Tag Archives: Blues Dancing

Blues music and blues dancing

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I’ve started compiling lists in my head. This song is good to dance to. This song is great for listening. The listening list is much longer than the dancing list, and this discrepancy is forcing me to question the connection between music and dance.

What compels us to dance to certain songs? What compels us to stop and stand still and simply hear what’s being said? Randomly, I have “Cool Drink of Water Blues” by Tommy Johnson playing right now, and I can’t say it moves me to move. Instead I’m somewhat haunted, intermittently, by the way his voice slides into moments of wavering falsetto and feelng. The guitar in the background offers just enough of a rolling sense of rhythm and melody to send the song forward, but that’s it. This is delta blues from back in the day! It’s the roots of what we all dance to! Why doesn’t it make me want to dance? Perhaps the music wasn’t connected to movement at first? This makes sense to me. It also makes sense to question the idea of dancing to such music in the first place. If dance is a celebration, does it make sense to dance to someone else’s musical outcry of hardship and suffering? Perhaps this is how difficult experience is transformed into something positive.

A quick scan of some wikipedic blues dance history reveals that some of the old musicians from the early 1900s played for dancers! I’ll have to delve into their music and figure out what the difference was between their dancer-driven songs and the songs that just don’t seem to move me (or others) to move.

Apparently the tango was in vogue in the early 1900s, and W. C. Handy used a tango rhythm to entice dancers onto the floor, then broke in an entirely different, bluesy beat. St. Louis Blues uses this tactic. So, did African-roots blues, once melded with European-rhythm music give rise to “danceable” blues music?

As soon as I let go of the idea of what created blues dance music in the first place, it’s easy to start picking out danceable songs. The shuffle beat is incredibly powerful and important in blues dance music. But it’s not the end-all of rhythmic devices either. A simple, single-time stomp can create enough driving rhythm for dancing. There’s a guitarist who plays on Commercial Drive, and as he plays, he stomps out simple a beat on his guitar case. The result is the slide guitar style of old delta blues with enough rhythm to make me want to dance!

A quick glance through a few of my 882 songs that are specifically labeled with “blues” under the genre heading:

3 O’clock blues – B. B. King – medium-slow – shuffle beat with triplets played on cymbals – DEFINITELY danceable

Another version of the same song – a little slower – the shuffle is less noticeable – instead a simple 1 – 2 kickdrum-cymbal beat of boom-click, boom-click – and it totally works

Yet another version – Ike and Tina Turner – from Putumayo’s Mississippi Blues album – shuffle beat with triplets – medium-slow and totally danceable

606 Blues by Slim Tinsley and His Band from Midnite Blues Party, vol 2. – no shuffle beat, but rather a thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk beat in both the rhythm and bass and thus more of a sloooow lindy or slightly faster bluesy step-touch or shake ‘n bake effect – danceable? yes, but not in the really groovy way a lot of us love

Bad Luck Shadow by Johnny Otis – more shuffle, so it’s a groovy slow-medium tempo, perfect for draggin’, struttin’, shakin’, or doin’ whatever blues movement one wants

I could keep listing songs on and on into the night, but here’s the thing – I might find hundreds with the right beat and sound, but the next level is definitely a less definable thing – feeling, soul, heart, whatever it is that moves me to move and express myself. Maybe this is the question worth exploring, how to know whether a song has feeling or not….but then again, isn’t this a decision best left to each individual listener?

Gosh, then how does DJing really make sense? Every song will be interpreted in as many ways as there are dancers in the room, right?

More thinking, more lists, more levels of categorization, more listening is needed!

Vancouver Lindy Bout II Blues: We won!

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David and Diane competing in the blues competition at Lindy Bout II

After much agonizing, I finally decided I could handle competing. I think Diane was ready before I was (she wanted to compete at Swing Summit) and I might not even have joined this competition if it weren’t for her.

I’m of two minds when it comes to dance competitions. First, I prefer to approach dance as a means of expressing myself, connecting with a partner and with the music, and really being in the moment. It’s a form of moving art for me. Competing brings dance into the realm of sport, and I don’t necessarily dance to be better than anyone else. It certainly isn’t a sport for me.

In fact, one reason for my long delay in signing up to compete was the fact that I didn’t feel like I was polished enough, ready enough, good enough, perfect enough. I suppose the biggest competitor I’ll ever face is…myself.

My other feeling about dance competitions – or even competitions in general – is that I’m actually too competitive to handle competing. I take it way too seriously, way too personally, and can’t seem to separate my heart from the act of winning and losing. Throughout the eleven years that I played soccer, I always told others I didn’t like competition, just the feel of the game. While this was true in some ways (I loved moving across the field, feeling the touch of the ball, making elegant plays), the underlying meaning of my statement was that I didn’t want to get too caught up in the competition aspect because I simply cared too much. This made for some nerve-wracking games back in the day, and it all returned to me last night. I had trouble social dancing at first because I was so keyed up about competing.

