It's The Way That You Do It

Let me start off this post with a personal story. In my first Jack & Jill competition that I made finals I was paired with a follow named Josephine who I had never danced with before in my entire life.  The format of the finals was which in phrase battle style which meant for two sets of eight counts of 8 we would have to dance alone in front of a crowd with no idea of how the other person would react. To add onto that a fair amount of the people I was competing with were paired with people they regularly danced with at regional dance events. To say that I was in a slightly intimidating and nerve-wracking situation would be an understatement.

An interesting trend that my friend Annabel Truesdell noticed and I agree exists as well, is competitions in the United States are cutting out warm-up songs before competitions. The main reason I am assuming for this is since more events are creating more divisions, time becomes a pressing issue and those warm-up songs add up.

Opinions

I figured to get a good representation of how competitors in the community feels about the topic, I’ve asked several individuals who regularly compete across the United States for their opinion on the issue with the following question,

What’s your opinion about warm-up songs before competitions? I’ve noticed this trend of some events are cutting them out to save time, but have noticed some competitors complaining about it in result.

These are the responses I received:

Alice Pye who writes for the blog The Rantings of A Lindy Hopper and regular competitor at Lindy Hop events around the United States such as ILHC & Camp Hollywood.

 “I need them definitely. Especially for jack and jills, obviously and also form the promoter/organizer point of view if you take that minute to give everyone a warm up song in the beginning, you’re pretty much guaranteeing a great show for the rest of the competition. I think cutting that warm up cuts a lot more than that one minute, it cuts the fun out of the rest of the comp.” – Alice Pye

David Lee who regularly competes at Balboa, Collegiate Shag, and Lindy Hop events across the United States at events like ILHC, All Balboa Weekend, and Hot Rhythm Holiday.

“Yes, it helps to have a warm-up song. It is a lower pressure environment to get to know your partner’s connection and the warm-up song is usually a little slower.

For example at ILHC this year, we went straight to spotlights. I danced the lindy J&J with a partner I have never danced with before in front of the whole community of lindyhoppers. A warm-up song would have helped me smooth out some of the edges. Generally if you go straight to spotlights, it is going to be fast and faster for the final all-skate.

I think a contest should test all tempos of your abilities. For example, the first year of ILHC used a slow and fast spotlight. Westies test the range of a dancer’s abilities by using a classic and contemporary song. It would be nice to see more contests that show the entire range of tempos that lindyhop is danced to rather than fast and faster.

The tempos of contests is a separate issue, but the warm-up song has been filling the role of the slow song in previous contests. If the trend is to eliminate the warm-up song, then we need another way to show off lindyhop to slower tempos.” – David Lee

Laura Glaess an international instructor who regularly teaches, competes, and judges at competitions from ULHS to the Lonestar Championships.

“Hmm… I feel like I can kind of see both sides. As a competitor, you really want that warmup song. If it’s a Jack and Jill, you need to get an idea of what the other person is like. If it’s a strictly, you want to use it calm down. However, as an organizer, you’re considering all of the people who are sitting there, not dancing. If you’ve got a load of comps, all of those warmups can add up.

I think if the event doesn’t have that many comps, give everyone a warmup song. It’s only a minute. If the event is really stuffed, I think the Jack and Jills should still get one. It’s an investment in the show they’ll be putting on.” – Laura Glaess

Morgan Day a.k.a. Super Mario who  regularly competes in Lindy Hop, Balboa and Collegiate Shag competitions on the West Coast.

“As a competitor I’m for them. Personally, I think 90 seconds isn’t a significant time in the competition when you have a phrase battle that goes on for 6 minutes. Some event organizers might want to cut them so they can jump right into the “show” part of the competition, but a dance competition isn’t a pre-planned show (like what they do at Camp Jitterbug). A warm up songs lets dancers (especially amateur dancers) get into competition mode smoothly. That’s my $0.02.” – Morgan Day

Mary Freitag who writes for the blog Art and Dancing and who regularly competes and teaches at Lindy Hop and Balboa events across the United States.

“I like warm up songs for jack and jills, and I think that they aren’t really necessary for strictlys. Whenever I have done finals of a jack and jill and they don’t have a warm-up, I can never really get in the groove with my partner….even if I have danced with them a bunch before. Warm-ups really do help for jack and jills, even if it is just 1 minute! However, with strictlys you already know your partner and usually are dancing together for the songs right before the strictly anyways, so don’t really think they are needed.” – Mary Freitag

The Cost of Cutting out a Warm-Up Song

I agree from personal experience with the sentiment that most of the dancers who gave me responses wrote which is for Jack & Jill’s (especially in the case of newer dancers) that the warm-up song is an investment that organizers should put in to create a better quality experience for the audience that the competitors are trying to entertain and for the competitors who may be dancing with somebody for the first time in their lives.

