As she saw it there is a lot of variation in how our top dancers express themselves.

Skye and Frida

can look quite different from Peter and Naomi

who can look really different from Stefan and Bethany

who don’t dance like Thomas and Alice

And that is not even counting some of the more creative themed routines like

Kevin and Jo’s Aviators

Andrew and Karen’s Hoedown

or Morgan and Emily’s Mario Bros. routine

I disagreed with her.  I think that while what we consider Lindy Hop is pretty broad and pretty permissive, there are still some aesthetics that we as a community believe in.  It will take a wiser and braver person than I to define what those are, since collectively these aesthetics still fall under “I know it when I see it” categories.  But what I can do is link to some of the boundary conditions where people start grumbling.  Once again I am not brave enough to weigh in on where I stand with each of these examples, (ok I am really just lazy and don’t want to have to defend my views) but I will say that for each and every one of the following videos I have heard a number of people say this was Lindy Hop or this was not Lindy Hop.

Lindy Hop or merely some fantastic jazz dancing by Nathan and Giselle?

Lindy Hop or Boogie Woogie by William and Maeva?

Lindy Hop or Boogie Woogie by William and Maeva again?

Lindy Hop or West Coast Swing influenced “Wiggle Hop” by a much younger Todd and Jo?

Lindy Hop or do the Bobbysox Brigade demonstrate how catering to a largely West Coast Swing audience and judging panel makes the dance something else?  (There is a song change, so stick this out past the opening song)

Without going into details, a few of these videos brought my friend around to my point of view, because she, like me, saw Lindy Hop in some of the videos and did not see it in others.

The private with Laura Glaess really cut me down a notch.  A lot of what she said was similar to the instruction I had gotten from Laura Keat last year.  Laura herself was wonderful, but being confronted with the fact that everything I had worked on for a couple months at the beginning of 2011 simply flew out the window over the months that followed, well it was a bitter pill to swallow.  But I relearned a lot about body leading, which hopefully will stick this time.

Inspired by the Yehoodi Beaver Lodge podcasts, I also peppered Laura with questions about how she approached following and how her ideal leader would lead.  I remember having a dance with her a few years back and not understanding what she wanted in her connection.  (There had been no follow up dances since because I am of the mindset of why burden a follower with a crummy dance when the problem is on my end)  I don’t trust myself to explain her answers with my words, but I do understand a bit better what sort of connection I should provide her, even if I am not skilled enough to do so yet.  About all I will say is she is a self professed “momentum junkie” and has some very specific ideas on how to milk everything out of that momentum and how leaders can facilitate that.  What fascinated me though, was that with that knowledge I could watch her dance for the rest of the camp and could see the little burrs and hiccups (no outright errors, just movement spent on connection readjustments vs. her creating awesomeness) in the dances between her and her partners based off what her leaders were doing, specifically when it did not align with her predilections.

With my self esteem cut down several notches after the private with Laura, I got a nice boost later that night.  As the dance ended my partner looked at my wristband, and not recognizing the coloring asked me if I was in the Master’s track.  Now each of the dance tracks had solid color wristbands, but I had signed up for a dance pass only, and the bracelet for that was this multicolored festive party pattern.  Honestly, if I wanted to give the Master’s track a special wristband saying, “hey you are awesome”, this is probably what I would have given them, so I can see how the conclusion was drawn.  At any rate I had to self deprecatingly laugh and tell her no, it was a dance pass only bracelet, and that I would probably be in the inter-adv+ track if I had actually done classes.  Still, that was a nice shot to the ego.

My private with Mikey went really well.  He is a heck of a teacher and we had good give and take chemistry.  We covered a whole lot of things, much of which built on body leading principles from the privates I had with both Laura’s but through Mikey’s filter of where connection points should be.  This went smoothly as much of Mikey’s thoughts matched well with my predilections.  I probably shouldn’t be surprised by that match up, considering that I specifically sought him out due to our sharing of similar body types and I wanted his take on form/function movement with said body type.  So being comfortable with his conclusions should follow.  But the other point was just some philosophy.  Watching me dance he said something to the effect that I did some of the most comfortable for the follower arm leading he had seen, but that it was still arm leading.  What we worked on then was replicating that comfortable leading with body leads.  With thought, I can now implement perhaps 75% of the material at 120-140 bpm.  So now the trick is to get that other 25%, getting the full 100% to work in the 160-180 bpm range (and beyond), and to be able to do so without having to think about it.  If this actually sticks, this is going to be a game changer for my dancing.