Our approach to dance may be a little different than others’. We really really really believe in connection, which for us is a fourfold layering of signals and responses: I respond to the music, and I respond to my partner. My partner also responds to the music as well as to me. This means that at any possible moment in the dance, there might be four possible impulses balanced against four possible responses, and somehow we must do it at the same time, flowing from the previous moment to the next. Add to this our preferred level of emotional intensity – intense, joyful or passionate, tuned in – our attempt to be active in every part of our bodies, and you have something very different from a repertoire of moves that get mixed up based on the lead’s whim, with the follow more or less following, reacting, responding all along the way.

We started dancing the way we always do, but it wasn’t long before the audience began to hoot, holler, and cheer for other couples. I panicked. What was going on? I tensed up, and I could tell that Diane was trying to be calm about my tension. Should I be doing something more crowd-pleasing, more humourous or risque or….? Diane poured her calm, grounded energy into the dance, kept reminding me with her eyes and body to keep listening to the music. Still the audience cheered the others on. From the corner of my eye I saw shoes and jackets being removed. I imagined some saucy routine taking place right there behind my back, and I felt my presense slipping. Even worse, some of the couples kept dancing right in front of us, right into our space, and at one point I panicked again because I realized the judges probably couldn’t even see us.

I don’t know how it happened, but by the fourth song we had it. A gorgeous song came on, we breathed it in, and we were transformed. Did the crowd see it? I heard someone murmur, “Right on, David,” and I actually felt a shift in everyone’s attention. The laughter had trickled away, our focus and connection had suddenly deepened in response to the music and each other, and the room’s collective breath seemed to be suddenly held.

That moment was beautiful. I felt our dancing reach yet another level beyond steps and moves and patterns – we were pure impulse guided by the music. Later on we traded phrases with the other two couples, and again we struggled with the balance between sincere connection in our dance and ways to please the audience, but in the end our connection and presence came through. In the end, it was really only the act of dancing that mattered.

The audience was given the final vote. I expected a quiet response to our quiet way of dancing with each other. Instead, the cheering was thunderously definite. We had won!

Oh, the blues dance blues

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Since 2001 I’ve come to love this thing called blues dance.

It’s possible, though, that this thing isn’t really even called blues dance. Can you give something a name and yet not know exactly what that thing is?

Here’s what I thought it was back in 2001: adapting what I knew from lindy hop to be slow enough and fitting enough to dance to blues music, to fit the music, to have a more moment by moment connection, and, oh yeah – feeling the thrill of really close contact with someone while dancing in a semi-darkened room, and being so tired that I actually felt wonderful and could finally let go. That was blues. It was awesome.

Seven years later, I’ve danced to countless blues songs. I’ve attended blues house parties and blues dances that lasted until dawn. I’ve taught blues classes and blues workshops. I’ve watched blues, read about blues, learned to play a bit of blues. And at some point in all this time I developed the blues dance blues. It’s quite possibly a more urgently mournful blues than any actual blues song itself. If my blues could express itself in a conversation, it would go like this:

“I’m digging this slow, sensual dancin’, man, and this song just eats my soul!”

“Yeah, but you ain’t doin’ actual blues, man!”

“I’m feeling the shuffle beat and the bass and the low growlin’ horns, and I’m moving! What else is there?”

“The shake ‘n bake! That’s what else!”

“That what?!?”

“It’s a vintage step, man, straight outta the ole juke joints, man. You dig?”

“No.”

“To dance blues, you gotta dance the dance they danced back in the day! You gotta do the mooch! You gotta do the fishtail. You gotta do the slow drag. They’re all historic!”

“I’ve never even heard of those names! And I thought I was dancing in the only day that really matters anyway – right now!”

“Maybe so, but then you ain’t dancing blues.”

And on it goes. Is blues the pure and simple act of dancing to blues music? Is it using the different layers of the music to inspire different kinds of movement? Or is it the mooch? You have your historians on one side, your presentorians on the other. You have your purists teaming up with the historians, the inventors enjoying the present moment. You have your…. blues dance blues. One big unnecessary argument.

When asked if he could teach some certain move, I think it was the “leap frog,” one of the biggest names in swing dancing history, Frankie Manning, said they didn’t have names back when they danced in the 30′s. They just danced! I find the non-name thing a little hard to believe simply because it’s our nature to name things. And yet the point here is that the idea of not naming is one that allows for discovery, expression, and invention. Naming brings in the added argument of correct-ness or not-correct-ness, and that’s where my blues is coming from. If I’m worrying about the historical validity of my footwork while trying to dance blues, then that’s all I’m ever going to feel: blues. If someone watching me is only looking for vintage steps, they’ll miss the excitement of what’s happening – what’s being created – in the moment.

So let’s try this. Let the historians compile their lists. While I dance what I feel is blues, they can check off any of the old moves that I do properly. I’ll be happy if I get even one step correct. The slow drag? Check! Then I’ll pocket the list. A keepsake.

Then I’ll forget about that list, turn the lights down low, and spend the rest of the night dancing my heart out in the best possible way I know how – by feeling it, by connecting with my partner, by being open to possibility. I’ll get the blues, then, I’m sure of it, but it will be the kind of blues we all want to feel: deep, raucous, sensual, passionate, wild, playful, uninhibited, wonderful.