Author Archives: dogpossum

Hippity hop: In which I get jiggy

Last Monday I did my first hip hop class. I went to a studio we’ve been using for our solo jazz practice and late night dances, and I went because I was curious, but mostly because I like going to the studio. The studio is run by a young man and his friends, and it’s in the guts of the city, in the Chinatown bit. They run lots of classes and workshops (almost all in street dances like hip hop or house or locking), see lots and lots and lots of students through the door, and are generally treated as a sort of drop-in social space as well as a class venue. Most of the students are ‘Asian’, and many are international university students. ‘Asian’ is one of those difficultly broad terms, and I don’t think it’s that useful in this context: these kids are from all over China, Hong Kong, South-East Asia, Japan, Korea and beyond. A lot of younger kids use the studio space – younger as in high school – and it really feels like a well-used space.

I always enjoy going there. There’re always people bustling about, and the reception desk is planted right in the middle of the room, directly opposite the lift doors, so you’re greeted immediately as you enter the room. People are always friendly. I’m getting to know people there, and it’s really nice to get a friendly “Hi Sam!” as I arrive. It feels like an energetic, creative space. But not in one of those desperately hip ‘art’ spaces. This is functional creativity. Functional in that this music and these dancers are part of these kids’ everyday lives, and dancing isn’t just a ‘hobby’ that they do one night a week.

There are regular classes, but the studio (which has three separate practice spaces as well as the main foyer space) is used for casual ‘jams’, which you pay for with a gold coin donation (presented as a ‘donation’ for upkeep of the studio), and there’s always music running in that jam space. The ‘jam’ is really a practice, a bit like a tango practica, where you go to test out what you know and are learning, not in a workshop or class environment, but in a more social space. This isn’t ‘social dancing’, though, the dancers are focussed and really experimenting with movement.

Dancers use the studio as an inbetween or meeting place before going off to the ‘battles’ down in a public piazza somewhere on Friday nights (this is real street dance) or out for a night clubbing. Uni students drop in between lectures, and high school girls turn up in their uniforms after school and before dance class to practice. Dance crews also use the space to meet up and touch base or to practice. The idea of ‘crews’ as a real thing is new to me. I’ve seen them in films: a group of dancers who work together in competitions or battles. But I’d thought they were exaggerated or made up for films. But they’re not. The nearest equivalent in lindy hop is a dance troupe, with all the attendant friendship and peer support functions. But crews feel less contrived and more organic, based on creative similarity, friendships and shared values rather than a formal dance school promotional function.

I first met the owner and venue when we used the space for a late night dance. I was working with a guy who was running the late night event and was also involved in the hip hop scene. He knew the studio through hip hop classes and the local scene. It was really wonderful to walk into a studio that felt like a living, breathing social space. Most dance studios feel a bit lame or a bit empty, socially. The dances people practice are formalised by their position as ‘commodity’ and they’re definitely a ‘hobby’ or ‘career’ rather than lifestyle. But at the hip hop studio, the dancing is tied in with all the other parts of people’s lives – music, fashion, media (particularly digital media), eating, drinking, socialising. LeeEllen Friedland talks about this continuum of cultural practice. But, really, this studio and dancing are just points in everyday life.

That first event we ran at the studio went off wonderfully. The dancers who turned up really liked the feel of the venue. We were very happy with the studio manager and with the layout and feel of the venue. This isn’t a cold, professional studio or a dirty, dingey bar like most late night venues. It made the dancing wonderful.

Isn’t it strange to think like that? I can’t explain, really, why it made such a difference. But I found DJing really exciting, and as a punter I had a BRILLIANT time. But a space made place really makes for excellent social dancing.

Anyway, we needed a place for our solo practice, and while we’ve tried a few other places, I pushed for us to use this studio as an experiment at least. It’s not the cheapest venue (I pay $30 for 2 hours at a church hall near me that has no mirrors or sound system, I’ve paid $20 per hour at a clean, well-lit place with mirrors, a good floor and sound system), but it has good mirrors, good floors, decent sound proofing, and feels great.

When we finish practicing, it’s hard to just leave. There are people who’re interested in what we’re doing. Interested just as part of being polite and sociable, but also interested in a creative sense. I’ve already had a few exciting conversations with hip hop people where we’ve compared moves that we have in common. Mine are a hundred years old. Theirs are brand new. But they’re the same. It’s thrilling.
This studio feels like Herrang. At Herrang, which runs for about 4 weeks (give or take), there’s always someone dancing or practicing or talking about dancing or music. You can join in with strangers, and the whole place feels alive with music and dance and rhythm. It seeps into your pores. The studio feels like that. And this is exactly what swing dancing – lindy hop, balboa, blues, charleston, all of it – really needs. A vibrant cultural, social space where dancers hang out and experiment and socialise. But not in a forced way. In a natural way that results from shared interests and a welcoming space. It’s tricky with jazz dances, though, as these are dead dances. They’re not connected to popular music and culture anymore, so it’s harder to find them, to make them part of your everyday.

At any rate, it’s not a surprise that I ended up doing a hip hop class. I had a spare afternoon/evening, and just felt so comfortable at the studio, I figured I’d just turn up and see what happened. There were two classes on, and I really didn’t plan which one I’d do. I guess I’m lucky it was hip hop and not breaking. There was ‘girl hip hop’ and ‘hip hop’ on. The girl hip hop studio was full of teenage girls in school uniforms practicing to girly rnb. That class was taught by the teacher I know, a bloke. I paid for my class, and settled on the couch as I was a bit early. When I went to join the class as it started, I was directed, “No, no Sam, you do the Hip Hop class” by the teacher. I was ‘Sure, whatevs’ and changed studio. I asked another teacher/dancer as I passed the registration desk “What’s the difference?” and she replied “It’s pretty girly. You’d like hip hop more, I reckon.” I’m sure that’s because I am built like a brick shithouse, not at all girly, and not sixteen. I don’t exactly scream sexed up nightclub dancing.
I’m glad I did do the ‘hip hop’ class. There were just two of us in there with the teacher. I was the only girl, and they were both Chinese, the teacher in his twenties, the other student in his late teens or possibly early twenties. I was the tallest, the whitest, the femalest, the oldest. Which was pretty much as I’d expected.
The class was FUN but also challenging, and a real culture difference.

Firstly, the music was on all the time, and it was quite loud. I’m used to lots of talking in classes, but that’s not how we worked. Spoken instructions were few and shouted over the music. I was kind of relieved to have so much music in the room. I don’t know any modern music, and hip hop is so far from my usual musical listening, I really needed a crash course in its rhythms and structure. Thankfully, it’s like simplified jazz, structurally, but has a different feel.

At first I stood a little behind the teacher (who had his back to us, with the other student to his right hand side, in a row). Because I’m used to standing behind the teacher to shadow what I see them doing. But almost immediately I was told to “Look up! Look at yourself in the mirror!” This was a revelation. This is the difference between partner dancing and solo dance. I was there to present myself, so I had to see what I was doing to assess my own skills. Many of the movements we did involved very clear hand and finger gestures. Our arms had to end at the end of our fingers (in clenched fists, in flowing sweeps, in sharp chops), and I needed to see myself in the mirror to be sure I was doing this all properly. I moved up beside the teacher.

He began the class by explaining how movements worked, but as he realised I could pick up the movements from what he was doing, and as the other student was much more advanced than me, he stopped explaining, except when I needed something clarified. If you’ve done a lot of dance classes, you can follow along with the choreography and movements really without thinking about it. You move with the other people in the room, turning when they turn, sinking when they sink and so on. In those moments thinking is actually a real problem. You don’t want to have to think your way through each movement before you do it. You want to just do it. I’m not a talented dancer, and I’m quite a slow learner, but all this lindy hop and solo stuff has taught me how to know how to move my body at least a little bit.

So learning the choreography wasn’t too complicated. I could get the rhythms quickly (they were much, much, much simpler than lindy hop or jazz stuff), I could turn when I should, I could face the right direction. But watching myself, I thought “This is what ballet dancers look like when they start lindy hop.” I looked like I was floating, like a really upright, ungrounded ballet dancer. And I’m usually pretty grounded in my lindy hop. But hip hop required a lot more in the ground. You get this look by bending your knees, but hip hop – this type of hip hop – requires a lot of shoulder action and a very different type of bounce.

I know, in my brains, they’re the same principles of biomechanics, but it was really difficult to figure out what the teacher was doing to get that look while also learning choreography. I realised that I had to control my hips and core, and hold them very stable and still. Instead, I had to use my shoulders, arms and upper body in much more definite, bigger ways. I had to sink down into the floor by bending my knees, but without sticking my arse out. I had to hold my chest and shoulders in a way that held my bust still and stopped it bouncing.

It was a matter of at once learning a different dance aesthetic, and also dancing ‘like a man’ rather than ‘like a woman’. I’ve had similar issues learning to lead, if I’ve been interested in leading ‘like a man’. It’s very interesting to see how gender is played out through which parts of your body you emphasise. It’s not at all genetic; this is a learned thing.

I also found that some of the movements involved hyperflexing of the joints, especially at the shoulders and elbows. This is something professional dancers learn. It’s something we try to avoid in lindy hop, because it’s about hyper-straight arms, and lindy likes right angles. But hyperflexing is something a lot of Asian kids do, in part because of genetics, but also because of cultural factors. I am very tight in my arms and shoulders, because I sit on my arse all day and type. It’s also a very anglo thing to do – to carry tension in the upper body like that. So I had to at once learn to release and relax my upper body to allow liquid, extended range of movement in my arms, but also to engage my core and upper body so that I could also do sharper, more abrupt, more ‘masculine’ movements.

After an hour I was queen of sweat.

I found I could do most of the things we learnt, except a couple of moves that were almost exactly the same as ones we do in lindy hop/jazz. We learnt a step very like a camel walk, except beginning with the toes pointed up and weight on the heel, rather than toe down, with the weight on the heel. This really melted my brain, especially as we were doing a flowing, released arm movement at the same time. I just couldn’t get it right.

But this really taught me some things: I do those ‘standard’ jazz movements without thinking about what I’m doing. I’m not conscious of my body and muscles in an active way. So I’m really not dancing very well. I’m actually doing habitual motions. Being aware of what you’re doing, and moving muscles independently and in groups in a conscious way is central to being able to dance well, to respond quickly, and to adjust to suit the music and partner. So having to learn a very similar movement really made me aware of the weaknesses in my dancing.

It was really interesting to see how those combined steps (flowing arms, sharp, syncopated footwork) reflected the music: flowing melody, grace and balance coupled with abrupt, sharp lower body movements. I had to rethink my habitual dance movements, but also the gendered movements and muscle use which I was utterly unconscious of. Our movements are marked by gender and culture, ethnicity, age, class, experience. It’s in our interests, as social animals, that these movements become unconscious, so that we ‘fit in’, and give the ‘right signals’ to the people around us.

If you think for example, of how someone who sits too close to us on the bus makes us feel, then you kind of get the idea. That’s just a tiny example, but the way someone holds their body while sitting in a public, shared space, tells you about how they think and act about shared space (especially crowded shared space), and how they use muscle tension to delineate shared space. I mean, to be even clearer, if I want to crowd out someone on a shared bus seat, I ‘land and expand’. I sit down with control, but gradually relax my muscles so I gradually take up more space. This makes my seat mate feel ‘crowded’, so they move over. This even works on male suits in peak hour.

I think that my being aware of these issues is a disadvantage most of the time. It’s better to stop thinking and to let your body figure out what to do. If you have to think your way through every single movement, you’re going to be slow and your movement will look ‘unnatural’ and make people feel uncomfortable.

Finally, then, I have to say that this class was wonderful. I felt very welcome, and I liked the way the class was quite quickly paced and felt ‘all business’. We didn’t fuck around with fake jokes, we got on and danced, all the time. I liked the way the other student modelled respect for the teacher, so I knew how I was supposed to act. I also liked the way we could relax these relationships when we got outside the classroom. Out there it was all rowdiness and comparing movements and excited, adrenaline-charged, dance-high loud talk. And not just from me.

I’m definitely going back for more. Though I suspect this will be a long, challenging road for me. Perhaps I should buy some music?

bands for dancing

What should a band playing at a ