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Collegiate Shag: A Few Years Back and Now

Lets start this journey by taking a trip back in time,

(1999) Camp Hollywood Collegiate Shag division:

Interesting things to note:

  • A lot of choreography, some of it original & some of it from vintage clips.
  •  Emphasis on tricks/flash to get attention (The Camp Hollywood showmanship judging criteria may explain this).
  • Bal-swing being dispersed through some couples turns out in the center (4:15 Tip West & Holly are.
  • Even though there is a line up it almost seems like a jam circle format with the competitors being surrounded, something I don’t see that much these days besides some ULHS competitions.
  • Tempos were a lot faster, my BPM counter clocked in that last song around 320ish.
  • Bonus: Notice at 5:28 a certain drummer from a LA swing band that most of the United States can recognize out there.

(2000) San Francisco Jitterbugs Collegiate Shag Routine On The USS Hornet:

What I liked is they seemed to have a little of everything in this performance. An example of this is at 0:53 they go into a “fanny out” posture popularized by Ray Hirsch in some of his clips, but the interesting thing is while they are in it they don’t go wild and crazy like a lot of people do when they adopt this posture but instead keep it clean and controlled. At 1:52 they briefly go into single rhythm shag (quick, quick, slow) for breaks as well.

(2002) Sailor Mike and Holly Dumaux Social Dance at the Argyle Hotel

In this clip we have Sailor Mike and Holly who were both in the 1999 Camp Hollywood shag division at the beginning of this post. Unlike the other two settings of a competition and a performance we get to see what Shag looked like danced socially in the early 2000s. While for most of the clip they are both pretty clean technique wise, toward the end when the drummer starts having fun, Mike and Holly start to as well. This is unlike the competition or the performance where if people were “crazy/wild” it was a reference to some vintage clip or pre-choreographed.

(2003) Instructors Demo at Boogie and Swing in Toulouse, France

Marcus Koch und Bärbl Kaufer dance in an instructor demo where there is Collegiate Shag mixed in with Balboa & Lindy Hop. What stands out to me is Marcus and Bärbl are very performance oriented and their presentation of their movement seems to be a key factor here.

(2007) Shag Jam Instructors Demo

This clip is the instructor (and special guest) demo from Shag Jam 2007 in San Francisco.  Depth is the first word that comes to mind when I see this clip, because compared to a lot of the early 2000 clips it seems like it is less of trying to get from move to move but more building upon previous movements to make more of a statement. A perfect example is at 0:36 where Sailor Mike is doing a double rhythm basic but it slowly builds up larger each time.

(2008) Camp Hollywood Collegiate Shag Division

As annoying as the guy frequently yelling “This is a battle.” is, he has a point. The battle format at Camp Hollywood showed how individuality and style was starting to become more prevalent and the pressure of a battle brought some interesting things out into the open. There are some who were staunch traditionalists and would only stay in double shag rhythm and dance crystal clean basics, there was some who would use tricks and choreography from vintage clips, and there was some that would go in their own directions.

 (2008) Shag Jam Jack & Jill Finals:

At this particular year during Shag Jam the finals were conducted by having the finalists dance with the instructors. It was a fun mix of the old school & new school, interestingly enough a lot of the old school material worked just fine with newer dancers.  If you watch the first clip at 6:47 and this one at 1:37, you will see Minn Vo show that a trick still works fine 9 years later.

(2009) Happy Feet Monday’s at Joe’s Bar and Grill Amateur Collegiate Shag Finals

This is a smaller competition in Los Angeles, California. It’s interesting to see many of the dancers who would go on to be prevalent in future Camp Hollywood Shag divisions when they were a bit more green, also its rare to see a female lead in a Shag competition as well.

(2009) Camp Hollywood Collegiate Shag Division

This year at Camp Hollywood had competition from all over ranging from Germany to New York City. At 3:14 check out both of the couples battling coincidentally both pull tricks out of the Ray Hirsch book at the same time.

(2010) Shag Showcase at Rock That Swing Festival

At Rock That Swing Jeremy Otth and Laura Keat performed in Munich. I can confidentially say this is the most polished Collegiate Shag performance I have seen in all of my scouring of clips through the internet.

(2010) Camp Hollywood Shag Division All Skate

Oddly enough the reason why this is in here is Sailor Mike’s exit. Unfortunately the entrance where he was brought on the dance floor in a coffin is not on film, but this was probably the hands down craziest competition entrance and exit of all time and earned him and Tip West the coveted Golden Bugie award that year.

(2010) Hot Rhythm Holiday Collegiate Shag Finals

Besides Tony/Jamie & Joe/Tabitha, not too much flash or tricks was thrown in this competition compared to Camp Hollywood. Interestingly enough a lot of the competitors from Camp Hollywood are not present as well.

