SparX Recap

I spent the month of January concentrating on improving my lamentably shabby Lindy Hopping abilities. To this end I attended a wonderful four week intermediate Lindy series by Swing Ann Arbor on Wednesday evenings. The culmination of my month was attending the SparX workshop in Cleveland, OH last weekend. In the hope that you will find my misadventures amusing and that I will be better able to remember the weekend, I feel I should record the weekend happenings before I go dancing this evening and forget it all.

We departed East Lansing around 5:30 but, due to an error in the Google directions, we went a bit out of our way on the approach to Cleveland and didn't make it to the hotel until a bit after 10. However, we managed to get checked in, then promptly got lost trying to get to the dance hall. In my defense, I was trying to locate it using a map on which it was not marked, furthermore, when I asked for directions I was sent off the wrong way, despite being kitty-corner to the building at which I was attempting to arrive. Soooo close, maybe I should just be a better stereotypical guy and just stop asking for directions. Finally, around 11, we managed to find the dance hall, in time to catch the finals of the Solo Jazz competition and social dance for a few hours.

I wimped out and left early, at around 1:20 AM, so I could beat the group back to the hotel and grab a shower. My plans changed on the way back when my stomach reminded me that the only food I'd had in the last nine and a half hours was a strawberry strudel stick on the ride down. At the hotel I was told there was a 24 hour McDonald about 4 blocks away. It turned out to be more like 10-20 blocks away, and only the drive-thru (sic) was open 24 hours, but a 40 minute walk alone through sketchy Cleveland neighborhoods at 2 AM was a good way to cool down after dancing, and I think it makes a rather amusing story. Failing to find food, I showered and went to sleep.

The next morning ostensibly there were try-outs for workshop tracks 3 and 4. We arrived, watched the people who wanted into level 5 tryout, then were informed that anyone who wanted to do level 3 was welcome to do so. I found this somewhat disappointing, because I really did want to know if I was "level 3 material," whatever that means. I guess I am not immune from desiring external validation (which is why you should comment). However, just guessing from my ability to follow the lessons and from the follows with whom I danced, I think level 3 was a fine place for me.

The first lesson was on finding places when dancing to improvise and be yourself. Although I didn't really take too much away from this one, Karen and Andrew were very amusing instructors and it was quite the enjoyable lesson to attend. We did a variant on Sailor Kicks (that destroyed my quads, by the way), a pass-by that ended with interpretive flair and worked on improvising in the space between hand-to-hand Charlestons. The second lesson was also by Karen and Andrew, so more fun, and it concerned dancing without physical connection. We did a toss out from hand-to-hand into a scarecrow slump, and some sort of variant on a free spin after a tuck turn that I should ask about tonight, because I am a bit blurry on that move, but I enjoyed it.

After the "morning" lessons we went and got lunch. This was at almost 2:00, if you are keeping track you may have noticed I didn't mention a breakfast, so I was very happy to get to lunch. We went to a delicious smoothie place north of campus, and I got a turkey/guacamole sandwich and a orange/mango/strawberry/banana smoothie that was the first smoothie that was everything I have wanted from a smoothie since I moved out of the dorms and stopped going to Main Squeeze as an undergraduate, nigh unto five years ago. Like I said, I was very happy to get lunch!

Following lunch we had the final track workshop for the day, this time taught by Kevin and Jo (happy Birthday Jo!!!). They were amazing! The entire time was spent drilling the difference between leading half counts (a step every other beat), full count (a step every beat), and triple steps (three steps every two beats, did you really need that one explained?). While this may seems like a very technical detail, I think being able to communicate nuance through connection is one of the most important and fulfilling things to develop. Once you are able to cleanly lead stylistic changes, then you can really do a ton of interpretative things secure in the confidence that your point will come across in your connection. Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to do on my connection, including toning it down, but I always take joy in drilling a technical detail.

