This is exactly the reason I didn’t name names in my thesis, and am reluctant to publish some parts of it.
I just know I’ll get a serve for pointing out the obvious.
I might write more on this later when I’m not so busy.
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but are you making negative moral assessments in your diss???
I don’t know about negative moral assessments, but I certainly (to paraphrase a marker) made some provocative comments about dance schools, commodification of dance and standardisation of dance practice.
It’s not anything I’ve kept secret in the past – I don’t hide the fact that I believe that the sort of ‘McDonalds’ approach to teaching lindy hop in Melbourne has resulted in a very ordinary dance culture (ie what people actually do on the dance floor).
This is actually the big point of my final chapter – that the mediation of dance by institutions (schools in this case) has resulted in very ordinary dancing in this city (and I’m interested in the role of various online media in this process).
I argue that the commodification of dance in dance classes (and the hardcore promotional/business activities of this school) has necessarily resulted in a ‘simplifying’ of the dance (ie the difficult stuff is taken out).
It’s also resulted in a homogenising of dance practice on and off the floor, ie students are taught that ‘this is how you dance’ and that anything else is (implicitly or explicitly) ‘wrong’. This is in part a natural consequence of formal dance classes (as opposed to learning on the dance floor), but also a result of having to promote a particular ‘product’ to a particular market.
It’s really difficult to sell ‘improvisation’ to a market in one hour dance classes in the back room of a pub.
Another result of this has been a de-emphasis on improvisation _generally_ by dance schools (because, frankly, why would you go to classes if you could just make shit up on the dance floor?), as well as, consequently, a movement away from the resistant and transgressive qualities of African American vernacular dance.
In other words, if you push a standardised dance form/class/series of steps, you discourage improvisation (making shit up) and also discourage tactical responses to dominant ideological discourses and practices (though I argue that you also _provoke_ these sorts of responses… but, considering the demographs involved, that’s not so likely).
The commodification of dance relies on (in part), on students accepting teachers’ opinions and examples as authoritative (and I write some stuff about how pedagogic practices feed into capitalist practices), and in not questioning how teachers do things. This is not an ‘active learning’ environment – classes are very much heirarchical, with a teacher-centred approach. There is no room for critical thinking or of questioning approaches to teaching or knowledge.
[and I argue that this is actually a key part of revivalism – you simply ‘recreate’ a particular discursive form, priveleging certain types of knowledge and certain people]
…So my point is that I’m not so keen on the effects of dance schools on actual dance practices and political discourses in contemporary swing dance culture. I do concede that _without_ schools the Melbourne scene would be smaller… but grudgingly.
As soon as I start saying things like that in a formal context (ie in published papers), there’s a chance that I’d jeopardise my own participation in the dance world – it’d be fricking hard to get a DJing gig when I’d pissed off the only people in my town who hire DJs. It’s not nice to be snubbed by a bunch of dancers when you’re out _partner_ dancing. It’s also in my interests to maintain a good working relationship with these doods when I’m running big events like the MLX6 – we simply can’t do it without their cooperation.
…so I have to settle for being sneaky when I’m fighting the power in dance (ahahahahah – man, I’m so fuckin’ fly). And I’m still wondering if/how I’ll publish that stuff without screwing up my own everyday dance/community practices.
Having said all that, I didn’t do anything dumb like accuse anyone of paedophilia (or of facilitating peadophila)…. in fact, I doubt anyone in the swinguverse would really see my criticisms as important at all. There are plenty of dancers who say ‘what’s wrong with running dance schools like McDonalds?’. And I’ve spent a great deal of time writing about how revivalists see this approach as _essential_. And the fact that we’re dealing largely with young people (young, conservative people who are all about the in-group) is also kind of significant.
It’s tricky stuff, really.
Don’t worry dog p. It’s different kind of DJs in that case. I’ll explain tomorrow.
:) I’m assuming that was a joke, FXH? I have to admit, each time I see the line about DJs sueing academics (or whatever), I get a bit worried. Where would I stand? Would I be sueing or a sue-ee?
ahhh, this is interesting. there are so many similarities/differences in our respective projects! I really like how you talk about a revivalism and the institutions of the scene and how this impacts on the quality of actual dance. This is totally the inverse of the trad youth culture subcultural way of doing things that totally ignores actual bodies and states of affairs and the institutions that allow a scene to exist. In my language the event of the lindy hop scene would therefore extend from the dance floor between bodies into the institutional and institutitonal spaces (so I am guessing, total guess, things like online spaces, record shops, print media maybe, etc and anyhing that allows the scene to function as a scene).
I try to capture some sense of how the scene has transformed over the last 30 years, but I am not sure how successful it is because discourse analysis-style history (ala Foucault, even in a quasi-genealogical form) only reflects what the archival traces allows it to reflect. This is my safety net, in that anything said has already been printed or published online. My danger is in the explicit ethnocentricity (bordering on racism) of car dudes. One of the reasons I trace it back through the archive is to play it safe in terms of my fieldwork. I let the archive speak, so to speak.
I don’t suppose there is the same sort of rich archive in melbs lindy hop scene? My only question is what makes you sure that macca’s dance schools or a programmatic form of mass dance pdagogy have not always been part of the scene?
I keep thinking about the way we (apparently) have similar methodological issues as well.
To answer the last question first, Is there an archive for Melb swing scene?