Speaking of chemistry, I had one of those wild encounters of instant “connection zen” both on and off the floor with a follower there.  As I know she sometimes reads this blog, this is my shout out and thank you to her for all the great dances and for sitting with me and chatting while I was under the weather on New Year’s Eve.  One of her stories about drawing college students in to a class with promises of learning the cool move “The Pretzel”, and then teaching a swing out under the name of “The Pretzel” sent me into stitches twice over as my laughter devolved into a horrible coughing fit.  Totally worth it.  Here’s to hoping that as I change my dancing, I don’t simultaneously break that “connection zen”

But one final story before I cut to the draft blog post I mentioned. It is a story that I think emphasizes much of all that is right with Lindy Hop.

Standing on the side one evening, I watched two pros, who will remain nameless since I don’t want to embarrass them, meet up and dance.  I was very interested because the leader has a very precise, controlled, and measured style, while the follower has a very raw, loose, and organic style.  So I figured seeing those two styles put together was going to be something.

The dance was a trainwreck.  It looked like every 8-16 beats there was a connection foible so bad that an out and out dance reset had to be made.  But the entire time there was nothing but smiles on both their faces, and mouthed versions of “darn that was cool” or “I’ll get that next time” from both of them.  Nothing but respect and joy for what the other person was doing even if things were not working.  And they both went wholeheartedly into every movement they made, really going for everything despite the outcomes.  When the song ended they stayed together and tried to make it work in a second dance.

The second dance was possibly even a bigger train wreck.  At one point the leader knocked the follower’s glasses off and they flew a good 10 feet.  Even with that dance stopping moment, nothing but smiles, respect, admiration and joy.  And when the song ended they stayed together for another song determined to make it work.

I wish I could tell you they finally gelled and that this third dance was magic, but this is no fairy tale.  There was a start to that gelling, and they occasionally made it through an entire phrase before fouling up.  But the entire time, still nothing but smiles, laughter, respect, and dancing all out.  Seeing how those two people turned “failure” into joy and start on the path to making it work was one of the most inspiring things I have seen in a while, and a humble reminder that there is always more to learn, even for the pros.

Now on to that post I never finished

———

Earlier in December there were a pair of interesting blog posts talking about conformity and lack of innovation in Lindy.  The first was with regards to routines at Vernacular Jazz Dance.  The second was with regards to followers at Lindy Hop Variations For Followers.

And these posts got me thinking, and ranting, and wanting to write… so here’s a post that is going to be part rambling pseudo-analytical personal manifesto, part rant, and partly me touching on some potentially hot topics that I am in no way skilled to write about without offending someone.

So the big disclaimer before I start.

My thoughts and approaches to dance are not the only way to approach dance.  They only reflect how I view things and what works for me.  I do not claim that these views are definitive descriptions of how things are or how they ought to be.  There are other approaches that are (equally?  more?) valid that work for other people.  I will even list a few of them as I go along.  And if you think my views make me an asshole, that’s cool.  Sometimes I am and I am the one who has to live with that.

That said let me begin.

—

My initial thoughts reading these posts were blunt, simplistic, and somewhat snarky.  Duh.  Sturgeon’s Law , which posits that 90% of everything is crap, applies just as well to Lindy Hop as it does to any other art production.  It may be uncharitable to call technically sound but unoriginal routines or followers “crap”.   But if they aren’t “good”, well Sturgeon’s Law doesn’t differentiate between degrees of “bad” or “OK” (Something that isn’t “good” is simply “crap”)  When approached from this angle, I find it pretty remarkable that there are so many “good” routines and follows in the Lindy world period.

Another blunt simplicity.  Innovation and creativity are hard.  And for that creativity and innovation to also be good?  Well that’s harder still.  While there are multiple paths to being able to reach the end goal of good creativity, Jazz great Clark Terry has a quote that sums up the path a lot of people take “Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate”.  Google that quote and take your pick of blog posts to read more about it, if the concept is new to you.

It really shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of people, be they choreographers, followers, or leaders, are hung up at the imitate and the assimilate phases of learning.  And contributing to that hang up is another blunt simplicity.  Group think and peer pressure to conform are real bitches.

In the discussion section at Variations for Followers, a blog post on a similar theme, the growing homogeneity of lindy hop, is referenced.  Part of that post laments what the poster sees as the apparent death of city or regional styles of dance and the growth of more national or even international homogeneity.  I’ve seen responses to that post and posts like it which boil down to the following.  Once upon a time, travel and video were limited so all people could imitate was local talent.  Group think and conformity was similarly locked down locally.  Then there came youtube and the explosion of dance weekends and events.  Imitation never went away, but the group think and conformity broke loose and went global too.  So instead of what once was 10 groups comprised of 10 similar dancers now we have 1 group of 100 similar dancers.