Enough gushing Kenny. We had our first elective next. While I started out in Aerials, because the class was quite daunting I ended up in Solo Charleston, which finished off whatever quad strength I had left. I would like to eventually go through the Aerials lesson, because I think it is an interesting and visually appealing part of swing dancing, but I was quite happy to finally learn how Jump Charleston works, because it is also quite fun to watch! The Charleston lesson threw a ton of moves at us, some of which I actually sort of could do, but most of which I will have to work on a lot more if I want them to feel right.

Dinner was a mediocre shawarma wrap, but I'm starting to get the feeling that all shawarma is mediocre, because when I got it in Corvallis I was similarly unimpressed. I guess I just don't like shawarma, but it was fun to see more of Cleveland near the campus. After dinner was open dancing and the Jack and Jill competition, both of which were fun. There was also a great Shim-Sham where I grabbed an amazing follow after the routine on accident, so much fun!!! My one peeve was that they kept doing show off circles during songs fast enough to be challenging single-time swings. However, I cannot complain too much because watching people Lindy Hop to a song that I forced to stay on my toes to single-time to is incredible. This was also when the instructors would really strut their stuff, and boy did they have stuff to strut.

After the main dance in the dance hall ended, we went to the later dance. There I got to break out a bit of West Coast as the DJ played some contemporary pop music. However, I was quite exhausted, so I ended up just going downstairs and listening to live blues. On a related note, I am somewhat excited to learn blues at Pirate Swing next month, as long as I can avoid uncomfortably close dancing with people I don't know well. This ended Saturday's festivities, at around 3 AM.

Sunday we had our last track lesson, which started blessedly after noon. This was a routine designed to highlight using one's own position and momentum to lead a move. However, since the movie was rather involved and challenging, I had enough trouble remembering what I was supposed to be leading without worrying about trying to lead it correctly. By which I mean, if I remember what is supposed to be happening a beat or two too late, no matter how well my lead goes, it will not be well led. Oh well, more to work on! Just so I remember, the routine was a tuck-less tuck-turn with a hand swap, followed by a linear tuck-freespin where I turn against my frame's rotation (which was the first thing causing me trouble), picking up in left to right for the oppositional triples, to a hand pass into a tuck-freespin for each of us, finishing left to left for a passby and another tuck-freesipn.

Last two lessons were both by Kevin and Jo. First was on slides, which made me want to pick up some proper dancing shoes. However, my worn nearly away street shoes were slippery enough for me to biff it on a slide when one of my legs shot out from under me as I was trying to switch which foot was in the lead, earning me my sliding dust and a gold star. The second lesson was much more up my alley, as it focused on the nitpicky, technical, and seriously important skill of counterbalancing. As someone in the car noted on our way home, everyone should be required to attend such a lesson.

This ended the workshop portion of the weekend. There was one last, small, social dance filled with exhausted dancers trying to get in just a little last dancing. Then we left and came home. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my newer shoes with me, which is sad, but my older ones are more comfortable anyway, as long as the ground stays dry so their many holes don't become an issue. It was a quiet, tired car that returned to East Lansing, but what an absolutely wonderful weekend!

Searching for the Stretch

The instructor at Wednesday's lesson said that when he dances Lindy Hop he is always looking for the stretch, or it is all about the stretch, or something to that effect. I really liked that statement, because it works on multiple levels. Purely pragmatically, I want to get better at Lindy Hop so I should be paying attention to getting good stretch where it ought to be. More metaphorically, the stretch is how dancers communicate, so this might be interpreted as looking for communication. I think this interpretation is quite interesting, as well as heartwarming, because stretching is achieved by both parties settling away from one another; so communication  is mutual and is obtained by a slight withdrawal.

Anyway, I thought that phrase was awesome, so I made a post with that as the title. I kind of wanted to make a blog about dancing and entitle it that, but I have enough trouble keeping up with this blog, and I'm not sure that I have enough to say about dancing... we'll see. Without further ado, what your dance style says about your personality:

East Coast: Fun loving and silly. Like, really really silly. So silly that it becomes problematic if people take you entirely seriously. I probably belong to this category, so keep that in mind when deciding how seriously to take this list.

