the dark side of the swinguverse

I think you raise very important points, FXH. This is something that I take up in my work – I worry that when we valorise a particular style of dancing because it’s representative of a particular ethnic or racial identity, we have to be really really careful.
On the one hand, I’m with Trev – this stuff doesn’t read like lindy hop to me. That’s partly because it’s not (it’s west coast swing, and that’s quite a different social and technical animal. And as you point out, FXH, it’s a peculiarly American phenomenon. And far more popular than lindy).
I have trouble with the sort of stuff getting around on Melbourne dance floors that looks like that being called lindy – and Trev has made that point as well. In most cases the term ‘lindy’ is under-used in Melbourne. The predominant term is ‘swing’ or ‘swing dancing’ – and lindy is hardly used at all. There’s this curious distinction between ‘8 count swing’ and ‘6 count’ in class descriptions by the local school, and this distinction has entered the common vernacular. It’s all marketing and regional variations in vernacular to me, so I tend not to stress about it too much. Though it worries me when dancers don’t know what lindy hop is – it’s true. I’ve had to explain the term quite a few times. To people who’ve been dancing a year or more.
That scares me.
And then there’s the issue of music. As I’ve said a million times, that old school stuff really works for the type of lindy I prefer. And I like that music for its humour, its subversiveness, etc. I’m working on a paper right now on why blues dancers might choose to not use the radical feminist/black politics blues music of the 20s. For me, dancing this way to this music is part of a broader political continuum. And writing about dance is another point on that continuum.
But it’s important to point out that the style lindy I favour, which is associated with the old school Harlem doods like the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, is danced by very few Melbourne dancers. In fact, there’s an on going debate about the difference between the way those guys danced and the way the Harlem Hot Shots dance. And a predominant myth amongst ‘Savoy’ style lindy hoppers (ie kids like me) is that the Hot Shots dance just like the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. Which isn’t really the case.
[NB this is kind of a meaningless debate – pure semantics – there were waves of dancers and dances in Harlem at the Savoy during the 30s and 40s and 50s, not to mention each dancer having an individual style. So saying you dance ‘savoy style’ is kind of … meaningless]
I’ve actually heard the argument that ‘revivalist’ lindy hoppers (ie the Hot Shots and other first gen revivalist types) weren’t historically accurate and are technically shitful dancers. Admittedly, that argument was made by Captain Stupidity. But it’s interesting that that idea is being floated in the Melbourne community.
In Melbourne, we see not only a peculiarly Melbourne take on international styles (and America is the dominant influence), but a favouring of ‘smooth style’ lindy (a term used almost exclusively by Australians and meaning something quite different in the US or Europe). A style which has more in common with contemporary dancers like Steven and Virgine (who’d I’d argue are far frickin’ bouncier than anyone in Melbourne – and lack of bounce seems to be the defining factor of ‘smoothness’) than any historic dancers.
There’s been some inroads in terms of trend setting by dancers like those in the Silver Shadows, but only with more experienced, more widely travelled dancers. On the whole, the preference is for smoother lindy hop. See footage of Kevin and Carla from a few years ago for demonstrations.
This lindy is characterised by:
– a distinct lack of triple steps (which are the syncopated steps linking lindy most solidly with the jazz (music and dance) tradition, and incidentally, with the Africanist geneaology. They’re also much more difficult to learn and make you do more steps per minute, so you work harder);
– a very clear lead-follow dynamic (where he leads, she follows, and he is definitely The Boss. She spins a lot and he tends not to do as much moving as she does);
– a more upright stance (though the bent-overedness is associated with Frankie Manning in the late 30s/second wave lindy rather than earlier doods like George Snowden);
– straighter legs and pointed toes (those pointed toes fucking SHIT me – I do not like the look of that. It says white, patriarchal notions of femininity like nobody’s business. The expression ‘gimme de kneebone bent’ is important here – in an Africanist tradition the straight limb signifies death, inactivity, and the bent signifies life, vitality, energy and power. I want to get the fuck DOWN with my unfeminine bent knees and spread legs. I want to bend my arms and wrists and frickin’ MOVE);
– very little bounce if any (which makes the dance look less dynamic – they’re essentially walking through steps like the west coast swingers – lindy is hardcore, it kicks your arse. So you should bounce, and the bounce is essentially an effect of using a jogging-like motion. And that frickin’ kicks your arse and is the reason hardcore lindy hoppers are built like long distance runners. Not academics. The bounce is also there in the music of the period – and you should do as the music says);
And so on.
Essentially, all these things are markers of a particular, ethnically informed bodily aesthetic. Extended legs, pointed toes, etc – white, European, middle class = ballet. Bent limbs, closer to the ground, etc = working class African American vernacular dance. There’s a neat article by Joann Kealiinohomoku where she reads ballet as ‘ethnic dance’. It neatly upsets all the ethnocentric/classcentric traditions of anthropological and sociological dance studies).
