Expressions you can commonly hear in the swing dance world are, “I’m trying to become an advanced dancer.” or  “Oh I am a beginner go easy on me.”

The weird thing about this is I have had followers who claim they are beginners to a dance clearly outshine people who say they are intermediate or “know” a dance.

What it comes down to often is subjectivity. I know small community colleges that consider knowing a swingout as a sign of an advanced dancer. Put that in juxposition with the Orange County/Los Angeles swing dance scene, where if you claim the title advanced dancer you better be able to bust a move in the middle of a competition or jam circle.

What Is Intermediate?

As a fun little exercise I am going to take the descriptions of the requirements for an intermediate level track at different events in the Lindy Hop community to see if there is any parallels among them. To have an even mix I have selected nationally recognized events, smaller college workshops, and regular venues from across the United States.

SparX (College Swing Dance Workshop in Ohio): Intermediate: You’ve already conquered swingouts, lindy circles, texas tommy, tuck turns, other basic 8 count material, as well as common 6 count turns and side passes. And I mean you’ve conquered them– you execute them while throwing in variations so that people say “Woah, that was just a tuck turn??” (but in a good way). You also can easily mix the 6 and 8 count moves and have begun creating steps of your own. You understand musicality and now want to learn those subtle techniques that will take your dancing to the next level.

Lindy Focus (Ashville, North Carolina): “This track is for dancers who are already quite comfortable social dancing Lindy Hop on a regular basis. You have a strong understanding of the core repertoire including swingouts, lindy circle, texas tommy, tuck turns, other basic 8 count, as well as common 6 count turns and passes. You easily mix the two. You are strong with your technique, can move easily at a wide variety of tempos (dancing a little faster all the time), you’ve worked on frame, balance, and posture”

Camp Jitterbug (Seattle, Washington): You have a few Lindy Hop classes and/or workshops under your belt. The basics are comfortable, but you realize that continuing to fine-tune them will only make you better. While you can execute basics during classes, social dancing is a challenge still and you want to learn how to become more comfortable on the social floor. Higher tempos are a bit challenging still since you are still trying to think of the move the comes next if you are a lead or how to keep your frame so you can follow. Requirement for this track is to know the basics of Lindy Hop.

Tuesday Night Swing at the Verdi Club (San Francisco, California): For the Intermediate Level Lindy Hop Class, you must already be confident with 8-count basics, including the Lindy Hop Swingout and related turns, and basic Charleston steps. We will expect that you are committed to practicing your Lindy Hop regularly outside of class. New steps and concepts are introduced each month in the Intermediate Lindy Hop class. The Intermediate Lindy Hop class is meant to be taken continuously over several months or years

Flyin’ Footwork Productions (Orlando, Florida): You must be familiar with the 8-count Lindy Hop basic and the Lindy Circle to take this class. If you have taken our Lindy Hop Series, then you are ready for this class

Heartland Swing Festival (Collegiate level competition/workshop weekend in Des Moines, Iowa): Dancer should have at least a few months experience and be comfortable with the basics at medium tempos (up to 185bpm). Tuck turns, sugar pushes, basic charleston, footwork variations, and swingouts should all be familiar to you while you learn to integrate 6 and 8 count patterns. The trust relationship between partner’s connection is dawning on you.

Breakdown

So from this small sampling of  six events from all over the United States here some things to notice:

• Five events explicitly list that you are comfortable with or have “conquered” the swingout.
• Three of the events list that you know how to do a Lindy Circle.
• Two of the events list that you should know how to do; a Texas Tommy, tuck turns, other basic 8 count, as well as common 6 count turns and passes
• Two of the events list that you know basic Charleston.
• Three of the events mention you should have a decent amount of class/social dance experience under your belt.
• Two of the events mention being able to handle medium level tempos.

The interesting thing for me is when putting this together I assumed the more nationally recognized events (Lindy Focus & Camp Jitterbug) would have stiffer requirements then the more regional lessons/college events. Surprisingly there was a lot of overlap though.

Camp Jitterbug as well does not get into specifics such as moves. Instead they choose to base their requirements on more situational requirements such as how a dancer feels about certain situations such as social dance, classes, and different tempos.

Also interesting to note that ILHC and Lonestar Championships do not have descriptions for requirements for the levels in their tracks.

My View

Personally my (generic and non specific) view of an intermediate level Lindy Hopper is someone who can comfortably and confidently dance Lindy Hop on the social dance floor. However they lack the quality of movement and ability to handle extremes in tempos that separates them from being an advanced dancer. But they aren’t struggling to make it through a dance like perhaps a beginner may.