(Between starting to write this post weeks ago and actually finishing it, a post on imitation, inspired by the original 2 posts on innovation, popped up on dogpossum. I think it is worth a read)

—

But are there factors that reinforce that group think conformity and are there ways to promote innovation?  In the discussion section, Variations for Followers posits that competition between followers for dances with top leaders in her scene forces follows to conform.  A little lower in the discussion, Sam from dogpossum mentions her experience with clear solid leading prompting innovation in followers she has danced with and wonders if poor leaders might be to blame for impeded follower creativity.

I’d like to discuss these two ideas and a few related concepts.  And it is here that I know I am going to be playing with fire and the disclaimer at the beginning of this post is going to make more sense.

To a degree I believe Variations for Followers is right.  I believe that leaders that subscribe to more traditional lead follow models of the dance where roles are fixed do cause pressure to conform.  (This may not be as true for leaders subscribing to 50-50 models of dancer responsibility).  They, or at the very least I, do not like unskilled innovation and react negatively to it.  However, no one magically leaps from unskilled innovation to skilled innovation without messing up and risking that negative response.  I’d like to address what brings about that negative reaction and while I don’t have magic solutions for getting around it, perhaps it might inspire others to think up solutions.

Part of what draws this leader response is simply leader well being.  Many things that a follower can do will hurt a leader if done wrong.  Take something like the kick away variation.  Here’s a random teaching clip I found demonstrating them so we are all on the same page.

Relatively simple, relatively common lexicon move, and when done right should be insertable into just about any swingout by a follower without the variation being lead.  However, doing this correctly takes timing.  It takes balance.  To do it and really look good often requires support from the leader so the follow can really stretch it and the follower needs to learn how to ask for that support when the leader hadn’t originally planned on giving it.  And if the leader is not paying attention or is simply unprepared or unable to offer that support, a follower needs to know how to abort or scale back.

That’s quite a bit to learn.  Much respect for every follower who eventually learns these things.  And the end results are gorgeous.  But anytime kick aways are taught during a workshop weekend though I cringe.  Because during that learning process my left arm and shoulder are going to be wrecked by every screw up a follower makes.

And that’s just a common variation.  A follower learning the kick away has a blue print to work from and knows it works.  A follower really innovating and making a new styling or making a kick away their own is everything above squared.  Including the potential leader hurt.

Back to the comments section of Variations for Followers, Sam expressed some surprise that Frida hasn’t had a larger effect on the American Lindy Hop scene.  My hypothesis as to why?  People channeling Frida without the skill to back it up hurt.  The thing that I think that makes Frida so interesting to watch is that she gives the impression that she tight rope walks the fine line between control and disaster and never missteps.  Learning to walk that line is going to involve missteps and hurt.

Unsurprisingly, leaders do not like to dance with followers who hurt them.  I would also like to believe that followers do not like to be responsible for bringing the pain either.  So yes there is some pressure by leaders on followers to not innovate.  This however isn’t maliciously caused pressure.  Perhaps followers wishing to push bounds might explore partnering for the same reason one partners to learn aeriels, moving the learning to a practice environment instead of doing it on the social floor.  I don’t really know though.  I am just hypothesizing here.

But safety is not the only part to the aversion for unskilled innovation.  Experimentation often adds uncertainty to a dance and can break dance flow entirely.  However, before I delve into that, let me first take a little detour and discuss Sam’s observation regarding solid leading prompting follower innovation.

—

I have heard it said that there is leading, there is following, and there is dancing (which I am going to italicize to differentiate the term from normal uses of the word dancing).  The most obvious feature of partner dancing (unitalicized) is two people executing movement together.  Hopefully to the music.  Usually based on a lead follow dynamic.  But within that framework each person moves to create or express their own rhythms through their body and that’s where the dancing is.

Now good dancing often is pure innovation and innovation takes some thought.  Generally not detailed thought because that gets in the way, but thought nonetheless.  However there is a limit to what you can think about on the floor, and good partnered dancers have a lot to think about:  safety, the music, what are we doing as partners together, dancing.  Good solid leading takes much of the thought out of the “what are we doing” aspect of the dance, because the intent becomes clear and thought doesn’t have to be wasted figuring out what a leader meant.  Followers then can think about their dancing more and thus Sam’s observation that good solid leading prompts innovation plays out.

