We Sweet Jubilee Girls have been excitedly counting down the days until the release of the new Great Gatsby movie. Being released this past weekend, wouldn’t you know we had a performance the same night it opened? A few of us trekked to the movies over the weekend to see it even though we missed opening night. The costumes, the sets, the actors, everything was so spectacular. Even without the old jazz music, it was still quite awesome. Every time a party scene showed dancers my heart rate jumped. Sweet Jubilee knew months ago that we needed to throw our own Gatsby Party and so the planning began…

So how do you throw a Great Gatsby Party?

1. Assemble a team to plan and help at the event. That’s all us Sweet Jubilee Girls and a few close friends.
2. Find a location. One with character or age will make the night even more memorable.
3. Get a DJ (or a few) on board to DJ vintage jazz music. Ours will be sticking to 1920s-1940s music.
4. Host a vintage fashion show as part of the event. Why not? It’s all about stepping back into time.
5. Invite the local swing and blues dancers. Seriously, they/we love a good vintage party.
6. Have a floor show performance. I’m sure you saw some of the centerpiece dancers at the parties if you saw the new Gatsby movie. There are local dance teams in many towns that do vintage jazz dance. We are Albuquerque’s group. If you live outside of Albuquerque, your city may just have their own chorus girl dance team.
7. Hire a live jazz band. Luckily one of our team members is part of a local jazz band; we’re excited to have them play!
8. Organize a photo booth. Okay completely optional, but it would be great to allow people to go home with a photo memory of the night. We’re building a complete set for this… be sure to check back for the “After” photos!
9. Don’t forget food! We’ll be having finger foods, sparkling cider and wine!
10. Encourage people to dress up! What’s a Gatsby party without people in their finest?
11. We’re planning to include a raffle at our event as well. Our event is a fundraiser for the troupe. With 8-10 girls to costume for every routine and spaces to rent on top of other general costs we need to bring in some money to keep creating and performing and hopefully keep throwing wonderful parties!

Hope we’ve given you some ideas for planning your own Gatsby Party. And if you are an Albuquerque local, we hope you have a better idea of how grand this party is going to be on Sunday! See you there with fringe, feathers, or beads on!

For the where, when, and more details on our event:

The Great Gatsby Party and Fundraiser

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We loved every minute of the evening. We posed for so many photos we lost count. Thank you to everyone who asked for a photo and if you see us at a future event and want a photo, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Every once in a while you stumble on an event or place that reminds you why you love where you live. This event reminded us of that very thing. We are so very lucky to live in a great city where Albuquerqueans appreciate us, what we do, and why we do it. We Sweet Jubilee Girls love you Albuquerque!

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The debut of Toyko Boogie Woogie

Sweet Jubilee has been beyond busy in the past few months, and the next month is just more of the same. We wouldn’t have it any other way! We left off on our last blog post as getting ready for the big performance at the Albuquerque Museum. Our vintage selves were ready to go. Costumes made, props polished, and hair and make-up practiced. We entertained a good crowd that night with five routines. Our grande finale was our debut of a new (for us) routine, Tokyo Boogie Woogie! We were so busy changing costumes we almost missed out seeing the art exhibit. Thankfully someone from the museum wanted group photos of us IN the Deco Japan exhibit so we got a chance to pause and appreciate the art after all!

Check out two facebook photo galleries of us at the museum:

Sweet Jubilee at Albuquerque Museum – Gallery 1

Sweet Jubilee at Albuquerque Museum – Gallery 2

After our museum performance we had another performance at 505 Stomp where we performed our Toyko Boogie Woogie routine we had crafted for the Deco Japan theme of the museum. Now for some background on the routine. It was created based on the original choreography featured in this 1947 vintage clip:

After breaking it down (all except the soloist part) and recreating it completely, we knew it needed a little something more. That’s when we added the umbrellas and then later changed other parts to spice it up. It was a routine that evolved over many rehearsals. Here we are performing it at 505 Stomp!

After weeks of working on high kicks and syncronizing other parts of the routine we are still pretty darn happy with the way it turned out. Too bad we can sing the song in our heads now, but STILL don’t know Japanese! Seems like the song and original video clip are a bit of Japanese pop culture since a youtube search for Tokyo Boogie Woogie brings up karaoke versions of Shizuko Kasagi‘s song, some even with their own background dancers!

Look like fun? Come Audition THIS Sunday!

This Sunday (4/21/13) we have auditions to join Sweet Jubilee! More info here. If you have been following us and are itching to join our troupe this is your chance. Even though we are a dance team, you do not need to be an advanced dancer to be on the team, just have a strong interest in performing and sharing a love of vintage style and dance. We have dancers of all levels on the team. We can’t wait to welcome some more ladies.

Until next time!

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You’ll definitely want to see our “fan” dance!

We are a very short two days away from our next performance, and if you follow us on Facebook there’s a good chance you’ve seen how much we’ve been promoting the event! We are so exciting we are dancing right out of our t-strap shoes!

We have been feverishly sewing costumes, researching Art Deco hair, makeup, and fashion, and of course practicing our lovely dance moves. This past Sunday we had our first dress rehearsal. Seeing everything come together that we’ve been working on for months was amazing.

The event, Art Deco Japan: The Jazz Age Experience, will be an evening of live music and dance (that’s us!) at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History this Thursday, February 21st. The evening event lasts from 5 pm until 8:30 pm. We’ll be performing at three different time slots: 5:45 pm, 6:45 pm, and 7:45 pm. You’ll want to catch all three-we promise! At 5:45 pm, we’ll teach everyone how to do some Charleston, too. And did we mention it’s FREE?! That’s right, live music, dancing, and art, all for free!

So grab some friends, learn some flapper slang: The Top 10 most sarcastic Flapper slang words. (Courtesy of glamourdaze.com), and get ready to cut a rug, but don’t be a “corn shredder.” Also, join us in dressing of the Art Deco era. We know Albuquerque is full of vintage goodies so pull them out of the trunks, dig them out of grandma’s closet and give them another night out on the town!

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Although there’s only photos of a few routines, we did perform more but had no photos because we were all dancing! Hope you forgive us.

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After the performance, some of us girls took to the streets for a little holiday window-shopping. With the roads blocked off for pedestrian foot traffic, we strutted our stuff right down the middle of Central. Turns out they didn’t need to barricade the street—we could’ve stopped traffic!

Just a couple blocks from where we performed sat this gem-of-a-truck, all spiffed up for the holidays: the owners had tied a beautiful evergreen wreath to the front grill. It was as if this opportunity was designed just for us—we couldn’t help ourselves; holiday photos were in order. We took turns trying out our best pinup poses. How did we do?

Nob Hill has some wonderful places to shop for vintage finds—of course, we had to stop and take a peek. TONS of wonderful gift ideas, especially with our annual Secret Santa gift exchange this coming Sunday. And as you can see, we certainly had trouble just looking; those hats were begging to sit atop our carefully coiffed hairstyles. Now to find the rest of the outfit to match…

What a fun way to kick start the holidays—I think we’d all agree that after that event, It’s Beginning to Look A lot like Christmas!

All photos by Morgan and Alyx – Click on them to see larger.

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