MLX 2002

An article i wrote after the 2002 MLX. 2003 saw the third mlx, and many of the observations i make in this article were realised last year. i did not participate in mlx 2003 as a volunteer.

What is an exchange?
The exchange is a long-standing tradition in the international lindy scene, with the basic principle being that a particular city ‘hosts’ an exchange, inviting dancers from all over the world and country to descend en masse to dance with the locals. The locals usually host visitors in their own homes, with the implication being, of course, that when they visit their guest’s home town they will be hosted in exchange. The exchanges are almost exclusively based on social dancing events, and usually last a weekend. The overall intention is to showcase the local lindy scene, and to dance like crazy things, sleeping only the bare minimum.

It’s all about social dancing, and the schedules are pretty bloody demanding. Dancing may start in the afternoon, followed by an evening dance til, say, midnight, and then late night dancing continuing on til the wee hours. And it’s not all lindy. There’s plenty of room for blues dancing (which makes sense when you’ve been dancing for nigh on ten hours… a little close-up leaning into your partner provides breathing room… maybe), shag and all those other lindy-associated dances.

In the states (where domestic travel is cheaper than here in Australia), dancers will gather in possies and truck on over to the host city. Carpooling is another tradition, especially between closer cities. It is a mark of honour to have spent far more hours dancing than sleeping or eating… or anything else at exchanges, but it’s not unheard of for the host city to organise local sight seeing trips, or daytime, non-dancing events. The organisers usually produce a t-shirt commemorating the exchange, and these are quite often a mark of the seasoned swinger - a little in-house reference to how far a dancer will travel for an exchange. Online resources are an essential part of organising exchanges, with websites devote either to advertising exchanges generally (such as www.lindyexchange.com), or to a specific exchange. Exchanges are discussed at length online on bulletin boards (perhaps the most well-known of which is yehoodi), chatrooms and so on. If you’ve still no idea as to what an exchange entails, just type ‘lindy exchange’ into google and you’ll get a million responses. The Americans in particular really dig this stuff. Probably because there’s so many of them. But there are European and Asian exchanges. And an Australian one.

The MLX
2002 saw the second Melbourne Lindy Exchange, funded by Matthew Riddle’s Swingshift company, and organised and run by a host of volunteer and some paid labour. Unlike the international exchanges, the MLX has in both years been run with workshops, although 2002 saw a reduction in the number of classes and an emphasis on social events. While this is not strictly in accordance with the ‘true’ spirit of lindy, in the Australian context geography, a smallish lindy scene and inexperience make workshops an important aspect of the MLX.

The Australian Exchange: Geographical and cultural context
Australia is geographically huge - it’s an hour and a half flight from Melbourne to Sydney, an hour from Hobart to Melbourne, a couple of hours from Brisbane to Melbourne and five hours from Melbourne to Perth. And there’s very little in between (well, sure, there are all those little country towns, but Melbourne, the second biggest city only has 3 million residents. The whole country only has about 15 billion people living here). Flights are expensive. You’ll pay at least AUS200 between Melbourne and Sydney. If you book ahead. And driving is prohibitively long and tiring. You’ll take a couple of days to drive from Melbourne to Sydney. Or one loooong day.

Melbourne has the biggest lindy scene in the country, with between 4 and 5 thousand dancers registered on the books of the four major swing schools. There are maybe 500 regular social dancers, though you’d see perhaps a 100 of those more than once during a month. There are perhaps 50 hardcore, more than once a week social dancers. These are of course guesstimate figures, based on my own experiences in the last couple of years. There are far fewer lindy dancers in the other major cities, with schools and societies in Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart and Adelaide.

The lindy scene in Australia is relatively young. We have had lindy classes in Melbourne since the mid eighties, though the biggest schools have only been running classes since 1998 or so. We do not receive many international teaching guests. A year would see perhaps three or four ‘celebrity’ teaching couples visit the country. And they don’t visit every city. The MLX in 2001 was the first Australian exchange, though there are some traditionally annual dancing events (such as the Lismore lindy camp). The Australian swing scene, particularly in Melbourne, is dominated by the dance schools, with the majority of dancers devoting their dancing time solely to classes, with perhaps an irregular amount of social dancing. In Melbourne, the events devoted to social lindy dancing are run almost exclusively by schools, or are in some way affiliated with the schools (with a class being taught at the beginning of the night). I can think of only four or five events run in the past year devoted to social dancing and without school affiliation. There is some social dancing to live bands (and Melbourne does have a vibrant jazz scene), but this is irregular, and often difficult to discover without insider knowledge or extensive research. There are no clubs devoted solely to lindy hop.

The Australian Exchange: MLX as a fore-runner
It makes sense, then to involve workshops in the MLX. Inter-state visitors can combine classes taught by international celebrity and local teachers with social dancing and sightseeing. This makes the exchange more expensive in one hit, if dancers wish to do both workshops and social dancing, but there of course the option to do only social dancing.
As far as negatives go, regarding the MLX, the timing can be a problem - November in Melbourne can be bloody hot, as it was this year. It’s nice to see the sun in a city which at times seems perpetually overcast, but it did make airconditioning a necessity. The growth of the MLX since the previous year also meant that a more comprehensive organisational structure was necessary, although this is a factor that would not have affected the punters. The sheer scale of the 2002 MLX, with the implication that 2003 will be even bigger, demands a highly organised team of workers, and while many of us who were involved in both now have some fairly serious experience and skills under our belts, I would argue that future MLXs will demand increasing levels of commitment, practical skills and problem solving abilities. Running an exchange for so many people from such diverse dancing backgrounds and from so many different places is demanding work, and not to be undertaken lightly. As an organiser, it’s best not to imagine yourself having a carefree, easy weekend of dancing leisure. It’s unlikely you’ll get more than a few dances, and you’ll probably not get enough sleep. And it’s also likely that you’ll not have the time you’d like to catch up with visiting friends.

Despite the importance of workshops, it was possible to have a healthy (or excessive) amount of dancing doing only social dancing at MLX. I would hope for the MLX to eventually become a purely social dancing exchange, yet this might not be possible with such a young scene, with so many dancers who aren’t experienced social dancers. The success of the MLX - measured in the positive feedback from punters - might serve as encouragement for those brave enough to hold their own Australian exchange. I know I’d very much like to attend an exchange devoted solely to social dancing, in another city where I have no commitments as organiser or volunteer.

There have not been so many international visitors to MLX. This is in large part a result of Australia’s distance from the other high profile dancing countries. The 2002 MLX saw an increase in international and interstate dancers, a decrease in the number of workshops and an increase in the number of social dancing events. And if we’re talking success, perhaps one of the nicest parts of MLX was meeting new people from all over the place. We could argue that the MLX helps to develop a national lindy hop community. Hosting inter-state guests has made me feel that there are people I can comfortably visit and stay with in other cities, and I’ve made some good friends during the MLX in 2001 and 2002. It was nice to put faces to the names I know on the swingtalk board, which is my only real way of keeping in contact with lindy dancers in the rest of the country.

Despite my comments about the difficult aspects of organising an exchange, I would argue unequivocally, that exchanges are to the benefit to the lindy scene in Australia, a tradition we should take up with all the enthusiasm we bring to our dancing. Exchanges, with their emphasis on social dancing, provide hosts and guests with an opportunity not only to dance like nuts, but to make contact with other dancers in a community that is divided by geography and internal politics.