—

Back to why leaders non-maliciously stifle follower innovation.  As followers learn to dance, the errors that result produce noise in the connection and the reverse of everything in the preceding paragraph applies.  Leaders have to think more about what their partner is doing to make “what we are doing” work.  This means that considerate leaders have a little less thought to devote to their dancing.  But more importantly, leading and managing the “what we are doing” aspect of the dance is a minor degree of innovation on its own.  At the risk of oversimplifying, when one swing out ends, the dance is going to sputter unless the leader thinks of something else, even if it is another swingout or just standing there and pulsing.  Something new is created, and while a lot of things like the music, setting yourself up, and partner input affect what new thing a leader leads, we also have established that innovation is hard, requires some thought, and wondering what the heck your follower is doing is a drain on thought that makes it harder.  Working under the assumption that noone particularly likes it when things are made harder, there should be no surprise that there is going to be some negative pressure on followers learning to dance, even if this pressure is unconscious.

I was going to write more, but post Lindy Focus thoughts have made me stop.  Especially after the private with Mikey, I am thinking about leading and dancing as a more unified piece instead of separate concepts and that puts a lie to most of the above paragraph.  I haven’t even begun to think about following and dancing as a unified piece and frankly am feeling less than qualified to even attempt to at this moment.  So take everything above with some healthy skepticism.  Maybe there are some kernels of truth in some of that B.S., but I am no longer sure about even that.

I don’t have access to most streaming music sites at work, but I do have access to youtube, so I sometimes go song hunting there during my breaks.  During one of those breaks I listened to Fats Waller and his rendition of Lulu’s Back in Town.

One of the related videos youtube suggested was a clip from the Justice League Unlimited Cartoon

It was a (crummy) episode that I remember watching years ago, but it stuck in my memory because the entire episode was a set up to make Batman sing.

So Fats Waller to Batman through 2 degrees.

But there is more fun to be had with Lulu’s Back in Town.  Did you know the song was used on Sesame Street?  With muppets dancing no less!

Now before I go any further, let me first say that I found this year’s Classic to be insane.  With no disrespect intended towards the competitors in 2010, the 2010 Classic was rather tame in comparison.  My thoughts watching it that year were that it was going to be a battle between Thomas and Alice and Kevin and Jo for 1st and that Thomas and Alice would probably take it.  My predicting power that year was pretty good.

But watching the Classic this year, I didn’t have a clue who was going to win.  There has been some talk lately about the growing homogenization of the dance and how a lot of people are starting to look the same.  I’d argue that the Classic this year told a different story.  I found that the competitors came to the Classic with a broad notion of what Lindy Hop meant to them and that I did not envy the judges who had to parse through that and make some tough decisions.  That said, in my mind there were no less than 5 contenders for 1st place this year, and while I had a favorite, I had no idea how the judges were going to score things.  (For the record my top 5 contenders did take 1st through 5th but I was nowhere near correct in guessing the actual placements).

At any rate, the conversation with my friend started out with her incredulous that none of the judges placed Thomas and Alice in 1st as they would have been her pick to win it.  I was a little non plussed since Thomas and Alice in 3rd was the only prediction I got right.  But in the spirit of the conversation I noted that my pick for 1st, Nicolas and Mikalea, only got one 1st from the judges and wound up in 5th overall.  We then exchanged our picks for 1st through 3rd and that’s when things took a turn for the interesting.

My friend mentioned that she was tired of seeing routines that Skye and Frida slapped together at the last minute … again.  Especially when those routines win.  And thus began a long conversation about our expectations regarding the Classic division and what ought to be rewarded.

I won’t give you the blow by blow account of the rest of the conversation, but her position more or less boiled down to the following.  If the competition format is designed to feature choreography, she would prefer to see tightly put together choreography, performed error free, come out on top.  Skye and Frida may dance better and have more spirit than other competitors but perhaps they should take that to a Strictly and clean up there.  What sort of message does it send to other competitors when a slap dash routine with errors in it trumps the routines that other people presumably put a lot more effort into?  What incentive is there to put a lot of work into a routine period if that work is not what is going to be rewarded.

The position I took was that Skye and Frida were delivering a different and equally important message.  Go out, have fun, and don’t take competition too seriously.  It is probably the healthiest approach to competition out there.  Further, effort and choreography does not a winning routine make; the Classic is still about dancing.  If Skye and Frida’s slap dash routine is better dancing than someone else’s well planned routine that had a ton of effort invested in it, well Skye and Frida should win.  And after all, its not like Skye and Frida haven’t put in a lot of effort over their dance careers to get to a point where they can just put together something at the last minute and have it look good.

