Last night, thanks to the mysterious appearance of the HBO channels on our cable lineup, I finally watched Black Swan. I approached the movie with extreme trepidation: because I get creeped out really easily and I don’t like to be startled, several people had told me I shouldn’t see it at all. But I had …
Joyce has kindly sent me an article by Richard Powers, dance instructor at Stanford University, that explains the article in the New England Journal of Medicine (abstract here) about dancing and its ability to lower dementia risk. It makes a lot of sense and, I think, indirectly speaks to the special challenges of partner dancing, …
A tip of the hat to Sadie for sending this video clip my way. It fits right in with this past Wednesday’s first meeting of the Macon State College Dance Club, for which I have the honor to serve as faculty advisor. We had an incredible turnout of around 20 students, all full of good …
I was driving home from ballet class this evening and caught just the tail end of this story on WHYY’s Radio Times: Shall we dance? Inside the world of competitive ballroom dancing. When I got in the car the segment was already almost over, so I haven’t heard the whole thing yet. Somebody listen to …
Several people asked us for details about our participation in the Atlanta Dance Classic competition next weekend. The venue is the Westin Peachtree Plaza, 210 Peachtree Street, Atlanta 30303. We are dancing several American Smooth heats Friday morning in the 11:00 hour, then we will do our rumba exhibition number during the evening session. There’s no charge for spectator admission during the day but a ticket for the evening session is $35. We’re also dancing American Rhythm during the day Saturday; most of our heats are during the 1:00 hour.
The website for the competition is www.atlantadanceclassic.com. I’ll put this information on our website and also on Facebook. We would love it if you could come and cheer us on! These competitions are always fun, high-energy events. You are sure to see some great dancing!
Our dancers have been helping us come up with a list of rules for ballroom dancing. Herewith, the rules so far:
No tickling, no groping: Keep your hands where they’re supposed to be. Gentlemen, I’m lookin’ at you.
Stand like a king: Daniel came up with this great phrase to characterize the ideal male dance posture that is both regal and relaxed.
Respect the bubble: Baby & Johnny had this one figured out a quarter-century ago: “This is my dance space; this is your dance space. I don’t come into yours; you don’t come into mine.”
Don’t snatch: In the South you can use the verb “snatch” to characterize any action of grabbing something suddenly. Snatching your dance partner is not cool. Some moves appear to require snatching, but this is an illusion.
You can’t go till he goes: Ladies, this one’s for you. Your partner gets to decide when you start dancing. Wait for it. . . wait for it. . .
Don’t “Hulk out”: Concentration does some odd things to one’s facial expressions, neck veins, hand grip, etc. Keep it loose and light. (If you start to turn green, you’re doing it wrong.)
No apologetic birds, no sad princesses: Dance big and smile! Everything you do will look better.
I think I am leaving some out. Guys & gals, leave me a comment if you remember one that I forgot.
Posture and frame, and their influence on lead/follow, are among the biggest challenges for ballroom dancers. Your average 21st-century American just doesn’t absorb a dancer’s upright carriage without years of practice and many, many corrections, and the nuances of communicating movement to another person through the body are even harder to talk about than they are to get right. Nevertheless, posture and frame are so important that for the past 2 weeks I’ve been on a personal crusade titled “It’s Not About The Steps.”
People associate dancing first and foremost with moving the feet. This association is not wrong, of course. Last week I tried out my It’s Not About The Steps theory on one of our wedding couples and the groom said, “But if I don’t know any steps, I can’t dance.” He’s right, and he has identified the reductio ad absurdam point at which my theory ceases to operate. I would suggest, though, that a person can’t get very far with learning steps before posture and frame become essential to successfully executing the steps. If you can do the step by yourself but can’t do it with a partner, IT’S NOT ABOUT THE STEPS.
The theory works in this way: dancers really only need to know a small number of steps to have a good time getting around the floor. You could manage to dance a basic waltz, for instance, with only 2 steps: traveling half-boxes down the walls and a twinkle to get you around the corners. But a twinkle requires a change of body position, from closed hold to promenade and back again. Turning into promenade isn’t difficult, but in order for both partners to get into it and out of it, they have to pay attention to their posture, frame, and head position. Keep the frame consistent in promenade (that elbow stays perpendicular) and clearly turn your head to match your direction of travel: nose follows toes. If the frame was consistent on the way into promenade, getting out of promenade should just be a matter of keeping the frame up while bringing the torso back into closed position and adjusting the head to match.
