I don't intend for this request to be inflammatory.
When someone I know asks about swing dancing I have about three or four clips which I think perfectly represent what I love about swing - the epitome if you will. The clips are usually famous (Hellzapoppin', ULHS Fast 2006, ULHS Charleston 2005, etc).
I personally believe these clips accurately depict a distinct difference between "The Swing" and swing dancing with which I identify.
I'm genuinely curious which video clips blues dancers think best represent the dance with which they identify. Are there those one or two clips that every time you watch you say to yourself, "F yes! Look! Look how GD cool this is. This is so different than the popular perception."
Please share with me for I am ignorant. Thanks!
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I'm interested to see where this one goes. My gut feeling is that it's a little harder for a blues clip to reach iconic status because it's one of those dances they call more of a dancers' dance, and less of a spectators' dance.
I say this not as one seeking to answer your question, but as one seeking to expand it.
Damon and Heidi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwXbXhv0aeY
3rd Annual Rhythmic Arts Festival Slow Blues Finals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiU6XW-Qg5A
Ogden and Amanda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13RBVNbEyY
Mike and Eden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-mxEKFCFsI&feature=related
(This one I just saw today for the first time, and I think it's really classy.)
Thank you for the clips so far. I was hoping more people participating in the blues/"the blues" conversation would have chimed in.
If there is a misconception about what real blues is then expose the real blues to me and the yehoodi community. Or perhaps you could even post bad blues next to real blues to show the effect of good bluesing.
As far as I can see they are both the same. Prove me wrong!
I love how THIS CLIP is one of YouTubes most related videos to the Damon and Heidi clip.
Funny... the clip description on that one says:
"Me & Morgan getting off "
I'm just sayin.
It also doesn't have anything to do with either blues dancing OR "blues dancing". They're only linked because they share two tags (and the second only has 3 tags to begin with).
1. Slow - which doesn't mean anything.
2. Grind - which is the name of one of the moves Damon and Heidi are demonstrating.
If the description in clip 2 said, "Me & my shorty getting off," it would be linked to a slow lindy clip that demonstrated a "shorty george".
Quoted from "Dr. Feelgood" Throwing in two cents...this one is probably the one I
get asked about/hear about the most often:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RNVpNbZrcX8
OMG. I just watched this clip 5 times in a row.
I went to a concert once and there was this little hippie dude outside (blonde dreads, bob marley tshirt, hemp shorts, the whole nine yards) and he was trying to get me to purchase some of his wares. An eloquent salesperson, he said, "If you buy this one, it's like whoa, but if you buy this one, it's like WHHOOOA."
Quoted from "SliceyJ" Ogden and Amanda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13RBVNbEyY
Is this clip w/o sound, or is it just me?
Quote Mike and Eden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-mxEKFCFsI&feature=related
(This one I just saw today for the first time, and I think it's really classy.)
This one is fantastic dancing...but what about it is Blues?
Classic Jazz steps, into Fox Trot (or One Step), then Bal Swing, a great choreographed floor move, a little free style (although still looking like stylized Bal Swing), and into Lindy just at the end of the clip. Absolutely fantastic dancing! But about it is Blues? I'd put this one up as a great example for fusion long before I'd put it up as a great example of Blues. ;-) (if you just heard the sound of a huge kettle of warms opening up, you probably weren't imagining it...)
Personally I like to show people the high-res clips from Lindy Library.
http://www.lindylibrary.com/main/index.php?searchword=blues&option=com_search&Itemid=5
---
Edit: Bryn, thanks for that clip, fantastic! Two of my favorite people to watch at the top of their game. Great stuff!
Ahem! As I was going to say before the server was so rudely overrun by rabbits:
I had previously seen the RAF clip and the Damon/Heidi subtitled clip, and they're probably the clips I would have submitted if pushed. The other stuff is fun times, too.
Quoted from "Zenin"
Quoted from "SliceyJ" Ogden and Amanda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13RBVNbEyY
Is this clip w/o sound, or is it just me?
No, I didn't get any sound on it either. Sad day.
Quoted from "Zenin"
Quote Mike and Eden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-mxEKFCFsI&feature=related
(This one I just saw today for the first time, and I think it's really classy.)
This one is fantastic dancing...but what about it is Blues?