But I did agree with her in wishing that Skye and Frida would step up their game and put a little more into it.  My understanding (which may be wrong) is that a little more effort was put into the creation of their 24 Robbers routine.  At the very least I think it was a better performance piece than their routine to Wham.  But I will let you be the judge of that.

The conversation with my friend also got me thinking about what it is I value in choreography and the Classic competition format in general.

I think the strength of choreography is that it allows dancers a chance to perform a visual interpretation of the music vs performing a visual reaction to the music.  Social dancing is constrained by the limits of leading and following and whatever you can think up to go with the music as you hear the music playing.  Performed choreography removes the limitations of leading and following (although the best routines still maintain the illusion that even the impossible was led and followed) and gives dancers unlimited time to think up and pick 1 ultimate definitive movement they wish to go with the music.

If you know what you are doing (and I sure as heck don’t) you can use that choice of movement to devastating effect.  During Lindy 500 in Baltimore the week before ILHC, I remember Kevin giving an example from his latest routine of the sort of detail that can go into choreography if you think about it.

At about 2:00 in, Jo is set up to shake her rear in conjunction with the song’s “Shake That Thing!”  Kevin mostly freezes to put the emphasis on Jo’s movement… except for his head which turns to stare at Jo’s rear.  Kevin explained that as innocuous a movement as that might seem, it actually is calculated and has a very powerful effect.  Anyone who for some reason was looking at Kevin instead of Jo is encouraged to follow his gaze and see what he is looking at… namely Jo’s shaking rear which is the highlight of the moment.

And on that note, I think I will wrap this up because I don’t currently have a good conclusion to end this with.

Bastion is one of the best designed games that I have played in a while.  The game’s big hook is that the narrator from the trailer narrates the entire game in the manner of a classic storyteller.  This takes care of all the exposition in the game.  But in a brilliant move, the narration doesn’t stop there.  Player actions are set up to trip additional circumstantial narration so there is a running dialogue describing your victories, close calls, blunders, and general shenanigans as you go along.  The result is an added feeling of personalization to the story that is getting told.

The art direction for the game is also astounding.  The stylized water color like visuals are great, and the way that the world rises up and drops away as you move through the game is inspired.  And the music.  I can’t remember the last time I stopped while playing a game just to listen to the music, but I did for this song.

The company got so many requests for the game’s soundtrack that they wound up releasing it.

But all that is just the fluff on top.  The meat and bones of the game are solid and its heart is customization.  By the end of the game you have access to 11 weapons, each of which handles very differently, and each of which can be customized into behaving differently yet again.  Given how many action rpgs have weapons that are virtually indistinguishable from each other beyond this is a melee weapon, this is a ranged weapon, Bastion knocked the weapon design out of the park.  Of the 11 weapons however, you only get to take 2 with you on any outing, so you have a lot of permutations to adventure with.  The game is also very forgiving with its customization options, so you are free to experiment with your weapon set ups to your heart’s content free of penalty.

Beyond weapon modification, the player has access to about 20 passive bonuses of which only a fraction may be equipped at any time.  So your character is further customized by your choices there.

And in case you were thinking this makes the game too easy, well instead of set difficulty levels, there are approximately 10 passive enemy perks you can turn on and off to make the game more challenging .  Turn them all on and the game gets pretty tough.

The final decision the game forces you to make is choosing how the game ends.  And there is no right answer there by a long shot.  But if you wish to see the other ending, not a problem.  The game features a New Game+ feature and is short enough that going through it again while powered up is enjoyable.

On that note, I should also mention that the pacing of the game is also well done.  Levels are selected from a central hub and are varied enough and just the right length to give each stage some personality without having it drag on and on.

The last thing of note are the puzzles and achievement system in the game.  The achievements hit that sweet spot of offering rewards to make them worth completing while not making the rewards game breaking and forcing you to grind through them all if you don’t wish to.  Tied to some of the achievements are puzzle stages for each weapon.  These puzzle stages take the place of tutorials for each weapon and trial and error to figure out solutions to the puzzles greatly encourages players to familiarize themselves with each weapon and the customization options available to them.

Bastion is available both on the x-box 360 and on the PC through the Steam store. I highly recommend it.  Here is a video of some extended gameplay to give you a real feel for the game in case you are still undecided.