Holding a good frame also alleviates a lot of personal-space-invasion problems and stepped-on toes. New dancers tend to want to gaze into each other’s eyes as they dance, which is totally romantic but, at least in the smooth dances (waltz, tango, foxtrot), problematic. I fear looking like a cold-hearted cynic when I say this, but when Daniel and I dance smooth in competition, I’m deliberately conscious of NOT looking at him unless we do a step like the “butterfly” in foxtrot where we are supposed to look at each other. It seems a lot less lovey-dovey but it actually looks more impressive and more like we are in tune with one another if we can move in and out of positions without ever making eye contact: like I just know where he’s going to be, and vice versa.
We all want to focus on getting the steps right, and it’s true that the steps are an important basic starting point. But as soon as you have a step memorized, start improving everything that’s needed to make it successful but isn’t about moving your feet. Like the steps themselves, posture and frame will become more and more automatic with more and more practice. Good posture and a big, elegant frame also help a dancer look confident even if he/she is only a beginner.
One of my Tweeps posted this video today of an International Standard tango by Arunas & Katusha. Standard style is different from what Daniel and I dance because you have to stay in closed hold all the time–promenade is allowed but there’s no shadow position, no side-by-side work, no open positions of any kind. In this choreography you can REALLY see that it’s not about the steps. The body positions and head weight communicate the lead/follow and give the dance its characteristic, dramatic look:
Back at the beginning of the year I did an email interview with Rachel Holland, a freelance writer who regularly contributes to the UK’s Dance Today magazine as well as a dozen or so other publications. I had kind of forgotten about the interview until she emailed me the PDF from the May 2011 issue. Whee! Now we are renowned far and wide–and renowned far and wide for being nice people, no less. Hooray!
Well, sports fans, it’s been a long, hot summer. Not much to report…or is there?
At the end of July I went to Austria for an academic conference and also found out about the Vienna ball season. The Viennese waltz is called that for a reason, y’know! My dream is to attend the New Year’s Eve Kaiserball at Hofburg Palace, but I would also settle for a lesser ball such as the Coffeehouse Owners’ Ball. The challenges are considerable (airfare, ball ticket prices, transcontinental ballgown transport), but wouldn’t it be an amazing experience?
A week after my return from Austria, we performed our rumba exhibition at the third annual Dancing for our Heroes charity ball at the Museum of Aviation. It went REALLY well, probably the best we’ve ever danced it even though we had to put water on our shoes because the floor was so slick. Somehow (absent-mindedness) we did not get any video of our routine, but I think I have video of Jim and JoyDawn’s gorgeous waltz as well as Derrek and Wendy’s très avant-garde cha-cha to Rammstein’s “Du Hast” on my phone. It was a great night for everybody!
That was the last time Daniel and I danced before he went to Canada for two weeks to see his family. He returns early next week and we are going to jump into preparation for Carolina Fall Classic, Atlanta Dance Classic, and maybe Christmas in Dixie if we have any money left.
We are also starting to work with a new wedding couple (Hi Tiffany & Tyler!), looking forward to seeing Stacey & JT dance at their wedding over Labor Day weekend (thanks for the invite, guys!), and getting excited about jumping back into ballroom class on Wednesday nights. I am practically counting the HOURS until my first ballet class–either Tuesday night or Thursday night depending on exactly when Daniel rolls back into town (relevant because he went to Canada in MY car).
Meanwhile, I went to Academy Ballroom last weekend with JoyDawn and Beth for their monthly party and the next installment of the Jack & Jill competition (read up on the J&J here and here). This month’s dance was the cha-cha. My standard line re: the cha-cha is that I love it, but it doesn’t love me back. I am slowly getting better at it, but doing that characteristic Latin hip motion at cha-cha tempo continues to be a challenge. Plus, I am really out of shape right now and the cha-cha requires some stamina. I had NO expectations whatsoever. Well, check that: I expected to make it through the first round and into the final, which I duly did, dancing with a cool gentleman named Phil. For the final I drew another cool gentleman, Martin, who seemed (unlike me) not to be wheezing even though the song went on for a while (it’s possible that I’ve been spoiled by 90-second competition rounds). When Rachel announced the placements and I was not 5th, 4th, 3rd, or 2nd, I thought “Oh, I didn’t place, minor bummer.” Then she said that the first-place couple was “possibly the oddest pairing ever in the Jack and Jill” and it turned out that Martin and I had won! We were an “odd couple” because with dance shoes on, I am a good bit taller than he is. So now I am tied for the top of the J&J leaderboard. Can you believe it?
