Sara White | Blues Nites

The 10th Anniversary of Crystal Blues was everything I had hoped for – and so much more! I love this competition weekend for so much more than the competitions… The comps are what bring us all together. They are there to showcase the talent and the enthusiasm and the progress and the skills and the…

All the latest news from Blues Nites with details on classes, workshops, freestyle, retreats and all the madness and mayhem you’ve come to expect from your favourite Blues Dance provider. There’s always so much we would like to tell you so check out the latest newsletter now! (Please wait while the newsletter list loads –…

For sure it’s just another weekend. Just another dance event. Just another competition. But it really doesn’t feel that way to me. Surely there must be some kind of weird dance magic involved? What else could be drawing so many fantastic, friendly and fun dancers to a little village hall in Buckden? Our DJs Graham,…

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With Crystal Blues less than three months away, the excitement at BluesNites HQ is building! The Crystal Blues Challenge began in 2010 – and it’s been getting bigger and better every year. That said, we have never lost sight of our roots. Our aim is the same now as it has always been – to…

I’m being nudged/nagged/encouraged by those closest to me to get back to blog writing. I seem to have lost my way with words lately. So to get me re-started I think I’ll just put down a few of those little thought bubbles I have. The things I feel, but don’t always say… As your…

At our 2017 Yorkshire Blues Retreat in Skipton, we asked each of the tables at our Black Tie Banquet to create a representation of a film, a TV programme, a song, a book…. …and now all you have to do is to guess what it is. The prize for the one who gets the most…

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What a wild and wonderful year it has been… 2016 started with a celebration of 10 years of Sara White’s Jive and Blues Nites.. Wow! What a journey it has been!! So now, as we head into the New Year, it seems like a good time to reflect on what we got up…

So here I am in Lanzarote, enjoying some recovery time with my Mummy Wendy, and finally I think I can structure some thoughts about the epicness that was Crystal Blues Challenge – 2016!… Anyone who was there will already know that the competition aspect of this competition weekend is only one small part of it.…

Some musings on our Blues Retreats. . . . We ran our first ever Blues Retreat in 2012, and since then we’ve run ten of them, each getting bigger and better… and I thought today that it’s worth reflecting on what makes the Blues Retreats so good… There are many varied and good quality dance…

Postcard Recreation

Back from our Spring Blues Retreat in Bournemouth with lots of great memories. These weekends are so special – and never are two Blues Retreats exactly the same! This time, aside from all the usual mayhem and madness that we get up to, based on a suggestion from one of our lovely dancers, Julie, we…

I recently attended a lecture by Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University who has studied addiction for over 30 years. I was very interested to hear him talking about his latest study on Dance Addiction and so followed up the lecture by reading the report of his study. Some of the…

So… I’ve been trying really hard to be good. Not exactly Saint-level good… But definitely better than usual. I’ve cut down on cake. And bread. And chocolate. A little. I’ve upped my exercise. A little. Wine is a non-negotiable, so let’s not go there! Anyway, yesterday, after a busy day of taking on board lots…

For a week now I have tried over and over to find the words I want to say about Crystal Blues… Maybe it’s the laryngitis that stole them. Maybe it’s the rather large dollop of tiredness that seems to have landed on me… Maybe it’s just because there were so many moments throughout the weekend…

I recently read an interesting and enlightening article aimed at Tango leads and was both pleased and dismayed to see that a lot of the issues that are faced by follows in Blues dancing are actually faced by follows in all partner dancing. Pleased – because it is clear that these are issues that are…

5 things that will help to make you a better partner dance follow… 1. To truly follow, one must choose to surrender completely to the lead. This does not mean that the lead is superior, more important or better in any way to the follow. But the two skills are massively different and both are essential in the…

1 – Just like children, adults learn in a variety of ways. Some are visual learners – they need to see something being done, usually a few times, in order to make it their own. Some are aural learners – needing clear explanation, and memorable description. Some are kinaesthetic learners – who need to ‘just…

Over the course of time I have come to realise that I thrive on positivity. As lots of people do. I have also come to recognise that some people in life ooze positivity – like blessed rays of sunshine sent down to earth in human form to light the lives of all they come into…