(2011) Camp Hollywood Shag Finals

Thing to note is the change from a battle format to spotlights for each couple.  Something I would like to point out as well is I noticed a lot toward the mid to late 2000s a shift toward better technique/improved musicality/complex movement but it seemed to be missing something. What that thing was I believe is the borderline manic energy some of the competitors had on their faces and in their movements at the 1999 Camp Hollywood finals. I think what Stephen and Fancy had going for them, was the fact that they had that in this particular competition in addition to good technique.

Overall

The interesting struggle I notice now in the Collegiate Shag community is how to expand our repertoire of movements without losing the aesthetic of the dance, whether that be borrowing from Balboa/Lindy Hop or other dances. In addition the idea of sticking with double rhythm which is a very traditionalist view or expanding to “multrhythms” (Note: Formerly listed as “poly-rhythms”, see Ryan M’s comment below for clarification).

What I’ve seen in the last 10 years through my little clip scouring adventure is the assimilation and integration of vintage material and adding an individual touch to it. In the mid 2000’s I noticed people not just exactly copying Ray Hirsch’s material but slightly modifying it or creating their own entrances/exits out of it.  I’ve also seen a considerable increase among the top level dancers of their ability to remain smooth regardless of tempos are complexity of movements.

Even though I spent a decent amount of time on this, I still feel it is a rushed assessment.  Do any of you guys have thoughts on how the Shag community has evolved or is evolving?

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The Puzzle Piece of Practice

In The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance psychologist K. Anders Ericsson writes,

We agree that expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance and even that expert performers have characteristics and abilities that are qualitatively different from or at least outside the range of those of normal adults. However, we deny that these differences are immutable, that is, due to innate talent. Only a few exceptions, most notably height, are genetically prescribed. Instead, we argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.

Practice Makes Perfect

Over at The Rantings of a Lindy Hopper, Alice wrote in a post labeled True Improvement about the importance of (what I inferred as) deliberate practice or practice which is dedicated and involves reflection and evaluation of the efficiency of the methods one applies. Ericsson writes about this idea  in the same publication listed above,

An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback.

As someone who has been teaching swing dance for over two years, I can confidentially claim that besides actually social dancing (which can be argued as a form of practice) my students who progress the quickest develop ways to learn on their own and evaluate their own movement, or in some cases have it previously from activities like soccer or gymnastics.

My students who are often socializing in the wall/corner of the room or constantly need supervision in a class? They usually are the ones who try to crash my upper level classes when they don’t have the fundamentals down from the previous level, due to they are in most cases blissfully unaware of it.

Aversion

However many students, especially newer ones seem averse to this idea of practice outside of dance class. As a matter of fact, one of the things I did last year was set up a practice session for my local swing dance club on a Monday for an hour for people to have floor space to work with each other on stuff.

What happened was most people either stood around expecting someone to teach them or just used the time to social dance. What boggles me is other dance communities like Argentine Tango have specific events that the purpose is solely for practice and nothing else and it works fine. Yet, it seems for the swing dance community practice time is often a personal endeavor with oneself or a partner and does not happen regularly, unless if one is on a performance troupe.

Social Dance 

To add to the conundrum I know there are people out there who strongly feel social dancing is similar to an Argentine Tango milonga that one should be 100% dedicated to ones partner and the music . In result they would be averse to how Alice approaches her improvement citing that it is something for practice time or lessons as a reason.

Personally I don’t think there is a ‘right’ answer here, due to the response depends on ones’ own personal goals and views on dance.

Conclusions

What Alice proposes as a method of improvement that I believe is sound and effective. I remember when I was trying to get swingouts as a new lead I made a rule that I had to attempt to lead x amount of swingouts every dance and it worked well in the long run.

However she even admits there is a sacrifice to be made in this endeavor,

The problem is being honest with myself and focusing on that one thing I’m working on as much as I can. It is easy to forget about it and fall back into not caring and just dancing and having fun.

What I have personally working on lately is creating more ‘flow’ in my dance a.k.a. making my dances seem less like a chain of moves/patterns and more of an interpretation of the music. But its frustrating, I feel like I am not as fun as a dancer and have nights I mentally beat myself up because I feel like I am not making progress. As a dancer I know that effective practice is a necessity for improvement, but how do I fit that in without it being potentially detrimental toward myself or my dance partners?

I think something that could help the swing dance community is creating an effective model for a practice session on a regular basis. Personally I have not seen it implemented effectively besides troupe practices or yearly events such as the Balboa Experiment.

So what i’m curious about my readers is what ideas do you have for effective regular practice or how to implement a regular practice session that suits the unique needs of the swing dance community?

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Less Talk, More Rokk (Rock)

A topic I have been encountering in real life and on the internet on a fairly consistent basis is anxiety related to swing dancing, usually its one of the following:

“I am afraid to…”

  • compete because I won’t do well/people might look down on me/I won’t make finals/people will see me dancing badly/I am not a good dancer and shouldn’t even be in this division/everyone in this division is at a skill level way higher then mine
  • dance with (insert person here) because they are a really good dancer/i’m below their skill level/they are in high demand and other dancers will get upset/they are attractive.
  • dance to this song because it is too fast/its too slow.
The list could go on for quite awhile, but I think you get the point.
"But if what if I trip and fall during the spotlight in the finals?"