I’ve now ended the majority of the paragraphs in this post with questions. Can I keep it up?
As soon as I hit “post” I’m going over to the Local Dance Opportunities page to post some updates. Will you please look at them?
“Coordinated covert offensives involving two teams are a lot like ballroom dancing: you have to synchronize your steps, time your moves, and always put your partner first.”
–Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) of USA Network’s Burn Notice
the date for this year’s Stars Over Macon in October, and
a “weekly events” section.
Seriously, if you’re not finding enough times and places to dance around town, maybe you are not trying hard enough. Or not spending enough time on this website?
We went up to Atlanta last night to attend a dance at Academy Ballroom (home of our instructor Eddie and many of his talented brethren & sistren). At the dance, the hosts were putting on a Jack & Jill competition as part of their ongoing project to crown “Atlanta’s Best Social Dancer.” Jack & Jills are well known to West Coast Swing dancers but little practiced in the ballroom world. In a Jack & Jill, you dance with a randomly chosen partner rather than with your regular partner. There’s no choreography and no preparation time. The pair of you rely on your shared vocabulary of steps, musicality, and respective ability to lead and follow. The instructors are doing a Jack & Jill at each monthly dance between now and October. Those who place in the top five accumulate points toward being the overall winner, who gets a mini mirror-ball trophy à la Dancing with the Star. Cue Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction: “I want to dance. I want to win. I want that trophy.” The top three each month also get prizes: last night’s prizes were a free dance admission (3rd), a shoe bag (2nd), and a free private lesson (1st).
Last month, in the first installment of the J&J, the chosen dance was East Coast Swing. Our friend JoyDawn won the competition! Not surprising, because she is awesome. This month, the dance was the foxtrot—our nemesis. I did not have high hopes for Daniel or myself, especially when I noticed that nearly twice as many women as men had entered. In the first round, some of the men, including Daniel, danced twice so that all the ladies would have a chance to dance. Of course, I did not dance with Daniel since he is my regular partner. I was in the second group to dance and my partner knew a lot of steps that I didn’t know. I felt like I wasn’t following very well, but I tried to keep up while keeping my posture strong and my frame in position. Daniel danced with a couple of beginners and said later that he hadn’t felt very confident either. This is the challenge of Jack & Jill: unless you both happen to know a lot of the same steps, you have to rely on lead and follow.
I knew Daniel would get through to the final but I was surprised when I did, too. JoyDawn also made the cut and so did her partner Jim. Ten leads and ten follows were chosen and then randomly assigned to NEW partners. No one danced with the same person in both rounds. There were 2 or 3 husband-and-wife pairs in the final, which required some maneuvering so that no one got to dance with his or her spouse. Finally we were all paired up and off we went. Daniel was with Ann Yearian, an all-around superstar. She runs the consignment boutique at Academy, dances pro-am with Eddie, and regularly lays beat-downs on Daniel and me when dancing with her husband Thomas. My partner (whom I didn’t know at all—Hi, “Chad,” if that is your real name…) was really good. He asked me about what steps I knew and I just said I could fake a lot. Everyone knows steps by different names, and the truth is that I can follow steps I don’t technically know if I have a strong leader. He started out just doing basic Bronze steps for a couple of walls but then went into some Silver basics. We didn’t dance perfectly but we didn’t trip over each other’s feet, either. I just stayed left, stretched away, and smiled like a maniac till the song was over. It was fun!
After a few general dances they announced the top 5. Unlike in the semifinal, where they called back individuals, for the placements they placed couples. Daniel and Ann came in 5th, hooray! Jim and his partner came in first, which surprised me not at all because he is such a great technician. And Chad somehow led me into 2nd, at which I was surprised and quite pleased. So now I have 5 points toward this mini mirror-ball trophy, and I have a new shoe bag with the Bama Ballroom Classic logo on it. A triumphant night for team DLDancers. Next month is the cha-cha. Can’t wait!