Retro Re-Post: Focus on the Follows

As I've noted previously, talking about music isn't as useful as listening to it when you want to convey certain concepts. The same applies to dancing. In fact I think one of the reasons that the so called "style wars" broke out on various Lindy Hop discussion boards was because people couldn't understand what everyone else was trying say, and what was said was usually worded very poorly. One of the reasons why people come into conflict is because of poor or a complete lack of communication.

If dance is a form of communication, then I think one of the least understood concepts, at least in the realm of Lindy Hop, is that of "clarity of communication" or simply the ability to be articulate. Beginners (and some veterans) tend to get caught up in the need to learn a variety of moves or patterns. I sometimes teach at a small dance studio, and I once overheard a great line from a hip hop teacher at the end of one of his classes while talking to one of his students. The kid was badgering him about learning new moves, and the teacher simply replied, "You don't need more moves, you need more movement!"

WCS Futureshock

Tatiana Mollman and Jordan Frisbee unveiled their new routine at the USA Grand Nationals over Memorial Day weekend, and now their performance from the Liberty Swing Dance Championships a few weeks ago has been circulating the webs. I swear, given their popularity, I think they could build a whole dance event just around that and make a killing. It would be like Lebron’s “Decision” except with more integrity.

The Line

I was at an event a few years ago chatting with another dancer during the last dance of the weekend. We were watching a particular follow, and I’ll admit we were not paying attention to her connection or style; we were just straight up checking her out, and her considerable . . . talents. But oddly enough, the more we watched her, the less attractive she became. It just came down to the fact that we just didn’t like her dancing. This was a significant moment to me because up until that point it was fairly easy to identify what I didn’t like in a person’s dancing based mostly on their technical deficiencies. We were (an still are to a certain extent) collectively learning how to connect and how the dance generally worked. I’m talking about a time when people thought that Hollywood and Savoy were two entirely different dances and stopped dancing when they couldn’t find enough people to agree with them. But here was an advanced dancer with no such issues. I just couldn’t get into any of the creative or stylistic choices she was making.

Body Roles: Lindy Hop Gender Statistics Magnified

Looking at all the numbers I compiled for my statistical pornography post , I noticed something rather peculiar about the numbers when broken down by gender.

Event Data

This is a simple list of all the events I surveyed to come up with the numbers I used in my statistical pornography post.* I noticed a couple of interesting things in terms of scheduling. July is a pretty dead month in terms of big. There are a few small ones, but Herrang is the 5000 pound gorilla that draws everyone that’s anyone in the community. Even people who don’t teach there or are too advanced to take classes plan time to be there if only to have the opportunity to hang out. December is also another slow month until the year end events like Lindy Focus and The Snowball.

Lindy Hop Instructor Statistical Pornography

Stalking a lot of people at the same time is hard. Although stalking for academic purposes can be called research. Try that one on the judge next time someone files a restraining order on you. Let me know how it goes.

Not too long ago I was in the mood to make one of those lists of top dancers. No particular reason. Just one of those lists I was just curious to see written out in front of me.

What? Don’t you ever research something just to see the information in front of you? No? Well, I do. Don’t judge.

I jotted down what I could off the top of my head, looked at a relatively short list and thought to myself that this couldn’t be it. There had to be more people I wasn’t thinking of; probably around Europe, since I don’t feel I’m as familiar with what’s going on over there. That’s what led me to checking out the Herrang teachers awhile ago since I consider Herrang the center of the European Lindy-verse.

I still wasn’t satisfied after I was done with that, so I decided to check a few more event web sites around Europe to see if I could find any more unfamiliar names. Along the way I just started recording who was teaching where. I kept clicking and clicking until I had the instructor line ups for 120 events in front of me.

Happy Birthday, Frankie!

What else is there to say? This is from Frankie's 88th Birthday Celebration in 2002.

My favorite DC memory of him where he took us to school. In the midst of an improvised Big Apple during a jam, he jumps up out of his chair from the sidelines, stops the presses and shows the kids how its done.

And my favorite "new" video of him with his son Chazz Young. I don't get tired of watching this.

Learn more about him at his official website: www.FrankieManning.com

Creativity & Competitions

Lots of people took different things out of that thread, but this is what I learned: There's a difference between doing a "swing out" and swinging out.

Your Bio Sucks

I don’t think that many people read this blog. At least not many Lindy Hop instructors do. If they did, then they would know better than to put up all of the craptacular instructor bio’s I’ve been looking at lately. One of my first posts on this blog was about dancer bios. I’m in the middle of a little project that has me checking out a ton of Lindy event and dancer websites. I’ll reveal the reason for that in the near future. But as I’m going through all these sites, it’s becoming apparent that people don’t seem to understand the reason for a bio.

Frida=Awesome and Other Performance Observations

The reason why I like watching good dancing is because there's so much room for interpretation of subtleties and details. You can watch the same thing over and over again, but still see something new. Bad dancing just just gives me a headache from the the static of unclear intentions. My friend Ann Mony (who's website is imminent according to my sources) pointed out an interesting tidbit at 2:00 in this recent performance by Frida Segerdahl and Skye Humphries at Lindyfest last weekend. At 2:00 she waves for Skye to come over and join her.