sound, scientifically.


In short, keto diet seems to be beneficial in discouraging cancer growth, or enhancing chemotherapy. At least for relatively short term.

[There are theories behind it, which I skip in this blog.]

Many human studies were conducted with brain tumors. Since brain cells show established glucose dependency, it may have been easier for researchers to rationalize the use of ketogenic diet that limit energy source to fat/fatty acids instead of carb/glucose.

But there are some cautionary data. For renal cancer with longer term, keto diet may worsen cancer. Or, for breast cancer in animal models, ketosis may also worsen cancer.


So far, they say keto diet is promising in discouraging cancer. But jury is still out.


For otherwise healthy people to lose weight, up to 4 weeks of keto diet should be fine. Yet, with carb/glucose addition, poorly practiced keto diet can easily turn to western style high fat diet, which is known to facilitate cancer. Standardization and implementation of keto diet in experimental setting is another issue in practice. Know that even a glass of orange juice can break this diet. Be careful.



PS
Also important is the type of fat. Saturated fat are bad for your cardiac health and cancer development.

For all skeptics to consider: Medical research publications are subjected to "survivor's bias". Positive results tend to be published, while negative results may be left on researcher's desk without getting published.