That's something like the question I was going to ask. This thread seems to have spun out of the ever-present 'there's-blues-and-then-there's-"blues"' kvetch that flared up most recently in the Oberlin Blues Spectacular thread.
One position that people seem to take on the distinction is that blues dancing is real dancing, while "quote-blues-dancing" is a fancy name for making out with no real merit or substance, dancewise. It seems, though, that there's a separate but related distinction that also gets made: some argue that any dancing sufficiently far removed from a certain historical continuum of dances or of movement principles or what-have-you doesn't really qualify as blues dance, and needs some kind of separate name, even if you dance it to blues music, and /especially/ if you don't.
Mike and Eden seem to my unpracticed eye to be skirting the edges of the second distinction, and I can't say for sure on which side they fall.
I'm mostly sympathetic to Zenin's point of view here, but I have a few exceptions to take:
Classic jazz steps? Take this with a grain of salt, because my skills of a historian are pretty weak, but I'll bet many classic jazz steps were influenced by preclassic blues steps, and I'm definitely getting a certain blackbottom vibe from their tandem work at the beginning.
I can't answer yea or nay for one-step, but if you watch Mike's pulse, it looks like what I'd call "not particularly foxtrot". Whether it's blues or not, I'm not prepared to say, but I hear pulse is a pretty important distinction that the blues purists like to draw.
I think I see where you're coming from on bal-swing, but I think I disagree. 'Tain't whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it, and if I saw that way in the middle of a bal-swing dance, I'd be a little weirded. Can't say whether it's blues, but for now I'll say it's not bal-swing.
As far as lindy hop towards the end... the same caveat applies. It does look like they're getting some kind of a sugar push at the end, and I'm a little surprised you didn't try to pass it off as west coast swing. :-)
Quoted from "Zenin"
Personally I like to show people the high-res clips from Lindy Library.
http://www.lindylibrary.com/main/index.php?searchword=blues&option=com_search&Itemid=5
Blues comes in many forms- there is no 'one' way of doing it, and while Mike and Edan's routine isn't what people often see at blues dances, I think it is blues dancing. Fantastic routine! Seems more like historical blues dancing to me, which unless I'm sorely misinformed, has both blackbottom and ballroom influences. And just because they did a sugar push at the end doesn't mean it ain't blues, or that it suddenly becomes west coast.
I think this clip is a good clip of one way of blues dancing. Anyways, I don't really care for the 'is it blues or is it not' discussion- good dancing is good dancing and this clip is good dancing. So, people wanting to see an example of good dancing that probably fits into the blues category would like this clip.
Quoted from "fiddletree" Blues comes in many forms- there is no 'one' way of doing it, and while Mike and Edan's routine isn't what people often see at blues dances, I think it is blues dancing. Fantastic routine! Seems more like historical blues dancing to me, which unless I'm sorely misinformed, has both blackbottom and ballroom influences.
The style of blues that was commonly danced at the Savoy ("ballroomin blues") has strong ballroom influences. Brenda and Shaheed's routine, when they are doing partnered sections, draws from the same influences. The song B&S are dancing to is grittier than the one M&E use, which shows up in their movement.
Mike and Evita's is clearly more, for lack of a better description, ballroom-like than a lot of other examples of that style of blues. I think it would be fair to call it a hybrid style. (it's certainly not a pure foxtrot either) But that is just what fits the music - a blues song in the style of Duke Ellington.
Are there any clips from the Blues detractors like Swifty aside from the video posted in the BOOBS thread? I'd like to see if there's a disconnect with what you're posting and what Swifty would post.
Just for the record - that video clip I posted in the other thread was simply the first one that came up when I searched for one of the BOOBS people I wasn't familiar with. Nothing more went into selecting that.
I honestly wouldn't know any specific clips to look for as an example of definitive Blues Dance, but if someone were to ask me to post something I considered good dancing by people associated with Blues Dancing, I'd probably look for some of the same people mentioned already on this thread. People like Ogden/Amanda, Josh/Davona, etc. that I consider just good dancers, period.
Quoted from "SliceyJ" Ogden and Amanda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13RBVNbEyY
Is this clip w/o sound, or is it just me?
No, unfortunately we don't have that clip with sound. That's our ALHC competition routine from 2001. We've definitely changed a lot since then, but 2000-2001 was where it all started for us.
No, unfortunately we don't have that clip with sound. That's our ALHC competition routine from 2001. We've definitely changed a lot since then, but 2000-2001 was where it all started for us.