But to switch gears, I also tagged this post with Lindy Hop and there is a reason for that.  Bastion also contains a really good analogy for how I view leading in Lindy Hop to work.  Watch the first minute of the video above and then I will explain.

If the follower is the player character, the act of leading is building the ground and dropping in the terrain the character encounters.  The leader sets up places to go, things to see, things to do, and boundaries to be observed; creating it all a split second before the follower/player character gets there.  In short, the leader creates a world for the follower to explore and play in.

Now how the follower goes about exploring and playing is up to the follower.  A leader cannot and should not dictate how a follow does that.  But a leader may build a path and make that path so enticing that the follower wants to take it.  If the follower doesn’t take it though, well it is up to the leader to have ground ready to go no matter which direction the follower heads off in.  After all, unlike the game, which has a pre-built world that gets filled in, the “world building” a leader does in a dance is free form and has to be responsive to the follower.  If a player character decides to leap over an edge in the game, it’s fine if they fall.  If a follower decides to leap over an edge while dancing, the leader better have some ground ready for them to land on.  (But I guarantee that if you stick up your nose at every path I present you with and decide that what you really want to be doing is sky diving, well I am not going to ask you to dance again.)

One of the great things about events like ILHC or Lindy Focus is simply that so many of the pros are around and social dancing.  If you have the courage to ask (and they happen to be available) you will get to dance with some of the best dancers the Lindy world currently possesses.  I worked up the courage twice.  Unfortunately neither of those turned out to be very good dances.

I place the blame squarely on me.  Some of it was probably nerves.  But to be honest I just didn’t understand the connection each of them wanted and couldn’t provide it.  And that’s fine.  We all have different approaches to dancing and I obviously have a lot to learn about the approaches each of those people take.  I will also hasten to add that what it felt like each wanted in their connection was radically different from the other.

However my ignorance sometimes isn’t an entirely bad thing.  My best dance of the weekend occurred Thursday night when I asked a woman I didn’t recognize to dance.  Very early in the dance a couple of things became very clear.  1) She was very very good and I had probably just unknowingly asked a rockstar to dance.  2) The connection she wanted was light.  Very light.

Fortunately I had something to fall back on for that.  Back when I was dancing in Boston, the connection I developed originally was very light.  No counterbalance whatsoever, weight strait beneath me and going down.  I moved myself and my partner moved herself with a bare minimum of either of us using the other to move off of.  Definitely enough presence to firm up and be responsive when necessary, direction changes and intricate rhythms still require some connection, but if nothing else was happening the connection was airy.

I had to switch to a firmer connection when I moved to DC, and whenever I am in Baltimore, my connection tends to firm up even more to match the dancing there.  But falling back into that lighter connection felt good and she seemed to know what to do with it and loved it.  You’d think that without anchoring off your partner, the dance would be a lot more work, but my dance with mystery rockstar was effortless and easy.  It was quite the liberating feeling not to be in constant support of weight, and thus being free to move.

The offshoots of that dance was 1) figuring out that mystery girl was Giselle Anguizola and 2) deciding that I wanted to get back to my light leading roots.  So as much as I could, I stayed with the light lead through the rest of ILHC and through the week after that.

The results have been mixed.  Some follows at ILHC were so used to counterbalance that when they felt my lighter approach they put on the (very unbecoming) “I am dancing with a beginner and trying to tolerate it mask” until I switched back to my normal connection.  Others have played around with it like a novelty toy.  And a couple of dancers who have been around forever have eaten it up since they remembered this connection from back when they were starting.

But as light as I’d like to think I am, I can go lighter.  Or at least Nicolas Deniau & Mikaela Hellsten think so.  They guest taught a class at the Jam Cellar this past Tuesday and that was Nicolas’s feedback when he stopped by to correct problems I was having with what they were teaching.

At any rate, for the next few months in addition to working on lines and visual definition, I think my new project is going to be lightening my lead.

On Monday I did my taped social dance for the week and coming out of it I felt terrible about it.  My connection with my partner never really meshed during the song and there were constant bobbles and corrections on both our parts through the entire dance.  So imagine my surprise when I got home and played it back for review… and saw probably my best dance caught on tape yet.  None of the mistakes, gaffes, and oh noes that I felt while dancing had appeared visually.  The movement flowed without any signs of uncertainty and everything looked deliberate and good.  I never would have guessed that I had it in me to produce a dance that looked good without feeling good.   Go figure.