….though the latter is often read by contemporary Melbournians as (and brace yourself for this scariness): ‘monkey dancing’. Yes, that’s scary racist shit. But it’s a common opinion. The former is interpreted as ‘sexy’, ‘classy’, ‘stylish’, etc. Girls regularly tell me they don’t want to dance old school because it’s ‘not lady like’. Gack.
There is a wealth of literature on the ethnic and class inscriptions on (of? in?) dance. I can’t go into it here.
Keep in mind that most Melbourne lindy hoppers are white, middle class, urban, hetero kids. The dance is heavily commodified by dance classes, workshop weekends and camps – these doods are sold a particular notion of what dance is and how it works, socially and ideologically. Because they’re younger, they’re also busy developing a sense of themselves as gendered adults. And they’re not about to go exploring radical revisions of dominant gender norms. Noooo way.
So what does it mean for a bunch of white kids like Trev and I to get so fired up about the African American lindy hop tradition?
I spend a big fat chunk of my thesis talking about this.
I’m wary of exoticism creeping in. And I’ve been very critical of the revivalist themes in contemporary swing dance – reviving a dance today as an exact ‘replica’ of an Af-Am v dance is problematic in so many ways. Starting with the idea that saying you’re ‘reviving’ a dance is claiming the dance is dead and gone (which it wasn’t – lindy had simply morphed into other dances and turns up in things like hip hop and krumping and (eek) west coast swing) and ignoring the history of the dance (I have a neat quote from Paul Gilroy about this). And continuing with the scariness of a bunch of white, middle class folks insisting that their way of doing lindy is the ‘only’ way – the historically accurate way. Talk about class and power and cultural appropriation.
It’s all really scary and difficult to negotiate.
So how do I make my position as a fan of this ‘black’ dance tenable? Why don’t I just get into west coast swing?
1. I think that diversity in lindy hop is really important. So I like it that people are dancing however they like to whatever music they like – if you’re dancing, it’s good. But I like diversity, and in Melbourne, some types of lindy are overrepresented. The black history of the dance is seriously neglected.
2. I do as I did in my thesis and begin with the black history of lindy hop. I try to remember the ‘unnameable terrors’ (to quote Gilroy) that were a part of the African diasporic experience under slavery in the US. I try to remember the role Jim Crow legislation (dang, I’m reading articles about it now that are really really distressing) had on black cultural expression in America. I try to remember that the way those people dancing in those clips is informed by their lived experiences, and that I should remember that I will never dance like that.
So I guess I try to think of the dance in cultural context, and not as some discrete package from the past that I can simply unwrap and play with.
I am, utterly, completely committed to the idea that we should remember the dark parts of lindy’s past as well as the nice bits. Because when we remember both, we recognise the power dynamics at work in the revivalist process. And I think it’s important to remember that when I, as a white, urban middle class kid dance de lindy hop I am also reflecting my cultural and ideological position. And as Katrina Hazzard Gordon says, we should remember ‘who has the power to steal from whom’. Step stealing is great (and so’s revivalism), but it’s not cool to not be self reflexive about your own social power and privelage – having the power to revive.
I think it’s also important to remember that lindy is not a vernacular dance any more – unlike something like Salsa or Tango. There are also very few black dancers in the international lindy scene. So there is no one to take the ‘right of reply’ to dominant white discourse. That’s something that scares me.
I don’t really know how to resolve this dilemma. I don’t want to get all orientalist about this and be patronising and do scary stuff. But damn it, that particular type of lindy hop speaks to me.
It really makes me feel the way that insipid honky stuff doesn’t.
As a feminist, I see some really neat opportunities for resisting or challenging gender norms in that black lindy that the white stuff simply doesn’t allow. Resistance is built into that shit and I want to keep that part of the dance tradition alive.
Plus I like the music more. And I really like the way I feel when I’m flinging myself around doing the Big Apple – I like the way that super-energetic, full-on commitment to the dancing gets my endorphines going. And I like the way it says “ha, muthafuckas, I am going to fucking BRING IT”.
…look, I need to think about this more and formulate a more sensible, coherent response. But I just wanted to say ‘yes, I hear you, FXH – I see the issues you’re raising’. And I also want to say ‘yeah, motherfucker – yeah, fucking LINDY HOP!’ with Trev.
Perhaps Stuart Hall can help me out here when he points out that identity is not fixed. It’s necessarily an ever-shifting hybrid. Or state of hybridity. So I don’t have to make a final, definite statement about my feelings about the politics in lindy hop (though I already have) – I can change my mind tomorrow.
And dance _is_ discourse, so it will change and be contextually dependent and also carry the ideological baggage of its participants and observers.