Prompted by this thread, I finally got around to figuring out how to transcode the video to a format that could be uploaded to Youtube with sound. I removed the old one and added this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avg_DkPF6xE
To me, this is how I see blues dancing - plain and simple (for the follower): listening to the music and following your lead. And for the lead: have fun, don't overstep boundaries, and make her look good. (Yeah, before I get flamed, I know it's strictly not blues dancing, but c'mon ... it's awesome).
"Change your thoughts, and you change your world" - Norman Vincent Peale.
Quoted from "OpeningMinds" To me, this is how I see blues dancing - plain and simple (for the follower): listening to the music and following your lead. And for the lead: have fun, don't overstep boundaries, and make her look good. (Yeah, before I get flamed, I know it's strictly not blues dancing, but c'mon ... it's awesome).
Dawn is freakin' awesome- but also, it ain't always the lead making her look good, she looks good on her own no matter what.
But you are right. Listening to the music is so very important in blues (yes, in lindy too of course, before anyone tries to argue with me), and Dawn epitomizes musicality and how to respond to the music. I have a few clips of her dancing I need to post somewhere. That woman has more musicality in her little finger than most people have in their whole bodies.
I love how THIS CLIP is one of YouTubes most related videos to the Damon and Heidi clip.
Funny... the clip description on that one says:
"Me & Morgan getting off "
I'm just sayin.
It also doesn't have anything to do with either blues dancing OR "blues dancing". They're only linked because they share two tags (and the second only has 3 tags to begin with).
1. Slow - which doesn't mean anything.
2. Grind - which is the name of one of the moves Damon and Heidi are demonstrating.
If the description in clip 2 said, "Me & my shorty getting off," it would be linked to a slow lindy clip that demonstrated a "shorty george".
In other words, you're not sayin' much.
Yeah, but maybe them thar Youtubes agree with me... :spineyes:
Quote The style of blues that was commonly danced at the Savoy ("ballroomin blues")....
I ve come across no reference to the term blues ballroomin in relation to the Savoy. I have heard various references to the same dance being called The Ballroom in the Swing Era, and which incidentally probably owed more to adagio than any ballroom dance. Austin and Austin were the classic Whitey s Lindy Hopper's exponents, whilst Little Nick and Iva were the same for the Third Generation. It was one of two slow dances that evolved at the Savoy, the other being Walking The Floor.
Neither is there any record of it being called a blues dance back then. That misunderstanding seems to have arisen from Mura Dehn s at times inaccurate captioning of her film The Spirit Moves. Pepsi Bethel taught the Jiving Lindy Hoppers a dance he called The Blues in the mid 1980s, which apparently was originally created for his Authentic Jazz Dance Company in the 1970s. On reflection it seemed to have had more in common with Walking The Floor.
I have yet to read a plausible explanation as to why current enthusiasts, who are of course rightly dancing in whatever way they choose to, try to generically group together such a wide variety of mostly unrelated dance forms, other than that they are all danced to slow tempos? Why not enjoy and value the original dances under their original names, or specifically change them in the cases where new interpretations have made them look significantly different? Sustaining what appears to be the current confusion, serves to largely wall off newcomers from the actual history of popular dancing to jazz music.
This one is fantastic dancing...but what about it is Blues?
Classic Jazz steps, into Fox Trot (or One Step), then Bal Swing, a great choreographed floor move, a little free style (although still looking like stylized Bal Swing), and into Lindy just at the end of the clip. Absolutely fantastic dancing! But about it is Blues?
Ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. Let's take a systematic approach to figuring out whether or not this is blues, shall we?
Elements of the Blues Aesthetic, as researched and summarized by Damon Stone:
Quote 1. An athletic, grounded, "Earth as Center" or "get-down" body posture and movement, characterized by the weight being held on the balls of the feet, the knees bent over the balls of the feet, the hips pushed back, and the front of the shoulders or the sternum pitched forward over the knees. In this posture a dancer should be able to step in any direction without having to shift their body first.
Check.
Quote 2. An asymmetry and polyphonic look/feel to the body, characterized by an equality of body parts. No limb or part is given precedence over another, but they all work together both in a simultaneous and serialized fashion. The center of "energy", focus and even weight shifting moves through various parts of the body; polycentric.
Check.
