The 27th season of New York’s greatest outdoor dance party – Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing – takes over the open-air ballroom in Damrosch Park (West 62nd Street between Columbus & Amsterdam) from Tuesday, June 23 through Saturday, July 11. Midsummer Night Swing will bring together people of all ages, at every skill level, and from diverse social and cultural backgrounds for 15 evenings of social dance. Dance genres presented this summer include swing, mambo, tango, hustle, salsa, disco, blues, Lindy hop, waacking (similar to vogue-ing), and jitterbug. The bands come from across the country and around the world to play for the most demanding and appreciative audiences they’ll ever play for – New Yorkers. “For the fifth year in a row, Macy’s is proud to serve as a sponsor of Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing,” says Patti Lee, District Vice President and General Manager for Macy’s Herald Square. “Each year thousands of locals and tourists fill the park just to dance under the stars, against the New York City skyline. Midsummer Night Swing is an anticipated New York tradition and it would not be summer without it.” For more information, visit http://midsummernightswing.org/.
Lincoln Center Announces Midsummer Night Swing 2015, June 23-July 11
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A movie that takes place in Iceland and involves dance lessons, could there be a more perfect storyline for a dancetravelnews.com review? With high expectations of being transported to another land, while watching a story familiar to many a dance student in the U.S., and apparently Iceland too, Virgin Mountain delivers on the theme and delivers a movie sure to be the audience favorite for Best Feature Narrative. By familiar story, I am referring to dance lessons leading to an improved social life, not the story line of bullying, manic depression and living at home at age 43 with mom and her boyfriend. By improved social life I mean simply your life after dance lessons is never the same, not necessarily boy meets girl and keeps her. A sweet and moving film, Virgin Mountain follows Fusi, (Gunnar Jonsson) an airport baggage handler who is shy, socially awkward and has the hobbies and breakfast of an 11-year old boy. After he receives a birthday gift certificate for line dance lessons and eventually shows up to a class he meets Sjofn (Ilmur Kristjansdottir), and they eventually eventually end up in bed. Is there a dance studio in America that doesn’t sell this promise, though never explicitly? True, most of the movie transpires before that takes place and a beautiful and touching journey it is. Writer-director Dagur Kári, said, at a post screening Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival, he wanted to make a love story that’s not a love story, that the couple doesn’t end up together but their lives are richer for it. I asked him, How did he come to choose dance lessons to be part of this story? He said it could have been anything, he was just trying to think of something that Fusi wouldn’t want to do. Many a transformed person will tell you it’s the dance lessons that make our lives richer. Virgin Mountain would belong on an Oscar list for Best Foreign Language Film. 
This year Dance Themed Films include:
For the first time ever at Radio City Music Hall, MSG Entertainment and Weinstein Live Entertainment jointly produce a brand-new New York Spring Spectacularstarring the legendary Rockettes. Debuting in March, the New York Spring Spectacular was created by an unprecedented Tony and Drama Desk Award-winning team for Radio City Music Hall. The show, which has been boldly re-imagined from the originally conceived Heart and Lights, features one of a kind puppetry, state-of-the-art technology and dynamic dance numbers performed by the legendary Rockettes. This all-new show at Radio City Music Hall takes audiences on a whirlwind adventure across New York City while telling an inspiring and hopeful narrative about three New Yorkers who change each other’s lives in unexpectedly wonderful ways. Bursting with invigorating new Rockettes dance numbers, incredible 3D special effects and an exciting soundtrack of original songs, classics and pop hits, the Spectacular features Oscar and Tony Award-Winner Whoopi Goldberg as the voice of the Statue of Liberty and Nashville star and Tony Award-winning actress, Laura Benanti as the lead female character, Jenna. Mia Michaels, celebrated choreographer well-known for her work on the Fox Television Show, SoYouThink You Can Dance,will be choreographing the Rockettes in the dynamic opening number.The limited seven-week engagement begins previews March 12, opens on March 26 and runs through May 3. For more information visit 
Dance Travel News 