Some people think levels are meaningless and just exist to serve peoples egos. However to play the devils advocate one of my biggest pet peeves about last year’s Camp Hollywood was people in the intermediate Collegiate Shag class who were unable to dance a double shag basic (6 count footwork: with two slows followed by two quicks) in open.

If you have any thoughts on the subject, I’d love to hear it.

A question I receive often in my local scene, hear “dance nerding” it out with other people, and read online is often, “How do I get better at x?”. Variable x can be anything from dancing in general, to a particular type of dance, competition, and et cetera.

Goal setting is an effective tool to address these issues. This way instead of feeling like you are stumbling around in a general direction, you have a specific route you are taking to make progress.

Goals: How to effectively set them

Now you could have a generic goal of being “The best Lindy Hopper evah!”, however it is more realistic and effective to have a goal such as: I plan to become an amazing Lindy Hopper by attending three nationally recognized events in the United States and go social dancing at least three times a week this year.

A useful mnemonic featured at mindtools.com is SMART.

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Also quoted from mindtools are these useful tips,

• State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively – ‘Execute this technique well’ is a much better goal than ‘Don’t make this stupid mistake.’
• Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control! In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

We have a new year coming up, so for your New Year’s resolutions why not tack on some swing dance related goals?

P.S.: My goal for this year was to learn the Big Apple, the California Routine, and the Tranky Doo. Just have to clean up the second half of the Big Apple and clean up my Tranky Doo

Usually intermediate leads/follows are more guilty of this, often when dancing with a partner they ‘think’ is on a lower skill level, a term I refer to as dancturbating.

Definition:

Dancturbating : The act of dancing, often to draw attention, while completely ignoring your dance partner.

One of the best parts of dancing for me is attempting to connect with a person through the medium of dance. Often I use conversation as an analogy for dancing and ignoring your partner is effectively the same as having a one sided conversation.

Now I am not bashing on solo jazz/Charleston, in matter of fact I think it can be quite badass. But when you are dancing with another person its a nice courtesy to at least acknowledge their presence. I am also not saying if you are dancing with someone you feel is newer to the dance, only dance vanilla white basics.

If you have some decent social dance experience, then within a few seconds of dancing with someone you can usually figure out as an experienced lead/follow what boundaries a person has a dancer.  Listen to your partner and use that knowledge to create a great dance experience for both of you.

Interesting thing I have encountered with my travels across the United States is what kind and what tempos of music are played as it gets into the late night hours.

In Pennsylvania a lot of people insist that once it gets into the late hours it is only appropriate to play blues music. But if you go to Rochester, New York you might be dancing to some soul music at 3 A.M. in the morning. To get even more baffling, at Jammin’ on the James a few months back I distinctly remember a jam circle featuring the song Swingtime in the Rockies during the 1-2 AM hours.

The funny thing is, the arguments have not changed in seven years. Read this yehoodi topic to see for yourself.

My personal view on the issue is pretty much in line with the two quotes Mike Faltesek wrote on the same topic linked above:

Quote one in response to the post, “Tempo should decrease as it gets later.”

i disagree

tempos, to me, are meaningless. i like my music hot and full of energy almost all the time, but especially the later it gets. I need music that is screaming at me to wake up and swingout. Not music thats telling me to drink or to hump the cute girl thats hitting on me.

Quote two

I was reading this post on yehoodi and was reminded of Mike Thibault’s website, Vintage Jazz Art. It features for sale prints of artists’ work like Rube Goldberg, Miguel Covarrubias, and Charles Peterson related to dance.  To quote his website,

“For all the Jazz Fans, Vernacular Jazz Dancers, and Harlem Renaissance Aficionados out there, I have begun to acquire the rights to Jazz Age artwork with the intention of reproducing them as posters and fine art prints. Research and tracking down the original works is a large part of the process.  I have also done a lot of work in finding the best printing methods so that the reproductions of these long forgotten works will have the finest possible colors and detail.”

An additional plus to purchasing any of these pieces of art (besides the +1 to awesome your house gets) is,

“Additionally, a portion of every purchase benefits The Lindy Hopper’s Fund of America, a nonprofit organization that helps the elder generation of Lindy Hoppers still alive today who danced at the Savoy Ballroom, on stage, and on film.”

So if you are looking for some amazing dance related art to decorate your home or local swing dance venue with and like helping the elder generation of Lindy Hoppers as well, http://www.vintagejazzart.com/ is your destination.