Quote 3. Rhythmic movement. Not just auditory but visual. Rather than a single rhythm being used in/with the body mutiple meters or rhythms are used. Articulated movement in the torso (chest, rib cage, pelvis, butt) identifying and emphasizing different rhythms.
I'd say so. Especially during the solo bit.
Quote 4. Improvisation between dancers and on their own movements. All based, no... entrenched in the rhythm of the music.
Well it's a choreographed routine, so at the time it was performed, it wasn't improvised (though I'm sure they probably did some improvising to help them devise the choreography). The routine is, however, very rhythmic.
Quote 5. A drawing of the beats, dancing in the space between the beats, pushing and pulling creating a sense of tension both in the body and the body moving through space, while remaining loose and relaxed. The sense of moving through molasses or mud. A relaxed, lazy element to the interaction with the tempo and beats of a song, as if it doesn't matter if you are late, but somehow without seeming to rush always being on time.
Here's where I'm not quite convinced. They're pretty much on top of the music.
Is that enough to qualify it as Blues? It's walking a line, maybe, but if the timing had been stretched a little more, I'd say it would definitely be Blues. And as such, I'd say that clip qualifies as an example of what Blues Dance has the potential to look like.
Quoted from "terry monaghan" I ve come across no reference to the term blues ballroomin in relation to the Savoy. I have heard various references to the same dance being called The Ballroom in the Swing Era, and which incidentally probably owed more to adagio than any ballroom dance. Austin and Austin were the classic Whitey s Lindy Hopper's exponents, whilst Little Nick and Iva were the same for the Third Generation. It was one of two slow dances that evolved at the Savoy, the other being Walking The Floor.
Neither is there any record of it being called a blues dance back then. That misunderstanding seems to have arisen from Mura Dehn s at times inaccurate captioning of her film The Spirit Moves. Pepsi Bethel taught the Jiving Lindy Hoppers a dance he called The Blues in the mid 1980s, which apparently was originally created for his Authentic Jazz Dance Company in the 1970s. On reflection it seemed to have had more in common with Walking The Floor.
Cool, thanks for the clarification :)
Quote I have yet to read a plausible explanation as to why current enthusiasts, who are of course rightly dancing in whatever way they choose to, try to generically group together such a wide variety of mostly unrelated dance forms, other than that they are all danced to slow tempos? Why not enjoy and value the original dances under their original names, or specifically change them in the cases where new interpretations have made them look significantly different? Sustaining what appears to be the current confusion, serves to largely wall off newcomers from the actual history of popular dancing to jazz music.
Well for one, dance enthusiasts aren't necessarily dance historians. It might just not be an important distinction for them. Also, it's convenient to lump the dances under one name. "Down Home Blues/The Ballroom/Walking The Floor/Moochin/Jookin/Slow Drag" doesn't quite have that nice ring to it, even if it's more historically accurate. In fact it's my understanding that a LOT of unrelated dances were done on any given night at the Savoy, but back then it was just called dancing. If we just call it dancing today, people will mostly think of modern popular dancing, so we've got to come up with some kind of name (preferrably ten words or less :P ) to lump it all under. Since blues is the predominant music and most of the dances that fall under the category "blues dancing" are in fact blues dances that evolved more at the blues bars and juke joints than at swing ballrooms, there's a little bit of overlooking if a homoplasic dance like The Ballroom would be more appropriately labelled "slow partnered vernacular jazz dancing."
There's even some debate about what the historical names are, which dance claims what name, who can claim a name for a dance, etc. I recall a thread on gargleblaster about what exactly "Jookin" blues referred to - it was a pretty volatile topic.
Elements of the Blues Aesthetic, as researched and summarized by Damon Stone:
...
Quote 2. An asymmetry and polyphonic look/feel to the body, characterized by an equality of body parts. No limb or part is given precedence over another, but they all work together both in a simultaneous and serialized fashion. The center of "energy", focus and even weight shifting moves through various parts of the body; polycentric.
I'm curious why this particular definition of a blues aesthetic has become so enshrined. Point 2 in particular sounds rather incoherent to me. Asymmetry characterized by equality of body parts? (Asymmetry would imply an inequality or imbalance of some sort.) Both a simultaneous and serialized fashion? (That leaves nothing out and thus isn't saying anything.) Etc...
clips which embody blues dancing
maryx
I don't intend for this request to be inflammatory.