Lindy Hop: Fun loving and silly... but a bit of an elitist.

West Coast: Thinks being serious and somber is sexy. Probably watched too many vampire movies as a child.

Charleston: Just wants to groove with it, it's no big thing. Happy to dance with someone or alone, because dancing is awesome. Every day I'm just shufflin'. (Note: link is not to Party Rock Anthem, I like to think that I am classier than that, even though there is Charlestoning in the music video.)

Collegiate Shag: Probably has some sort of drug issue, no one has that kind of energy naturally.

Balboa: Wants to grope their partner.

Blues: Wants to grope their partner whilst also grinding on them.

Salsa: Flashy and smooth. This is the dance of trumpet players.

Bachata: Wants to grope their partner whilst also shaking their hips like mad.

Meringue: Just wants to shake their hips like mad, preferably while doing something incredibly silly and grinning like its no big thing.

Tango: Thinks being serious and angry is sexy. Probably a closet emo.

Foxtrot: Likes big band music, but is too serious to deign to Lindy Hop. Alternatively they are on their second set of knees after wearing the first out bouncing.

Waltz: Likes music in 3/4, and this is the only thing they can dance to that.

Dances too much to feel affiliation with one specific genre: Probably is awesome!

I know there are other forms of dancing, a lot of other forms of dancing, but I am restricting myself to social dances. Even so, I missed a lot of styles, but I just don't know anyone I would consider a Rumba-er, or a Samba-er, etc. If you are offended, I am sorry, I tried to keep it positive (nothing inherently wrong with wanting to grope your partner... I guess) and silly. Except Tango-ers, I am not sorry if I offended you one bit, you know you like it you angsty blighters.

Rueda y Rueda

I got to road trip down to the U of M today to dance salsa rueda with their club today. For those of you who are not aware, and do not feel like taking the time to YouTube it, rueda is a style of salsa where all the partners form a circle, then perform moves as directed by the caller. People switch partners in the course of different moves and everyone has a grand ole time!

I really like rueda! Anyone who reads my Facebook statuses probably already knew that. Part of the attraction lies in having the moves called. For me, a lead, that removes a great deal of the pressure to come up with interesting things to lead. I am told exactly what to lead and, as long as I know what the move called entails, which can be problematic when one goes somewhere new to dance and has a ton of new moves tossed at one's self, I know what I'm doing is what I am supposed to be doing.

The odd thing is that I am pretty sure that my worries about boring the follow by leading the same move a few times in a song, not in a row, are unfounded. Not only have follows told me that because they are working to interpret what the lead is indicating rather than planning what to do they are unlikely to even notice a bit of repetition, I have also experienced this first hand those few times I have tried following. I was much to busy trying to make sure I was doing what the lead wanted me to do, or at least something similar, to worry how much I was doing a certain move. Of course, I'm a pretty bad follow. But still, rueda provides a nice respite from this worry, irrational as it may be.

Which makes me wonder, how many of the things that we think others expect of us are actually just our own, incorrect, expectations? But really, go look at a YouTube video of rueda, it looks amazing!

Dancing Around Gender Roles

Those of you who happen to know me in the 3 dimensional space we call the real world probably are aware that I pretty much love social dancing. For those of you don't know this, or even what social dancing is, a social dance is a dance where a lead dances with a follow. It is the leads duty to, safely, determine what moves shall be done and indicate that to the follow through body motion. Then both people make the move happen, then much fun is had. While it is by no means a rule, for the most part males lead and females follow, so it would seem that some analysis of gender roles could be obtained by considering social dancing.

A while back I found myself taking regular car trips with a bunch of follows to various dances, and one topic of conversation turned to dance safety (not the safety dance) and dance etiquette (again, those who know me might not be surprised to find out I couldn't get "etiquette" close enough for spell checker to fix, I had to use a thesaurus and look up "manners"). One serious complaint was surprise aerials, an aerial is a move where one partner, usually the follow, spends a noticeable amount of time without any feet on the floor, and a surprise aerial is an aerial led by a lead whom the follow didn't know led aerials. Personally, I can only imagine that the experience of being suddenly thrown into the air is moderately disconcerting, to say the least.