4 Comments

trev says:

30th January, 2007 at 8:19 pm

Great post! I agree completely. I think the dancing is awesome, but if you are going to dance like that, to that kind of music, just don’t go telling people you do “lindy hop”, and don’t go to a lindy hop event and complain that the music is too “old”
Francis Xavier Holden says:

30th January, 2007 at 10:37 pm

I haven’t watched all the clips or heard any of the music. Certainly it’s whitey dancing. Perhaps even a particular brand of USA dancing?
But wouldn’t there be a good case to be made for honkey’s dancing like honkeys and not trying to be wiggas?
Scott says:

31st January, 2007 at 2:57 pm

That dude- Benji, is a contestant in the US show “So You Think You Can Dance”!
dogpossum says:

31st January, 2007 at 5:12 pm

I think you raise very important points, FXH. This is something that I take up in my work – I worry that when we valorise a particular style of dancing because it’s representative of a particular ethnic or racial identity, we have to be really really careful.
On the one hand, I’m with Trev – this stuff doesn’t read like lindy hop to me. That’s partly because it’s not (it’s west coast swing, and that’s quite a different social and technical animal. And as you point out, FXH, it’s a peculiarly American phenomenon. And far more popular than lindy).
I have trouble with the sort of stuff getting around on Melbourne dance floors that looks like that being called lindy – and Trev has made that point as well. In most cases the term ‘lindy’ is under-used in Melbourne. The predominant term is ‘swing’ or ‘swing dancing’ – and lindy is hardly used at all. There’s this curious distinction between ‘8 count swing’ and ‘6 count’ in class descriptions by the local school, and this distinction has entered the common vernacular. It’s all marketing and regional variations in vernacular to me, so I tend not to stress about it too much. Though it worries me when dancers don’t know what lindy hop is – it’s true. I’ve had to explain the term quite a few times. To people who’ve been dancing a year or more.
That scares me.
And then there’s the issue of music. As I’ve said a million times, that old school stuff really works for the type of lindy I prefer. And I like that music for its humour, its subversiveness, etc. I’m working on a paper right now on why blues dancers might choose to not use the radical feminist/black politics blues music of the 20s. For me, dancing this way to this music is part of a broader political continuum. And writing about dance is another point on that continuum.
But it’s important to point out that the style lindy I favour, which is associated with the old school Harlem doods like the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, is danced by very few Melbourne dancers. In fact, there’s an on going debate about the difference between the way those guys danced and the way the Harlem Hot Shots dance. And a predominant myth amongst ‘Savoy’ style lindy hoppers (ie kids like me) is that the Hot Shots dance just like the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. Which isn’t really the case.
[NB this is kind of a meaningless debate – pure semantics – there were waves of dancers and dances in Harlem at the Savoy during the 30s and 40s and 50s, not to mention each dancer having an individual style. So saying you dance ‘savoy style’ is kind of … meaningless]
I’ve actually heard the argument that ‘revivalist’ lindy hoppers (ie the Hot Shots and other first gen revivalist types) weren’t historically accurate and are technically shitful dancers. Admittedly, that argument was made by Captain Stupidity. But it’s interesting that that idea is being floated in the Melbourne community.
In Melbourne, we see not only a peculiarly Melbourne take on international styles (and America is the dominant influence), but a favouring of ‘smooth style’ lindy (a term used almost exclusively by Australians and meaning something quite different in the US or Europe). A style which has more in common with contemporary dancers like Steven and Virgine (who’d I’d argue are far frickin’ bouncier than anyone in Melbourne – and lack of bounce seems to be the defining factor of ‘smoothness’) than any historic dancers.
