A quote from an interview of a teacher who I personally admire, Dax Hock got me thinking.

Whenever I teach a workshop I ask my students if they want to get better at dancing, and of course the answer is yes. That is usually why they’re in the class. And then I ask them “so what is dancing?” And many have trouble really answering the question. I then like to ask, “how do you expect to get better at something if you don’t even know what it is?” I think people spend far too little time thinking about dancing. For example, what dancing actually is, what makes good dancing, and what differentiates it from “not as good” dancing?

Many people I know when they describe wanting to improve their dancing say, “I want to get as good as (person x)!” or “I want to be able to do (flashy move y)!”. But I think what is more important is what makes person x a good dancer or what is the movement and technique behind flashy move y that makes it look so cool.

An example of this is the a basic swing dance aerial known as the Frog Hop/Jump, usually the first one most people learn. When done by people who understand the mechanics of the move you can get the follow really high up in the air and it looks fantastic. However if the lead is not a stable base, forgets to switch to the flip grip, the follow loses her frame, et cetera the move becomes this hop that barely gets off the ground and the follow probably would have got more height jumping without the lead.

What good dancing in general is to me is can be described by this term that has been thrown around by different people in the past, which is quality of movement. What I mean is when a person moves to music, what decision did they make, how fully did they commit to that decision and does that decision even make sense in the context of the situation. I’ll talk about each of these briefly below.

How Fully Did They Commit To That Decision?

This phrase alone is often how I can easily tell who newer dancers are. People who do not have confidence in their movement often are tense making the move look mechanical. They either look down at the ground or around the room nervously. Follows who have leads who can’t fully commit are often left playing a guessing game to what type of motion they are supposed to respond with. Dancing without commitment is like the person who gives you the fish handshake or the person who can’t look you in the eye while talking, it just comes off as awkward and not genuine.

Does That Decision Even Make Sense In The Context Of The Siutation?

Would you do crazy aerials to this song?

For me dancing to the music is either going along or contrasting the music appropriately. One of my pet peeves in dancing is people who do moves completely ignoring the music [1]. Ignoring your partner is just as bad if not worse, follows generally dislike leads who strong-arm follows through moves and it usually looks as bad as it feels.

One of the things I really liked about watching the Balboa dancers at Balboa Rendezvous who have been dancing for 50+ years in most cases is they did more with less. Their small subtle movements spoke volumes. Good dancing to me is like good poetry, unique choices at the proper time and place, to stir emotions of those who witness it.

If you have your own view, comment below. I would be interested to hear it.

[1] If you want to a dance that you ignore the music and dance patterns the entire time, swing dancing is not for you.

I saw this  comment on Yehoodi a few days ago in a thread about people who improve at the lower end of the spectrum in dance.

I think almost anyone can make a vast improvement by fixing the three worst things they do. Often these are things that are deeply ingrained and take the most effort to fix. – slipandslide

It reminded me of something Mickey Fortanasce said in a class I took from him a few weeks back at Balboa Rendezvous where he said words similar to these,

“Take your weaknesses and make them your strengths”.

This struck a chord with me because often the problem many dancers have (including myself) that keep them from taking it to the next level is either mental barriers or long standing technique issues. In the yehoodi thread one poster commented the difficulty in this is often these problems are often deeply ingrained and take considerable amount of effort on the behalf of the dancer to fix it. I whole heartily agree with this, in the past fixing my more serious problems felt awkward and frustrating because I had ingrained bad technique through so many repetitions that it was an uphill battle trying to get the new technique into my system.

The most frequent problem I see among leads that I teach in my local classes is often they are not confident in their movements and leave follows guessing what they are trying to lead.  Once they have the mentality though of “I know this” the dance becomes much less of a guessing game for follows.  This is just one example of how fixing ingrained issues that can significantly improve ones capability to dance well.

My recent challenge to myself is through video recording and asking around finding my three biggest weakness and fixing them. If you feel up to it do it yourself as well and tell me how it goes.

This post is written in reference to a blog post written by Neil Figuracion [1] about Jonathan Stout’s recent DJ set at LindyGroove.