The opportunity cost for cutting out this warm-up means likely some of the competitors will have a case of the jitters and may not dance to their full potential that they would with one. As many of the dancers who responded agreed, that one minute is not a significant cost for the benefit of increased entertainment value for the crowd and a more likely positive experience for the competitors.

However in terms of a Stricly competition I would say like Laura wrote that it is a nice benefit to allow competitors to calm down with their partner. However like Mary wrote most people who compete in Strictly competitions already know their partner and usually dance with them right before the competition anyways. If there are not that many competitions that weekend and time allows for it, I can only see benefits from allowing for warm-up songs, but it is completely understandable if they are cut from the schedule due to time constraints during busy events like ILHC.

Alternative to Traditional Warm-Up

David Lee in my brief chat with him made a suggestion which I think has a lot of merit and has a similar format to what many people who enter Strictly competitions already do,

“One other option for warmups is to gather the competitors beforehand, match, and then give them one song of social dance time before the competition.” – David Lee 

What this does is not cut into social dance time, yet provides competitors a chance to know briefly the individuals they are dancing with. There is a third benefit that I realized the more I thought about this, which is this type of warm-up is also not in front of a crowd making it a much more low pressure environment then a traditional warm-up.

Warm-ups Worthy Investments

When it comes down to it at least for Jack & Jills’ if organizers are forced to cut out warm-up songs I think it would be more efficient to better organize the weekend then cut them because even if in the worst case scenario that there are 5 J&J divisions and each warm-up takes an unrealistic 3 minutes. That is still only 15 minutes out of an entire weekend to provide your attendees with a better quality experience. If that still seems like too much of an investment on part of organizers, implement David’s idea to still provide competitors with that sense of comfort and not cut into your event’s schedule.

I think a quote from my conversation with Alice best sums up my sentiment on the matter,

“You really have to choose the right corners to cut ’cause sometimes you think you’re cutting something out, but it’s actually holding a lot of other things in place…” – Alice Pye

This past Friday night/Vendredi soir I had the privilege of visiting Cat’s Corner located in Montreal, Canada. For those of you unfamiliar with Cat’s I am reluctant to say it is just a swing dance venue because it had a community atmosphere when I visited.

Community

One thing that Cat’s especially does to help out with the community feel is that it caters to the unique co-exisiting Anglophone and Francophone cultures within the city.

Within my visit to Cat’s I noticed the instructors for the classes would ask at the beginning their learning language preferences and would teach in either English, French or both depending upon the results. For those aspiring to learn French or students more comfortable learning in their native tongue, the lessons at Cat’s create a welcoming atmosphere.

Another thing Cat’s does to foster this sense of community is networking with not just other swing dance venues in the city but with surrounding communities as far as Rochester. When I was hanging out the following Saturday with some Cat’s organizers in the studio office, they were actively looking for events in the surrounding area to promote while munching on some Fairmount bagels.

This contrasts some of the horror stories I have heard in the U.S. of venues almost bitterly competing against each other.  Which ultimately in the end just hurts the local dance community because of the pyrrhic victories.

Options

As in most places they featured in their spacious and beautiful main studio, not one but two DJs that went until around 2 AM. However in the other studio they had a blues room open as well around 11 PM. As shown in the first picture they offer not just multiple levels of Lindy Hop, but classes in Collegiate Shag and Blues as well. Not listed in that picture, but I am fairly sure they have instruction in Balboa as well. The best thing is the classes are free with dance admission. What this does is encourages new dancers to find their own personal niche in the Cat’s community by taking classes tailored to their pace and preferences.

What is Cat’s Corner?

This is my view as a visiting American, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Talking with local organizers and dancing at the places I get the sense that Cat’s Corner is not just a dance venue but a place to be involved or be a part of. The staff (offical and volunteer) seems endeared toward the idea of maintaining and improving Cat’s and the classes are situated to cater toward the preferences of the dancers.

I know it sounds slightly cheesy, but I think it is what great events in the swing dance community do. People go to ILHC or Herrang because they want to be part of that experience, there is a distinct attitude and personality that is associated with those events that attracts people.

So if you are in Montreal on a Friday, pay a visit to their fun community. If possible grab a Schwartz sandwich beforehand and some poutine after.

This past weekend during Steven and Virginie, a workshop weekend in Rochester I had the privilege being in attendance at the live recording of a new CD “Live in Rochester” by The Gordon Webster Swingtet  featuring vocalist Naomi Uyama. While the experience was amazing and Naomi’s vocals on “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” sent a wave of nostalgia through me, in hindsight it put an interesting thought in my head.

