69: Pentastic Returns!

After 2 years off, we went back to Penticton last weekend for the Pentastic Hot Jazz and Music Festival. It was everything we remembered plus more that we had forgotten about in the meantime.

I made a real effort leading up to the event this year to try to recruit more swing dancers to come out, and while I failed completely at drawing any new people*, we still had a good group in attendance and it was a very fun weekend.

* I did have a few people express interest at the last minute and mention that they might be up for attending next year, so whether they meant it or not, they have been noted and I will be on them next year when they announce the event.

Michel and I made the drive up on Friday morning and arrived at the Penticton Convention Centre in time for the first set of the event. Throughout the weekend there are as many as 4 performances happening in 4 different locations over a total of 18 time slots.

Some folks choose to settle in at one location and just see whatever band is playing at that stage, and I can definitely see the appeal of this method. It would allow you to see all the bands at least once, (and some two or three times depending on the venue,) and it would make for a relaxing weekend where you don’t have to make a lot of decisions.

This is not the method we use at all. Our decision-making involves several factors and the weight of these factors fluctuates throughout the weekend. It includes a lot of discussion and reviewing of the band schedule, as well as on-the-fly changes to our plans as we go. It also ensures that by the end of the weekend our mental exhaustion is equal to our physical exhaustion.

You may be asking, why make it so complicated? That is a good question and the answer is that we are determined to see all the best sets of the weekend, and to get the most bang for our buck. The problem is that there is no way to know if we have succeeded or not, so we just have to keep striving for perfection and hopefully we will know when we get there. I think we got pretty close this year.

Here are the factors involved in deciding what set to attend:

1. Band – This is the most important one, for sure. It is best to see new bands as early in the weekend as possible so that you can determine whether they are ones you want to see multiple times or not. This year there were 10 bands in total, and only 4 of them were new to the festival. Of the remaining 6, there were 3 we didn’t really have an interest in seeing, so that helped narrow things down a little.
2. Venue – There are 2 large venues in the Convention Centre, and two standalone smaller venues. Orchard House is our favourite because it is more intimate but still has room to dance. The SS Sicamous is a historic stern wheeler that is normally a heritage site and museum. It is a cool place to experience at least one set, but it does not have a dance floor, so we usually just pick one or two bands we’d like to see there for the atmosphere.
3. Hunger – Refuelling is something we try to fit in around the must-see sets, but it doesn’t always work out very well for timing so we sometimes need to recalibrate as we go.
4. Exhaustion – This can mean we decide to take a break, or we choose to go to something that we expect will include less danceable songs/venue/band, but we pretty much never plan ahead for tiredness, just adjust our schedule when we get there.
5. Past experience – This one is very complicated because each set we watch could potentially affect our upcoming plans due to an unforeseen combination of factors that we didn’t think of.

As a group, I think we all agreed that Professor Cunningham and his Old School were the darlings of the festival this year. They came all the way from New York and they were fantastic. They played 8 sets, all different from each other, including 3 special sets:

One was a Bobby Darin tribute that counted down some of his Top 100 hits, ending in Mack the Knife, which is one of my favourites. They also did a Count Basie set, which was good, but it was in my least favourite (and largest) venue, which I think takes away from the performance.

Their last set, which was also the last one of the weekend, was a tribute to New Orleans and it was super fun. For the last song we decided to do a steal dance. In a steal dance, you and your partner cut in on other couples on the floor and change partners throughout the song. We had 8 of us (4 pairs) left at that point, plus there were two other unsuspecting couples already dancing. It got a bit messy at some points, but that was part of the fun and in the end the other couples that we’d roped into our shenanigans were happy to have been included.

The other new band that was fantastic (actually, all the new bands were really good this year) was the Holy Crow Jazz Band. They are from LA and the lead singer plays a washboard while she sings. They have a very old timey sound and focus on songs from the 1900’s through 1930’s and they are extremely danceable.

One of the things we’d forgotten about since Pentastic 2019 was the Mardi Gras themed outfits! Many of the older attendees arrive in festive outfits including flapper dresses, feather boas, beads, jazzy suspenders and matching costumes. We’ll have to keep this in mind for next year.

Another thing we’d forgotten about was how much the rest of the attendees enjoy having swing dancers on the floor. It is nice to be appreciated and told how amazing you are, especially several times every hour of the day! By the end of the weekend we felt like celebrities. Of course, as soon as we get home we’re nothing special again, but it’s fun for a couple of days a year.

Personally, I also forgot one other important thing: dance shorts! Luckily I packed all dresses that don’t go flying up in the air when I spin, so it was okay, but what a rookie mistake that was. It won’t happen again.

By the end of the weekend we all agreed that we’d made excellent decisions and we were very pleased with ourselves. I am sure I didn’t come close to describing the weekend to full effect; I think it’s something you have to experience for yourself, and if you’re thinking of doing that, I would highly recommend going next year!