An Evening At The Phoenix Club

Did You Know? - The Phoenix Club was founded in 1960 in Anaheim to preserve the German culture, customs and language. Members planned and built the original facility where the Honda Center now stands. The Phoenix Club built a new facility and moved to its current location in 1992.

Currently the Club has over 1,100 members/families. Membership is open to everyone interested in German, Austrian and Swiss culture and language. Members have the opportunity to join activity groups such as folk dance, karneval, skiing, table tennis, soccer, and air rifle shooting. However, the Bierstube, facilities, and events (Oktoberfest, Karneval, Bockbierfest, Maifest and Kinderfest, to name a few) are open to the general public.

The name, "Phoenix Club", was chosen and was patterned after the Egyptian Phoenix bird of mythology, the eagle-like bird which arose anew from its own ashes. It was thought the Phoenix best symbolized the founders, not only for their own renewal in America, but for the renewal of their post-war homeland as well.

Did You Know? - "Swing dance" is a group of dances that developed with the swing style of jazz music in the 1920s-1950s, the origin of the dances predating popular "swing era" music.

The most well-known of these dances is the Lindy Hop, a fusion of jazz, tap, breakaway, and Charleston, which originated in Harlem in the early 1920s, but includes a number of other styles such as Balboa, Shag, West Coast Swing, and Boogie Woogie to name a few.

While the majority of swing dances began in African American communities as vernacular African American dances, some swing era dances such as West Coast Swing and the Balboa developed in white communities.

Swing dance was not used as a blanket term for this group of dances until the latter half of the twentieth century. Historically, the term "Swing" referred to the style of Jazz music, which inspired the evolution of the dance.

Did You Know? - Marissa is latin and it means of the sea.

Did You Know? - Snowball is a fun variation on a swing dance, that gets its name from the way that it gathers dancers.

The dance begins with a large number of dancers forming a ring around a small number of dancers (usually around 2-6). When the music starts, only the people in the middle of the ring dance.

A little while into the song, the band calls out "snowball!", at which point each of the dancers in the middle grabs a new partner from the ring. This occurs a few more times until everyone has been brought into the dance.

Snowball dances have become an awkward tradition in middle school gyms across much of North America.