When someone I know asks about swing dancing I have about three or four clips which I think perfectly represent what I love about swing - the epitome if you will. The clips are usually famous (Hellzapoppin', ULHS Fast 2006, ULHS Charleston 2005, etc).
I personally believe these clips accurately depict a distinct difference between "The Swing" and swing dancing with which I identify.
I'm genuinely curious which video clips blues dancers think best represent the dance with which they identify. Are there those one or two clips that every time you watch you say to yourself, "F yes! Look! Look how GD cool this is. This is so different than the popular perception."
Please share with me for I am ignorant. Thanks!
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Foehg
I'm interested to see where this one goes. My gut feeling is that it's a little harder for a blues clip to reach iconic status because it's one of those dances they call more of a dancers' dance, and less of a spectators' dance.
I say this not as one seeking to answer your question, but as one seeking to expand it.
goofball
Grit Grinder Girlies (ALHC 1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0uJZXcmC6A
SliceyJ
The Grit Grinders ruled.
I like these ones:
Damon and Heidi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwXbXhv0aeY
3rd Annual Rhythmic Arts Festival Slow Blues Finals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiU6XW-Qg5A
Ogden and Amanda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13RBVNbEyY
Mike and Eden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-mxEKFCFsI&feature=related
(This one I just saw today for the first time, and I think it's really classy.)
maryx
Thank you for the clips so far. I was hoping more people participating in the blues/"the blues" conversation would have chimed in.
If there is a misconception about what real blues is then expose the real blues to me and the yehoodi community. Or perhaps you could even post bad blues next to real blues to show the effect of good bluesing.
As far as I can see they are both the same. Prove me wrong!
Ryan M
I love how THIS CLIP is one of YouTubes most related videos to the Damon and Heidi clip.
Dr. Feelgood
Throwing in two cents...this one is probably the one I
get asked about/hear about the most often:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RNVpNbZrcX8
You'll probably get more responses soon, Maryx. Hopefully
the next few clips will be lit better (the hall was pretty dark).
Beckto
Funny... the clip description on that one says:
"Me & Morgan getting off "
I'm just sayin.
Chivalrous
It also doesn't have anything to do with either blues dancing OR "blues dancing". They're only linked because they share two tags (and the second only has 3 tags to begin with).
1. Slow - which doesn't mean anything.
2. Grind - which is the name of one of the moves Damon and Heidi are demonstrating.
If the description in clip 2 said, "Me & my shorty getting off," it would be linked to a slow lindy clip that demonstrated a "shorty george".
In other words, you're not sayin' much.
Martinis do not contain vodka. —Rachel Maddow
goofball
OMG. I just watched this clip 5 times in a row.
I went to a concert once and there was this little hippie dude outside (blonde dreads, bob marley tshirt, hemp shorts, the whole nine yards) and he was trying to get me to purchase some of his wares. An eloquent salesperson, he said, "If you buy this one, it's like whoa, but if you buy this one, it's like WHHOOOA."
Damon and Heidi are WHHOOOA.
bryn
I love this routine by Brenda and Shaheed
swingkittenpsu1
Thanks Bryn, that routine in a word was freakin amazing. Here is the lovely Devona from the same weekend.
Zenin
Is this clip w/o sound, or is it just me?
This one is fantastic dancing...but what about it is Blues?
Classic Jazz steps, into Fox Trot (or One Step), then Bal Swing, a great choreographed floor move, a little free style (although still looking like stylized Bal Swing), and into Lindy just at the end of the clip. Absolutely fantastic dancing! But about it is Blues? I'd put this one up as a great example for fusion long before I'd put it up as a great example of Blues. ;-)
(if you just heard the sound of a huge kettle of warms opening up, you probably weren't imagining it...)
Personally I like to show people the high-res clips from Lindy Library.
http://www.lindylibrary.com/main/index.php?searchword=blues&option=com_search&Itemid=5
---
Edit: Bryn, thanks for that clip, fantastic! Two of my favorite people to watch at the top of their game. Great stuff!
Foehg
Ahem! As I was going to say before the server was so rudely overrun by rabbits:
I had previously seen the RAF clip and the Damon/Heidi subtitled clip, and they're probably the clips I would have submitted if pushed. The other stuff is fun times, too.
No, I didn't get any sound on it either. Sad day.