In addition to the unpleasant surprise factor, there is also an issue of respect and safety to consider. Safety because the lead is doing what amounts to throwing of the follow into the air when they are unprepared, and dance floors tend to be quite hard. Respect because the fact that a lead feels competent to make this decision without consulting the follow seems to show some amount of disrespect.

Of course, because I am a philosopher in addition to a dancer, I see this as a metaphor for gender relations off of the dance floor. It is quite common in our culture for males to take the lead, so to speak, in inter-gender relations. While there are some things both parties can do to protect themselves, once males are leading a disproportionate amount of injury occurs to females. So, as a Feminist, I have to question the morality of the worldview implicitly contained in social dancing.

Because I love dancing so much, it is of some importance that I find some way to rehabilitate it from this portrayal of a barbaric institution normalizing male dominance. The most obvious tool with which to do so is to claim that, unlike the imperfect world off the dance floor, dancers are actually able to choose which role they choose to embody independently of their gender. Thus women are not forced into the submissive, and somewhat more dangerous, role of follow.

Of course, this assertion is not entirely unproblematic. At first glance one can easily see that dance role and gender are not independent, as one's gender strongly influences, if not determines, the dance role one adopts. Furthermore, the question of how free one actually is to choose exists.

When women outnumber men it is not uncommon for those who are both experienced dancers and quite brave to try to learn the lead moves, in order to get closer to a balanced number of leads and follows. However, it is quite uncommon for women to lead in situations where men and women are in balanced numbers or when more men are present. This suggests the rather disturbing notion that, if there are excess women there is a choice, but primarily women are there to dance with men as follows. On the other hand, when teaching a lesson which was sparsely attended by males, I pretty much told them they had better be leads due to the gender imbalance, so perhaps there is symmetry in the assumption that each gender should conform to their traditional role in times of scarcity, leaving only the problematic issue of inequality inherent in the roles.

Before moving off this topic, I would like to note an interesting asymmetry that I believe exists. As I noted, in lessons when women greatly outnumber men it is not uncommon for women to lead. Additionally, it is also not unheard of for women to choose the lead role and ask another women to dance. However, it seems much less common for a man to explore the follow role. I have followed a few times, both because I wanted to balance the lead/follow ratio of a lesson and also because I believe that familiarity with the follow role translates into increased ability in the lead role. While following when dancing with a friend is quite comfortable, aside from the difficulty I have with the actual following, swapping to follow in a lesson often feels uncomfortable as other men seem reluctant to dance with another man, and occasionally I have received an outright refusal, albeit a polite one. It seems like this reflects a reluctance on the part of men to closely collaborate with each other which is much less common in women.

Anyway, if the defense that each dancer chooses their role is in fact only an illusion of choice for the most part, one must once again attempt to reconcile one's self with the inequity in dance roles. To be sure, there are decided advantages to studying the follow role. Because leads need to initiate the moves, it seems much easier for follows to "learn" new moves, as, ideally, they can simply follow the lead's direction through most moves assuming a degree of experience for both the lead and the follow. On the other hand, since the lead bears responsibility for guiding the follow through the move, an increased amount of technical knowledge of a move is required for the lead to be able to dance it. Furthermore this extends to learning entirely new dance styles. A highly skilled follow can succeed in dancing an unfamiliar style of dance with a quick introduction to the basic idea and a moderately competent lead, this is much less true for a lead.

While there seem to be both advantages and disadvantages to the expectation that follows cede responsibility for move choice to the lead, the disparity between lead and follow roles remains troubling. Perhaps the last recourse is to assert that at least it is the follow's decision to dance with me, although once again it is usually the lead that initiates the interaction by asking a follow to dance. Of course, even the assumption that this decision on the part of the follow is being freely made could be assaulted by dance etiquette that encourages acceptance of dance requests in order to keep leads comfortable making said requests.