Air guitar

I know I have been very remiss in my blogging, and I hope to remedy that soon. In the meantime, I would like to share with you the joy of air guitar.

In order to clear my post-dissertation mind, I decided that the next topic calling out for research was competitive air instrument playing. If you have seen the moving Air Guitar Nation, you will probably know why. Actually, it fits very much with my interest in dance, gender, and the body because it is a (usually) masculine-identified kind of bodily performance, which is kind of a rarity in Anglo-American culture, at least.

I attended the German national air guitar championships last week to see what was what, and we observed some stimulating performances. Look at some pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/salsasydney/BerlinAirGuitar?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvHyI-6xsDGpAE&feat=directlink

Nearly half the competitors this year were women, which is a huge departure from past years when 0-1 women was the average number. Also, a huge number of them were from Hildesheim, which is not exactly a metropolis. It turned out that both of these unusual circumstances were due to the fact that a professor at the university there had been giving a course called "Aesthetics of air guitar" in which students had to come up with their own air guitar moves and try them out on each other weekly.

These students were pretty impressive. THey had clearly thought a lot about air guitar performance! So many in the audience felt the contestants were robbed when it was announced that this year's winner was once again Heart Buckboard, already a four-time winner. His performance was good, but in the round where everyone must improvise along with a song chosen by the jury, one of the Hildesheim women was clearly better. Also, another Hildesheimer, who performed a geek character who receives his guitar from heaven and is overtaken by it, forcing his body into strange and bizarre movements like the duck walk, was more creative. He came in third, a Berlin woman called Mel from Hell second (also an impressive performance, involving an introduction borrowed from Schlager, or schmaltzy German pop ballads). Buckboards will again be representing Germany at the International championships in Finland, which I'll be attending in August.

I am working on putting together my air character - airacter? - for next year.

Another web page

Hi people, and sorry to those who are receiving this twice.

Just wanted to let you know I also have another web page. It is kind of under construction still, but I also have a blog there (on issues basically unrelated to Dominican accordion music).
Visit me at: http://sydneyhutchinson.com/