There’s been some inroads in terms of trend setting by dancers like those in the Silver Shadows, but only with more experienced, more widely travelled dancers. On the whole, the preference is for smoother lindy hop. See footage of Kevin and Carla from a few years ago for demonstrations.
This lindy is characterised by:
– a distinct lack of triple steps (which are the syncopated steps linking lindy most solidly with the jazz (music and dance) tradition, and incidentally, with the Africanist geneaology. They’re also much more difficult to learn and make you do more steps per minute, so you work harder);
– a very clear lead-follow dynamic (where he leads, she follows, and he is definitely The Boss. She spins a lot and he tends not to do as much moving as she does);
– a more upright stance (though the bent-overedness is associated with Frankie Manning in the late 30s/second wave lindy rather than earlier doods like George Snowden);
– straighter legs and pointed toes (those pointed toes fucking SHIT me – I do not like the look of that. It says white, patriarchal notions of femininity like nobody’s business. The expression ‘gimme de kneebone bent’ is important here – in an Africanist tradition the straight limb signifies death, inactivity, and the bent signifies life, vitality, energy and power. I want to get the fuck DOWN with my unfeminine bent knees and spread legs. I want to bend my arms and wrists and frickin’ MOVE);
– very little bounce if any (which makes the dance look less dynamic – they’re essentially walking through steps like the west coast swingers – lindy is hardcore, it kicks your arse. So you should bounce, and the bounce is essentially an effect of using a jogging-like motion. And that frickin’ kicks your arse and is the reason hardcore lindy hoppers are built like long distance runners. Not academics. The bounce is also there in the music of the period – and you should do as the music says);
And so on.
Essentially, all these things are markers of a particular, ethnically informed bodily aesthetic. Extended legs, pointed toes, etc – white, European, middle class = ballet. Bent limbs, closer to the ground, etc = working class African American vernacular dance. There’s a neat article by Joann Kealiinohomoku where she reads ballet as ‘ethnic dance’. It neatly upsets all the ethnocentric/classcentric traditions of anthropological and sociological dance studies).
….though the latter is often read by contemporary Melbournians as (and brace yourself for this scariness): ‘monkey dancing’. Yes, that’s scary racist shit. But it’s a common opinion. The former is interpreted as ‘sexy’, ‘classy’, ‘stylish’, etc. Girls regularly tell me they don’t want to dance old school because it’s ‘not lady like’. Gack.
There is a wealth of literature on the ethnic and class inscriptions on (of? in?) dance. I can’t go into it here.
Keep in mind that most Melbourne lindy hoppers are white, middle class, urban, hetero kids. The dance is heavily commodified by dance classes, workshop weekends and camps – these doods are sold a particular notion of what dance is and how it works, socially and ideologically. Because they’re younger, they’re also busy developing a sense of themselves as gendered adults. And they’re not about to go exploring radical revisions of dominant gender norms. Noooo way.
So what does it mean for a bunch of white kids like Trev and I to get so fired up about the African American lindy hop tradition?
I spend a big fat chunk of my thesis talking about this.
I’m wary of exoticism creeping in. And I’ve been very critical of the revivalist themes in contemporary swing dance – reviving a dance today as an exact ‘replica’ of an Af-Am v dance is problematic in so many ways. Starting with the idea that saying you’re ‘reviving’ a dance is claiming the dance is dead and gone (which it wasn’t – lindy had simply morphed into other dances and turns up in things like hip hop and krumping and (eek) west coast swing) and ignoring the history of the dance (I have a neat quote from Paul Gilroy about this). And continuing with the scariness of a bunch of white, middle class folks insisting that their way of doing lindy is the ‘only’ way – the historically accurate way. Talk about class and power and cultural appropriation.