Tuesday was something else entirely.  The floors at the Jam Cellar have been pretty awful lately.  All the heat and humidity have made them sticky and it’s been a fight to move my feet when dancing in my regular rubber soled deck shoes.  So on a lark I dug my Aris Allens out of the closet to see if I would hate them less than my rubber stand bys.  It turns out I am still not entirely happy with them.  I do a number of things where I do not bring my weight directly down and instead brace at an angle so that I can spring back along that angle.  That just is not possible in slippery shoes as my foot meets the floor and then keeps going.

But I did find that my biggest objection to the shoes, the dress heels, is less of a problem than I remember them as.  I started working at a new company in February and the change of work environment meant that I went from a dress code that read “wear what you want as long as you don’t offend anyone” to slacks and a coat.  This did mean I also had to wear polished leather shoes, with their silly dress shoe heels, and I guess walking around in them for the past 6 months has forced me to largely make my peace with dress heels.

I do have one more bit of shoe related story from that evening though.  I can spin in my deck shoes, but I can’t Spin, capital S.  Too much grip with the rubber to really go and keep going.  At any rate, years ago I learned a flash and trash spin as part of a routine that creates the illusion that the follower runs in a tight circle and the lead rides her hip through a spin (the actual mechanic is the lead spins and pushes the follow ahead through the circle).  It is very leadable, but I had not gotten it to work in the past 5 years.  But that Tuesday I heard something in the music that called for it, was with a follow I trusted, and figured what the heck I got more spin in me tonight than usual.  Bam.  Nailed it.  Never had tried it with the follow I was with before either and from her delighted “What was that?” I am guessing it was her first encounter with anything like that.

And as for Friday.  Well that was Monday all over again but on a bigger ego boosting scale.  I was munching on a lemonade frozen treat on the side when a friend walked over to grab some water and chat.  A nice uptempo song came on and I begged my friend to hold my lemon pop as I ran over to snag a dance with an acquaintance who was visiting from Philly.

Now I’ve danced once or twice with this acquaintance before, and the main reason that this number isn’t higher is that she is often highly in demand for dances.  She is immensely talented, much better than I am, and has a big big voice as a follower.  She is the sort of person who if you hand an inch to will dance a mile but that you wish to hand a mile to because she dares you to run the marathon she is going to turn it into with her and to be just as fantastic as she is going to be.  (It is that with part of that run on description that makes her truly exceptional.)

However, none of that is to say that I am talented enough to keep up with her or that we have enough knowledge of each other to sink into a connection that feels right down to our bones.  So the dance was a lot of missed calls and making it work.  Swing outs were not always supported to their fullest extent.  There were compensating flying slips and flying slops to get to where I needed to go at times.  Plenty of rythmic hanging out to wait for one of us or the other to catch up after a misread in intent.

When it was done, I headed back to my friend holding my lemonadesicle.  The first words out of his mouth “Where did that come from?”

Mistaking his meaning I pointed to the cooler 5 feet from us and told him that there were frozen stawberry slushies in there too.

“No no no.”  He said.  “The dance.”  He went on to say that that  was the best he had ever seen me dance.  Lines, musicality, all of it.  He had started talking to the people nearby after I had handed him my lemon pop but I had effectively killed the conversation as people stopped talking to watch us dance.  At this point the other folks nearby nodded in corroboration.

Well I may have inadvertently brought my A game to that dance, simply so that I could hang with my acquaintance as she rocked out… but it certainly didn’t feel like a conversation stopper of a dance from a connection stand point.  So as I said, Monday all over again in terms of looking awesome without the feel good connection.

One reason first dances with others is often awkward is that there is a lack of trust.  Sure a little good will trust is extended in believing the person you are with means you no harm, but further trust needs to be earned.  The trust that you can relax your frame because their technique won’t rip your arms out of your sockets, the trust that you can sink into counter balance because their weight will match yours, the trust that you both hear the music the same way so that if you break away and stop tracking each other visually, both of you will be back and ready at the same time anyway.  And if you like air steps, well trust is a big freaking deal in making them work.

During my past week in San Francisco, I made the acquaintance of a very talented follower visiting from Philly.  We had a dance or two at the 9:20 Special on Thursday and then a couple more early on at Lindy in the Park on Sunday.  Later that same Sunday afternoon in the park, the DJ put on an up tempo song in the 200 bpm range.  She rushed over when it started and asked me for a dance.

When it was over she said words to the effect that she was so glad she caught me for that.  She was afraid that given the newbie rich environment, hard surface we were dancing on, and fastish tempo she would have had to have sat the song out.  But she had seen me free and she trusted me.