That's something like the question I was going to ask. This thread seems to have spun out of the ever-present 'there's-blues-and-then-there's-"blues"' kvetch that flared up most recently in the Oberlin Blues Spectacular thread.
One position that people seem to take on the distinction is that blues dancing is real dancing, while "quote-blues-dancing" is a fancy name for making out with no real merit or substance, dancewise. It seems, though, that there's a separate but related distinction that also gets made: some argue that any dancing sufficiently far removed from a certain historical continuum of dances or of movement principles or what-have-you doesn't really qualify as blues dance, and needs some kind of separate name, even if you dance it to blues music, and /especially/ if you don't.
Mike and Eden seem to my unpracticed eye to be skirting the edges of the second distinction, and I can't say for sure on which side they fall.
I'm mostly sympathetic to Zenin's point of view here, but I have a few exceptions to take:
Classic jazz steps? Take this with a grain of salt, because my skills of a historian are pretty weak, but I'll bet many classic jazz steps were influenced by preclassic blues steps, and I'm definitely getting a certain blackbottom vibe from their tandem work at the beginning.
I can't answer yea or nay for one-step, but if you watch Mike's pulse, it looks like what I'd call "not particularly foxtrot". Whether it's blues or not, I'm not prepared to say, but I hear pulse is a pretty important distinction that the blues purists like to draw.
I think I see where you're coming from on bal-swing, but I think I disagree. 'Tain't whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it, and if I saw that way in the middle of a bal-swing dance, I'd be a little weirded. Can't say whether it's blues, but for now I'll say it's not bal-swing.
As far as lindy hop towards the end... the same caveat applies. It does look like they're getting some kind of a sugar push at the end, and I'm a little surprised you didn't try to pass it off as west coast swing. :-)
Hear, hear!
fiddletree
Blues comes in many forms- there is no 'one' way of doing it, and while Mike and Edan's routine isn't what people often see at blues dances, I think it is blues dancing. Fantastic routine! Seems more like historical blues dancing to me, which unless I'm sorely misinformed, has both blackbottom and ballroom influences. And just because they did a sugar push at the end doesn't mean it ain't blues, or that it suddenly becomes west coast.
I think this clip is a good clip of one way of blues dancing. Anyways, I don't really care for the 'is it blues or is it not' discussion- good dancing is good dancing and this clip is good dancing. So, people wanting to see an example of good dancing that probably fits into the blues category would like this clip.
SliceyJ
Wow...yeah...that's really cool!
Signet
The style of blues that was commonly danced at the Savoy ("ballroomin blues") has strong ballroom influences. Brenda and Shaheed's routine, when they are doing partnered sections, draws from the same influences. The song B&S are dancing to is grittier than the one M&E use, which shows up in their movement.
Mike and Evita's is clearly more, for lack of a better description, ballroom-like than a lot of other examples of that style of blues. I think it would be fair to call it a hybrid style. (it's certainly not a pure foxtrot either) But that is just what fits the music - a blues song in the style of Duke Ellington.
- James
SliceyJ
Whooooops...I meant to link to that clip. My bad.
:roll:
Marcelo
Are there any clips from the Blues detractors like Swifty aside from the video posted in the BOOBS thread? I'd like to see if there's a disconnect with what you're posting and what Swifty would post.
Swifty
Just for the record - that video clip I posted in the other thread was simply the first one that came up when I searched for one of the BOOBS people I wasn't familiar with. Nothing more went into selecting that.
I honestly wouldn't know any specific clips to look for as an example of definitive Blues Dance, but if someone were to ask me to post something I considered good dancing by people associated with Blues Dancing, I'd probably look for some of the same people mentioned already on this thread. People like Ogden/Amanda, Josh/Davona, etc. that I consider just good dancers, period.
√4 = Rainbows
Ogden
No, unfortunately we don't have that clip with sound. That's our ALHC competition routine from 2001. We've definitely changed a lot since then, but 2000-2001 was where it all started for us.
shaun
Prompted by this thread, I finally got around to figuring out how to transcode the video to a format that could be uploaded to Youtube with sound. I removed the old one and added this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avg_DkPF6xE
[/url]
OpeningMinds
To me, this is how I see blues dancing - plain and simple (for the follower): listening to the music and following your lead. And for the lead: have fun, don't overstep boundaries, and make her look good. (Yeah, before I get flamed, I know it's strictly not blues dancing, but c'mon ... it's awesome).
