I met Hakan!

This is Hakan, and I am going to assume that he's holding the grand tassel, since he is on The Grand Tassel Tour. What does that mean? It means that he's doing what many of us would love to do, driving from Pennsylvania to the west coast and back, meeting dancers along the way, teaching workshops, taking classes, performing, and drinking tea. Well, I don't know if the tea part is everyone's dream, but when you come to my town and you say you like tea, you go to Seven Cups Teahouse and spend the afternoon sipping Oolong and Pu'erh and talking about dance.

Hakan's about 2/3 of the way through his tour, heading back towards PA, so he had lots of great stories about where he's been and who he's met so far. But I think one of the best things about our meeting was finding out about up-and-coming East Coast dancers and musicians who have a pretty good following in their area but haven't made a splash on the national scene yet. I'm looking forward to sitting down with the long list of names he gave me and familiarizing myself with some new artists!

There's really nothing better than getting to spend a couple of hours talking with someone who is really passionate about the dance, knowledgeable about who's-who, and also into coming up with crazy themed dance numbers (apparently themed shows are really big in and around PA. I hope that catches on out here sometime soon, because I have IDEAS). You should definitely go visit Hakan's FB page (linked at the top here) to see where he's stopping on his way home and meet up with him if you can... and if you missed your chance, you can always book him to teach workshops!