Many people in the swing dance community know Naomi as a one of the dancers in the international instructors circuit, but my first experience with her was as a featured vocalist with The Boilermaker Jazz Band.  To me for several months she was “Naomi, the vocalist” not “Naomi, the International Lindy Hop Instructor”.

Mike Faltesek is another example of someone who fulfills these double roles. Around the world from Seoul, Korea to Philadelphia, United States dancers know him as a widely recognized swing dance instructor. Yet he also has an identity as a musician for the Careless Lovers having played recently at such events like Camp Hollywood or the Albuquerque Lindy Exchange.

Steven Mitchell is a shining example in this category for having been this duel role for quite some time. He regularly travels around the world as a swing dance instructor with his dance partner Virginie. However he also known to sing with Gordon Webster and occasionally other bands.

And You Crossover

It’s no secret that some jazz musicians ranging from back in the early 1900’s like Artie Shaw to today are skeptical of dancers,  thinking we would dance to anything if it had a beat. But a trend I have noticed is the swing dance community putting an honest effort understand the viewpoint of the musicians who perform for our community and to show that we appreciate what they bring to our community.

Perhaps this effort has always existed and I have been largely ignorant to it, but lately it has seemed to come not just from prominent members of our community leading by example (such as dancers listed above), but from scene organizers and average dancers as well. An example of this is found here in a post by Hamphats.ca of how the Montreal swing dance scene went up in arms on Facebook when a promoter was late in the payment of Meshiya Lake and Her Little Big Horns.

The Welbourne Jazz Camp is another example of this integration, creating an environment where one can pursue an education as a dancer, musician or both if you wish.  To quote their webpage,

“The creators of Wellbourne Jazz Camp  (Amy Johnson, dance director, Ben Polcer, music director)  have a vision of further bridging the gap between the inseparable jazz music and jazz dances.”

I think a lot of dancers wonder how can we improve and grow the scene? I think this idea of bridging the gap is a step in a very positive direction.

I’m not saying you have to go out and pick up a musical instrument and join a jazz band. (Though it is totally cool if you do.) But even little things help such buying a band’s CD instead of burning it from a friend or even something as simple as going up and introducing yourself to band members and thanking them if you enjoyed their performance.  Most of them are more then happy to talk to you and you can get some amazing stories in the process.

A critical component for someone if they ever want to judge a swing dance contest or to become a good dancer themselves is the idea of defining ,then being able to assess what is “good dancing”.

Dax Hock explains in this interview,

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? Why other people might be improving faster or having more fun? I guess the point I like to make to those interested in improvement is this….if you don’t really understand what something is you’re not going to be able to get much better at it. This goes for the dance as a whole or a concept as small as rhythm, leading, or a swing out.

However the struggle many people have is how to develop this besides the first obvious solution, which is to dance a lot to gain an experienced background to draw from?

One solution is take a look at events that are centered around the idea of determining good dancing, also known as competitions. Especially at the national/international level it is not unreasonable to expect that most of the judges have reasonable experience in this skill set of determining good dancing. Based on this I created a small game to improve that skill for myself and I am curious to see if it helps you guys out.

Assessment Game:

1. Pick a competition which has a video of good quality (shows all the dancers ) & has results posted online somewhere that you are unaware of.

2. In the time of the video act like a normal judge, if the competition uses relative placement then use it. Preferably only watch the video of the competition once so you get as much time as the judges and during it write notes and then choose your scores.

3. At the end compare your scores with the overall placement and each individual judges placement and ask yourself why your score was the same or different from the judges. (Watching the video again greatly assists with it.)

Notes:

This has been useful for me because I think it has improved by ability to assess quality of movement with dancers. This assists greatly in situations where I am teaching and I need to trouble shoot my students problems or when I am watching video of myself and trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. Most importantly though it has allowed me to to notice subjective biases within my own judging and other judges.

Take a look at the ILHC 2011 scoresheet for the Strictly Lindy Champions Division, along the top of the pack scores are all over the place among the judges. If you watch the video from that event and compare the judges scores, you will notice some judges had preferences toward certain things such as flashy tricks/aerials or classic choreography.

Which leads me to my next point, which I think ultimately is the more important thing learned is what is “good dancing” to oneself as an individual. While it is nice to get explanations from dancers somebody admires whether that be an old timer like Hal Talkier or a modern dancer like Skye Humphries, I believe it is pivotal to a dancers growth at the latter stages to answer this question for themselves.

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?

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 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.