Mixed Media
Swinging with the Santa Fe Community Orchestra & the Santa Fe Great Big Jazz Band
Santa Feans looking for some romantic fun on Valentine’s Day should make a beeline for Let’s Dance! , which features lots of great music and plenty of room to swing, swirl, and sashay on the vast dance floor at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. Oliver Prezant conducts the Santa Fe Community Orchestra, and Robert C. Jones directs the Santa Fe Great Big Jazz Band.
“The Community Orchestra will play standards like ‘The Girl From Ipanema,’ ‘Caravan,’ and ‘New York, New York’ — and also Johann Strauss II pieces, including The Blue Danube w altz and the Tic Tac Polka ,” Prezant said. “The Great Big Jazz Band plays big-band numbers, wonderful swing music for dancing. There will be some Latin numbers like ‘La Bamba,’ ‘Tico Tico,’ and ‘Tequila.’ We try to keep it varied: slow dances, some uptempo things, waltzes, and polkas. There’s nothing strict about it. Some people just come and bop around, and then there are others, like the faculty from NDI, who know exactly where they’re putting their feet,” he laughed. “We will pick out a couple of tunes for a dance competition, and there are cash prizes.”
The orchestra and band are both made up of members of the community. “It’s just us and 700 or 800 of our closest friends having a great time,” Prezant said. “It’s very rare nowadays to get the opportunity to dance to a live orchestra and an honest-to-goodness big band.” There will be food from the Pecos Trail Café, a cash bar, and fun photos with PhotoBooth Rentals of New Mexico.
Let’s Dance! begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 14, at the convention center (201 W. Marcy St.). In the hour preceding the event, Dance Station will provide dance instruction. Admission and instruction are free, but donations are appreciated. (If a group wants to reserve a table for 10, the cost is $200.)
Next on the calendar of the Santa Fe Community Orchestra is a March 1 concert at St. Francis Auditorium featuring Carl Nielsen’s Second Symphony as well as Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia . For information about the dance and concert, call 505-466-4879 or visit www.sfco.org.