I didn’t respond with “I know”, because only Harrison Ford is charming enough to pull that off, but it is what I was thinking.  Not because she had rushed over or because of anything else she did overtly and certainly not because she had vocalized her trust in me.  She found me free at the start of the dance because I had had the same worries that she had had.  When she rushed over, I lit up and said yes almost before she had finished asking for the dance because I trusted her.

I don’t see my high school friends often.  Most of them live either in Hawaii or in San Francisco while I am the length of a continent away in D.C.  The group in San Francisco still hangs out regularly, and for them Hawaii is a relatively short and cheap hop away.   So they all keep in touch, meeting weekly if not more frequently, while I’ve kind of drifted apart.  Before my recent vacation, I think the last contact I had with most of them was about 2 ½ years ago.

The group has always been somewhat game oriented.  We played countless hours of magic, cribbage, team chess, trumps, basketball, and all manner of video games during our high school days.  When last I saw them, my friends had been bitten by the Catan bug and there were a number of nights of cutthroat Settler playing during my last visit.

During the past year, a dance friend of mine in D.C. introduced me to the game Dominion.  During my first game, I remember thinking that Dominion was exactly the sort of game my high school friends would love and that I would have to introduce them to it when I saw them next.

So when my last vacation rolled around, I picked up a copy of the base set to share the gaming goodness with them.  I shouldn’t have bothered.  They had already discovered it for themselves and picked up several of the expansions to boot.  Furthermore they had even produced about half an expansion worth of home brewed cards based on inside jokes and phrases.  I was particularly touched when I first spied this.

Although the friend who created this card lifted a picture from this blog of me dancing at DCLX (without bothering to mention it to me) the Meller Dance actually was a term for the overly enthusiastic, spastic, and very distinctive skanking to Ska and Punk I did back in high school.

It was nice to know that to my friends I was gone but not forgotten.  I had however totally forgotten the incident behind the second inside joke they devoted to me.  Listening to them re-tell the story, I laughingly had to say I had no recollection of the event but that it did sound like something I would have done.

(Incidentally this card is far too powerful and ought to be scaled back)

And just because I want to, let me also share the story behind this card.

(As shown, this card is also too powerful and was changed during our play testing of it)

One night we were playing Pictionary in a number of two man teams.  One of the teams wound up with German Shepherd as the word to draw.  I think you can see where this is headed.

The illustrator of the team drew a swastika and a shepherd.  The guesser figured out the shepherd part but for the life of him could not figure out how the swastika fit with that.  The closest he got was Nazi Shepherd.  Everyone looking on tried not to die of laughter every time he repeated it in increasingly distressed and frustrated tones as time wound down.

The quote of the evening was “What the fuck is a Nazi Shepherd?”

——

On a completely unrelated note the summer TV season has started in Japan.  I normally follow an anime show or two each season but it has been a few seasons since anything has aired that I would recommend.  Not so this time around.  Based on the first couple of episodes, season 3 of Natsume Yujincho looks like it will be every bit as good as the past 2 seasons (which I also recommend). I am also enamored by the slice of life dramedy Usagi Drop.

This in turn led to a bit of nostalgia for the ex (girlfriend/dance partner).  One of the great thing about dating a dancer is having someone there to randomly start dancing with when the mood and music strikes you.  I have memories of dancing with the ex down supermarket isles, in department stores, on sidewalks in front of cafes, and in airports.

One airport memory is particularly poignant, a Christmas time affair shortly after we had started dating.  We were both headed home to our respective families for the holidays and very much in the clingy, don’t want to be separated phase of new young love.  This being pre 9/11, the ex came to the gates to see me off and every time a Christmas carol in swing-time would play, we would unentangle ourselves from where we were sitting, get up. and dance.

So as I sat in the LA airport, I remembered that Christmastime good-bye and thought about other airport farewells and how the 9/11 security changes really are a drag.  Specifically I remembered the goodbyes at the airport the summer after high school ended.

I don’t know if everyone in Hawaii did this, or if it was just my group of high school friends, but as we headed off to college, there was always one last “party” at the airport every time a person left.  We would bring food and games,  sit with our friend and their family at the gate, and have an equal parts happy and snuffly good time until the final boarding call was announced.  I find it a little sad that the changes in security mean no more emotion laden “at the gate” stories for anyone now.

But on a happier note, I eventually did get my dance fix that Thursday.  It turns out that by shear happenstance, my trip to Hawaii coincided with a couple of local dancers getting married to each other.  So all sorts of folks were in from out of town to help them celebrate and they all went dancing that evening.  My understanding is that the Oahu lindy scene briefly doubled in size that night.