1 second everyday: maj

Jag har alltid känt det som att magiska saker händer i maj. Och jag tycker att det syns i månadens film också. Att det är roligare, ljusare. Men det kanske bara är för att jag förknippar sekunderna med roligare minnen än i gråa februari. Jag visade filmen för en vän, och hon sa "music, dancing and food. Looks like a good life". Och det är ju precis vad det är.

Tove Styrke | Say My Name

stockholm blues fest part III

Day 3 of Stockholm Blues Fest was my favorite. By this time I had really sunk into a kind of comfortable ease where everything just ... flowed. I don't think I knew at all during the day what time it was; there was no need. When it was time for dinner, people would move toward the building where we ate. When there were activities, someone would come to tell you to gather around, or you would just walk around slowly and notice what was happening. And when I got tired I took a nap, and when I felt like dancing, I danced. It was all kinds of lovely.


Breakfast in the sun. What's not to like?


Steve, summoning us to the morning class with his bell. :)


Class with Leigh and Dáire, yay!


Honestly Leigh you're too gorgeous.


After class: swim time!!! :)


Yes, it was cold at first, as my facial expression would tell you. :)


But it was lovely, oh so lovely! And my first swim of the year and all! I always say that it's going to be a good summer for swimming when I take my first swim (without sauna) in May (or before). (My personal record: 26 April, which then turned into the amazing summer of 2014, so I have high hopes for this one.)


After a short walk I happened upon a table full of origami! What to do but sit down and join?



I had no idea what I was doing but, we were all in Annette's loving hands. :)


This photo is a total fake! Mathilde leaned back for just a second, and it looked so nice that I asked her to do it again while I got my camera out. "It really wasn't very comfortable ..." she said, but she did it anyway, so I could take a photo. :) The afternoon sunshine though is totally real.



When I took this, we were lying down on a blanket in a pile of people, and I put the camera on Xan's chest to get the angle I wanted. At one point Nikola made a grimace and I said "no, stop that!" and Xan said "what, breathing?!" because he thought I meant that I wanted his chest to stop moving. Ha! :)


Our very own champion glitter wrestler! (I forced him to describe what glitter wrestling is in Swedish so he could practise. That was a lot of fun. You did great, Geoff! :)) (I force everyone I know who move here from another country to practise Swedish with me. :) I feel like Swedish people are doing them a disservice by speaking English all the time, because then they will never know this beautiful language, right? And isn't it a shame that it's possible to live here for years and years and never learn Swedish?)


Another one of Nikola.


Late afternoon African dance class (which was way too high intensity for me to take part in at that point :)).





Hanna, Xan and Peter.


After dinner I went up to the hostel to get an hour or so of sleep, and when I went back down to dance, this was the sky.


And when I left at 3 AM, this is what I saw.



Kristine and I decided to take a short walk before we went to bed. It made me think about light, and my perception of it. It's obvious that my camera sees more light than I do with my own eyes. But I know that (compared to everyone I know) my night vision is completely awful (if I could put all of my ex boyfriends' collected laughter about my lack of night vision in a pile, it would reach the moon); and I chose this camera body specifically because it was said to work well in low-light conditions (which it does, I'm never disappointed, even though the choice of lens would normally make a greater difference than the camera body). So who's right about how dark it is - my camera or me?


This twilight stillness has my heart.

More blues dance travels? See dance travel photography blogging: an archive.

Björk | It's In Our Hands

stockholm blues fest part II

Day 2 of Stockholm Blues Fest: blue skies and sun and more dancing.



Well, hello there. :)


Lunch in the sun!


Then I took an afternoon walk. Because alone time. (In case you want to know why I often go for walks when I'm traveling, I wrote a blog post (in Swedish) about HSP in combination with traveling three years ago, after a week in Verona. You can read it here. Also, this list describes me exactly, except 5 and 14: 16 Habits Of Highly Sensitive People.)



More classes!


Lobster claws for the leads, fox ears for the follows. :)



After dinner I went back to our room to rest a little. I was so lucky with my roommates; this is the amazing Kristine, who very quickly became my good friend. <3


Time to dance!



Oh, look, it's the Storm and the Fire! I've always liked their music (not just because Elin and Hannah are good friends of mine, heh), but I think this gig was their best ever. My god these musicians are too fabulous for words.

(On a sidenote: The best promo photos I've ever taken are of the Storm and the Fire! I'm not sure if they still use them, but I'm still super proud of the work we did on a cold November day three and a half years ago. You can see a few of them here.)


A very tiny blues dancer. :)

More blues dance travels? See dance travel photography blogging: an archive.

Professor Longhair | Big Chief (Pt. 2)

stockholm blues fest part I

I spent the long weekend* at Stockholm Blues Fest; four days at a hostel outside of Södertälje. There was grass to rest on in the daytime, live music to enjoy in the evenings, wooden floors for dancing until early morning, a lake to swim in, woods to walk in, and old and new friends to spend time with. Needless to say, it was the vacation from everything that was sorely needed in my life. And I didn't want to go home.





The surroundings were beautiful.


We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and one of the first things that happened was a great class with 8 different styles of blues in an hour, and then a discussion about DJ:ing for blues. So good. It's really good to spend time with fellow blues nerds. :)




Then I went for an evening walk. Because alone time. And abounding beauty.


Coming back to the bulding where we danced. The hostel where we lived was in a separate building a few hundred meters away, which was so perfect for a dance weekend like this. It saved so much time! Compare it to a dance event in London where everything takes at least an hour one way. And it can be hard to find (affordable) accommodation near the venue. Just the traveling to and from different venues can take up hours of your day. Which rarely means less dancing, but it does mean less sleeping. :) Here, there was no time spent traveling at all. And each time I forgot something I could just walk up to the hostel and get it (dance shoes, snacks, cardigan, whatever). It was so good.




Dance events with fika are better than other dance events.



And then Christoffer played.


And my last photo before bedtime: Sandra with her bowl of filmjölk. It's possible that I've never seen her this content. :)

* Fun language fact: I looked up whether "long weekend" is actual English or if I had just translated that from Swedish ("långhelg"). Turns out it is, and what's more: "Further, in many nations, when a lone holiday occurs on a Tuesday or a Thursday, the gap between that day and the weekend may also be designated as a holiday, or set to be a movable or floating holiday, or indeed work/school may be avoided by consensus unofficially. This is typically referred to by a phrase involving "bridge" in most languages." (from Wikipedia). Isn't it amazing that in "most" languages it's called something with bridge, while we call it klämdag? Squeeze day! I love Swedish!

More blues dance travels? See dance travel photography blogging: an archive.

Jonas Knutsson & Mathilde Renault | Berceuse Indienne