Hm. Well, for the most part, we’re talking about digital records (hence my thesis topic), but the Melbourne post-revival scene is really young. It kind of got kicking in the mid 90s. I was in Brisvegas then, so I can’t comment.
Archives for melb swing scene:
– emailed newsletters from schools to stoods (4 schools a few years ago, only 2 now). I did keep a big archive of them all, but eventually gave up – 2 emails a week from at least 2 dance schools is too much pain. Some are archived on their site, but that kind of loses the temporal context and hence meaning of the texts. Ample evidence for many things (including scary ‘your swing school = your family’ and ‘your swing community = your school’. As I like to say, you don’t have to pay to be in my family).
– websites. There are websites for each school, with many interesting things. Archiving these is difficult.
– discussion boards. Ah, now you’re talking. http://www.sweethotblue.com has the swing talk board which is full of good stuff. Unfortunately, the posters on the board are not a representative number – there’s about 60 regular posters, a few hundred members, but the actual readers/lurkers number at least a few hundred _hits per minute_.
– av clips. Not this is the shit I love. Footage of dancers in Melbourne online, in people’s cameras and on YOUTUBE. That’s the shit. I like that action – it makes for great writing.
– DVDs and videos (mostly instructional). Useful but kind of nauseating.
So far as the macca’s approach to dance discourse in Melbourne… it’s changed over time. When there were 4 schools, the tone was different – the 3 smaller schools were not/are not maccas in their approach to PR/discourse. But they’ve been pretty much outcompeted by the maccas school. Incidentally, the size of the scene can be largely attributed _to_ the maccas work of the big school. It’s a catch 22.
The macca school _has_ always been very maccas in its approach. It’s pulled some heinous stunts in the past (very ‘uncommunitas’ to my mind) but have been a lot better behaved lately. Since they outcompeted the other schools).
‘Community development’ discourse (ie how to make the scene bigger/bigger = better) dominates much international swing talk. No one says ‘oh, I wish there were fewer people to dance with’. There’s also the revivalist imperative – ‘if we don’t grow the scene, the dance will be lost!’.
These ideas/discourses are used to justify all sorts of things.
It also dovetails nicely with capitalist market-developing talk.
I’ve seen the whole ‘grow the scene’ thing used to justify all sorts of fricking shit behaviour in Melbourne’s swing scene:
– it’s ok to fuck our volunteers over because we’re _holding an exchange for the scene and this grows the scene_
– it’s ok to promote scary heirarchies and gender norms because this _grows the scene_
– we don’t have to pay our DJs because they should do it for the _good of the scene_ because they want to _grow the scene_
– it’s ok for us to enter the competition we organised, planned and chose the judges before because it’s _just for fun_ and a fun scene _attracts new dancers_ so it _grows the scene_ (this one shits me – why can’t these doods see how it’s not cool to enter the dance comp they organise?!)
– we can exploit our ‘trainee teachers’ because they want to be teachers _more than anything_ (because we’ve set up this scary of in-group/out-group motivation thing, suckering in vulnerable low-self-esteemers and people who don’t much like their lives) and more teachers = _growing the scene_
etc etc etc
There are also some really horrible gender things going on. Horrible horrible horrible.
I see female dancers competing with each other to dance with ‘alpha male’ dancers because there are fewer leads than follows, and dancing with these guys gives you cred. I see these same women then putting up with leads who don’t look out for them on the floor (the lead is largely responsible for the follow’s safety as they choose which moves to do when and where), and also accepting the bullshit idea that they are merely there to complete the moves the leader demands. Whether the leader can actually _lead_ the move or not (talk about preserving masculine public status!).
I see female teachers quietly doing as the male teaching partner says, not contributing to the class.
I see female dancers performing ‘barbie action’ on the dance floor without a speck of self-reflexivity because _girly girls get guys_.
Why don’t these girls learn to lead?
Why don’t they ignore those dickheads and dance with nice guys who mightn’t have status, but often have better dancing skills and much nicer personalities?
Why does the teaching/performing/promotional machinery of the school _encourage_ this scary arse bullshit?
I must add: I feel more comfortable critiquing the gender stuff in public than the capitalist stuff. I worry that somewhere the dood who books the DJs will read this and I’ll never get another gig. Or we’ll never get any cooperation when try to run MLX in the future. I don’t worry about not getting another dance, because I know there are plenty of people who couldn’t give a crap.
Talk about institutions and power.
I’d really like to do some research overseas on this stuff. As far as I can tell, Melbourne is unique with its school structures.
Incidentally, all this talk raises interesting issues of ‘objectivity’ and the role of the researcher in the research. Should I set aside my personal/political feelings to gather more ‘accurate’ data?
I say no, and make it clear that I am doing a _feminist_ analysis, where I am very interested in issues of class, of race, of ethnicity, of sexuality, etc etc. I am really keen on seeing where and how power lies in this community, and how this is represented in/effected by media practices. How does a newsletter at once provide evidence of a particular ideological theme, and also serve as a tool for furthering an ideological/polital project?
I think it would be wrong-er to pretend my work _was_ ‘objective’ or could be ‘objective’ or that my politics and personal beliefes could be set aside.
It’s been 3 days since you updated your blog! Is everything okay? Worried. :P
Yes, well smarty pants, I’ve been _posting_ comments.
But seeing as how you’re asking for it, I feel a nice attack of _long-and-boring-DJ-blogging_ coming on.
Yay! My favourite kind!!
Looks like a set I would play – You’re making me go seek out those tracks I don’t have out of curiosity.