It’s all really scary and difficult to negotiate.
So how do I make my position as a fan of this ‘black’ dance tenable? Why don’t I just get into west coast swing?
1. I think that diversity in lindy hop is really important. So I like it that people are dancing however they like to whatever music they like – if you’re dancing, it’s good. But I like diversity, and in Melbourne, some types of lindy are overrepresented. The black history of the dance is seriously neglected.
2. I do as I did in my thesis and begin with the black history of lindy hop. I try to remember the ‘unnameable terrors’ (to quote Gilroy) that were a part of the African diasporic experience under slavery in the US. I try to remember the role Jim Crow legislation (dang, I’m reading articles about it now that are really really distressing) had on black cultural expression in America. I try to remember that the way those people dancing in those clips is informed by their lived experiences, and that I should remember that I will never dance like that.
So I guess I try to think of the dance in cultural context, and not as some discrete package from the past that I can simply unwrap and play with.
I am, utterly, completely committed to the idea that we should remember the dark parts of lindy’s past as well as the nice bits. Because when we remember both, we recognise the power dynamics at work in the revivalist process. And I think it’s important to remember that when I, as a white, urban middle class kid dance de lindy hop I am also reflecting my cultural and ideological position. And as Katrina Hazzard Gordon says, we should remember ‘who has the power to steal from whom’. Step stealing is great (and so’s revivalism), but it’s not cool to not be self reflexive about your own social power and privelage – having the power to revive.
I think it’s also important to remember that lindy is not a vernacular dance any more – unlike something like Salsa or Tango. There are also very few black dancers in the international lindy scene. So there is no one to take the ‘right of reply’ to dominant white discourse. That’s something that scares me.
I don’t really know how to resolve this dilemma. I don’t want to get all orientalist about this and be patronising and do scary stuff. But damn it, that particular type of lindy hop speaks to me.
It really makes me feel the way that insipid honky stuff doesn’t.
As a feminist, I see some really neat opportunities for resisting or challenging gender norms in that black lindy that the white stuff simply doesn’t allow. Resistance is built into that shit and I want to keep that part of the dance tradition alive.
Plus I like the music more. And I really like the way I feel when I’m flinging myself around doing the Big Apple – I like the way that super-energetic, full-on commitment to the dancing gets my endorphines going. And I like the way it says “ha, muthafuckas, I am going to fucking BRING IT”.
…look, I need to think about this more and formulate a more sensible, coherent response. But I just wanted to say ‘yes, I hear you, FXH – I see the issues you’re raising’. And I also want to say ‘yeah, motherfucker – yeah, fucking LINDY HOP!’ with Trev.
Perhaps Stuart Hall can help me out here when he points out that identity is not fixed. It’s necessarily an ever-shifting hybrid. Or state of hybridity. So I don’t have to make a final, definite statement about my feelings about the politics in lindy hop (though I already have) – I can change my mind tomorrow.
And dance _is_ discourse, so it will change and be contextually dependent and also carry the ideological baggage of its participants and observers.

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