The Good News

If you feel you are the only one in this boat, you aren’t.  Its quite normal and many people in the swing dance community deal with these anxieties ranging from newbies taking their first swing dance lessons to seasoned competitors.  I’m not exempt from this myself even though I have been in around twenty different competitions at this point there are still some moments that I get nervous and second guess myself beforehand. I’ll even candidly admit there was a follow who I didn’t dance with for a long time, not because she was fairly skilled (which she was), but because I thought she was cute and I was afraid I would choke and mess up my leading.

Awkwardness aside,  on a positive note if you are anxious it is a good sign because it means you are considering challenging yourself to move out of your usual comfort zone. Anxiety doesn’t seem like such a bad thing if its used as an indicator that one is considering decisions that lead in a progressive direction for ones dancing.

How To Deal With It

What works for one person may be the completely wrong thing for another, so I have a list of different mental suggestions that approach the problem in unique ways.
  1. Realize the logical flaws behind the issues that are causing anxiety: Many people are afraid to dance with people they perceive as “advanced” dancers because of an apprehension that they will bore them. This conflicts directly with the fact that many of them openly say in their classes, in conversations, and online that they are more then happy to dance with anybody as long as they are enjoying the dance and not hurting anybody. Often if you can logically deconstruct why fears are on a weak logical foundation, often they become trivial.
  2. Find a counterexample to the issue causing anxiety: This is a more specific version of suggestion one, but for people who like weighing pros and cons this is useful. An example is a lot of people feel like they shouldn’t compete because they won’t do well. It can be easily argued the other way that by not competing they are preventing themselves from having an opportunity to do well in a competition.
  3. Re-framing the anxiety into a positive opportunity: I actually did this in the second point, but re-framing is a great tool to feel positive about an issue that originally may have worried you. A big game changer for myself was when David Fritos told his story about his first competition with Ryan Francois and he mentioned to see competition as not competing against people but with them. Competitions become a lot less intimidating and stressful when one views it as dancing their personal best versus trying to dance better then everyone else in the division.
However I am going to share with you an important strategy which for at least myself is the best approach:
  • Just f$#@!%$ do whatever you are anxious about: You can always go over the multiple reasons of why something won’t work or will be less then optimal. But in reality the best way to make yourself grow as a dancer is to put oneself through those awkward experiences, until it doesn’t feel so awkward.
When it comes down to it, this is dance we are talking about. You can write or talk about apprehensions when it comes to dancing or even about dancing itself all you want, but what often speaks volumes to oneself or others is what is done on the dance floor.
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Mister John Clancy

At the end of August at ILHC Lennart Westerlund gave a LED Talk about the involvement of Sweden (in turn himself) of the swing dance revival back in the 80s and 90s. During the talk Lennart showed a clip of one of the first instructors they invited to Herrang, John Clancy.

The detail that caught my eye during the clip was during this video clip of him dancing he did the same Lindy Circle that I learned from Mike Faltesek awhile back, that in my eyes is rarely lead on the social floor these days. Due to time limitations Lennart only got to briefly mention John and didn’t get into much detail. My curiosity got the best of me and I shot him an email asking about John Clancy, this is the response I received.

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of information concerning John Clancy but please find the below small infos:

At the time when we got in touch with him he lived in Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan in New York. He was around 70-75 at the time (1982) and was married to Kicki (she also visited Herräng in 1982). He had been a dance teacher somewhere in New York in the 40s, 50s and 60s. During the World War II he spent time with the U.S. Military Air Force (did he say that he was a pilot?) and in the 60s and 70s he was a salesman of light bulbs. I guess that he had retired at the time when he was invited to Sweden. His dance style had a white and kind of ballroomish flavour. Everything he tought us was in strict patterns (short choreographys) – it wasn’t much about lead/follow. I can’t remember what kind of music he used – I even believe that most of the classes were more or less without music. Many of the things he showed had defined names. I don’t think that anything that we spent time with had a connection to how to improvise – it was very strict structures all the time. I remember that someone asked him something about the Savoy and he told that he had never been there. He also pronounced it strange – SA-VOY instead of SA-VOY. He is the only one I’ve heard pronounce it that way. Later on, when we read Jazzdance by Marshall Stearns, Stearns indicated that such pronunciation of Savoy was typical for white downtown people with not too much of an experience of the lindy hop …
Well, what do I know. However, John (and Kicki) became very appreciated during their visit to Herräng but unfortunately (I don’t remember the exact reason) we never had the opportunity to invite them to come back. I did call John a couple of times when I was visiting New York in the 80s and we met and had lunch together. Gradually we lost contact and I assume that they both have passed away by now.

Best regards
Lennart W.

Unfortunately my attempts to find more information about John and his wife Kicki online were met with no results found. However I hope you all enjoy the information Lennart was kind enough to provide.