"Change your thoughts, and you change your world" - Norman Vincent Peale.
CafeSavoy
blues and lindy in one clip.
Zenin
Great clip! I wonder if the LoC realizes the image is reversed (left is right and right is left). :D
fiddletree
Dawn is freakin' awesome- but also, it ain't always the lead making her look good, she looks good on her own no matter what.
But you are right. Listening to the music is so very important in blues (yes, in lindy too of course, before anyone tries to argue with me), and Dawn epitomizes musicality and how to respond to the music. I have a few clips of her dancing I need to post somewhere. That woman has more musicality in her little finger than most people have in their whole bodies.
Beckto
Yeah, but maybe them thar Youtubes agree with me... :spineyes:
terry monaghan
Signet wrote:
I ve come across no reference to the term blues ballroomin in relation to the Savoy. I have heard various references to the same dance being called The Ballroom in the Swing Era, and which incidentally probably owed more to adagio than any ballroom dance. Austin and Austin were the classic Whitey s Lindy Hopper's exponents, whilst Little Nick and Iva were the same for the Third Generation. It was one of two slow dances that evolved at the Savoy, the other being Walking The Floor.
Neither is there any record of it being called a blues dance back then. That misunderstanding seems to have arisen from Mura Dehn s at times inaccurate captioning of her film The Spirit Moves. Pepsi Bethel taught the Jiving Lindy Hoppers a dance he called The Blues in the mid 1980s, which apparently was originally created for his Authentic Jazz Dance Company in the 1970s. On reflection it seemed to have had more in common with Walking The Floor.
I have yet to read a plausible explanation as to why current enthusiasts, who are of course rightly dancing in whatever way they choose to, try to generically group together such a wide variety of mostly unrelated dance forms, other than that they are all danced to slow tempos? Why not enjoy and value the original dances under their original names, or specifically change them in the cases where new interpretations have made them look significantly different? Sustaining what appears to be the current confusion, serves to largely wall off newcomers from the actual history of popular dancing to jazz music.
bryn
Ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. Let's take a systematic approach to figuring out whether or not this is blues, shall we?
Elements of the Blues Aesthetic, as researched and summarized by Damon Stone:
Check.
Check.
I'd say so. Especially during the solo bit.
Well it's a choreographed routine, so at the time it was performed, it wasn't improvised (though I'm sure they probably did some improvising to help them devise the choreography). The routine is, however, very rhythmic.
Here's where I'm not quite convinced. They're pretty much on top of the music.
Is that enough to qualify it as Blues? It's walking a line, maybe, but if the timing had been stretched a little more, I'd say it would definitely be Blues. And as such, I'd say that clip qualifies as an example of what Blues Dance has the potential to look like.
Signet
Cool, thanks for the clarification :)
Well for one, dance enthusiasts aren't necessarily dance historians. It might just not be an important distinction for them. Also, it's convenient to lump the dances under one name. "Down Home Blues/The Ballroom/Walking The Floor/Moochin/Jookin/Slow Drag" doesn't quite have that nice ring to it, even if it's more historically accurate. In fact it's my understanding that a LOT of unrelated dances were done on any given night at the Savoy, but back then it was just called dancing. If we just call it dancing today, people will mostly think of modern popular dancing, so we've got to come up with some kind of name (preferrably ten words or less :P ) to lump it all under. Since blues is the predominant music and most of the dances that fall under the category "blues dancing" are in fact blues dances that evolved more at the blues bars and juke joints than at swing ballrooms, there's a little bit of overlooking if a homoplasic dance like The Ballroom would be more appropriately labelled "slow partnered vernacular jazz dancing."
There's even some debate about what the historical names are, which dance claims what name, who can claim a name for a dance, etc. I recall a thread on gargleblaster about what exactly "Jookin" blues referred to - it was a pretty volatile topic.
- James
Phlurg
I'm curious why this particular definition of a blues aesthetic has become so enshrined. Point 2 in particular sounds rather incoherent to me. Asymmetry characterized by equality of body parts? (Asymmetry would imply an inequality or imbalance of some sort.) Both a simultaneous and serialized fashion? (That leaves nothing out and thus isn't saying anything.) Etc...
IMHO. Your friendly curmudgeon.
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