If you haven’t already checked it out (which I recommend you do) Neil writes how at Lindygroove, a venue normally associated with… well groovy music had Jonathan Stout (notorious for being a proponent for authentic swing music) DJ [2] this past April 1st and how it brought a level energy to the place that has been absent for awhile.

Neil’s writing reminded me of my own Penn State scene in several ways. That people are there to hear music that they like and are used to. But like him, I want to see people bringing amazing energy to their dancing and tearing up the the dance floor. I’m spoiled enough that when I am back home in southern California I get to dance to live music organized by Jonathan Stout every Wednesday at Southland Strutters Ball. Normally I have to go to a nationally recognized camp or competition weekend back east to feel the level of energy that is brought to Strutters on a weekly basis. I wake up days the PSU Swing Dance club has a dance, hoping for a glimpse of that energy. However I am often left unsatisfied.

However  here in State College, Pennsylvania the problem is that first off anything DJ’ed over 180 BPM starts to clear the dance floor, quickly. Even slamming songs like Artie Shaw’s ‘The Carioca’ or Chick Webbs ‘Lindy Hopper’s Delight’ will make it so I can count the number of couples dancing on my left hand. I attribute this fact due to first off the scene consists of mostly beginner to intermediate dancers, a lot of the people don’t dance to faster songs because they don’t have the technique for it, think its ‘balboa’ music[3] or plain aren’t used to dancing to faster stuff.  Second there is this unspoken expectation in Pennsylvania that for some reason the last portion of a dance “has” to be blues dancing. People start to grumble and even demand it from the DJ’s the thirty minutes before we have to close up shop if it hasn’t been played.

This puts me in a hard place. On one hand one of the things I believe as a DJ is paying attention to the floor and catering to the dancers. On the other hand I do help run this scene and I want to nurture and challenge my fellow dancers and not just maintain the status quo.

So this Tuesday, I have a DJ slot. Normally I dramatically alter my DJ set’s on the fly to stay within the safety 130-170 BPM range, and play slow tunes or hand it off to another DJ to deal with the Blues section. This time I am holding my ground and going to keep em’ flying. I’ll update you folks later this week to tell you how it goes.

[1] Neil runs a fun class called the Lindygroove Technique class, out in Pasadena. What I really like is his class focuses more on what makes the moves work compared to getting a move working.

[2] When I got the email newsletter about Jonathan Stout DJ’ing at Lindygroove, like many people I thought it was perhaps an attempt at humor by the Lindygroove staff because of the knowledge of how Jonathan’s views on swing dance music sharply contrasted the ones’ held by many Lindygroove dancers.

[3] One of my giant pet peeves is how some people believe that all fast music is “balboa music”. While I love Balboa as much as my other fellow Bal dancers, its not an excuse to ignore or neglect the idea of fast Lindy (which I enjoy as well).

Edit: Due to conflicts with my schedule, I was unable to DJ this set but I have it saved. There will be a post when I can finally get a chance to DJ it.

This post is in reference to a blog post written a few years back by Naomi Uyama.

When I am out on the dance floor once in awhile I will see people who look like they are staring off blankly into a void or constantly looking at themselves in a mirror while they social dance. [1] I wonder at times if I replaced their lead/follow with a chair if they would even notice.

Partner dancing is interacting and communicating with your partner, otherwise it would be solo dancing. I find asking someone to dance then ignoring them the entire song the equivalent of asking someone if they want to get dinner, then ignoring them entire time to talk to yourself during the meal. Sounds awkward, even cruel when put in a different context right?

I think a lot of people get so wrapped up in wanting to improve quickly, that they lose focus of why they started to dance. While it is perfectly acceptable to want to work on and improve your dancing, it shouldn’t be at the expense of your dance partner. I will admit though it is sometimes not difficult to lose sight of that.  I have had days that I had to take a step back and remind myself to pay attention to my partner and to not get so narrowly focused on some technical detail or move.

If you are a dancer reading this, go out there on the dance floor and like Naomi said, be there to enjoy it.

[1] In Irvine, California people had created this game that consisted of spotting how many guys were watching themselves in the mirror a night. Last time I played I caught about six of them.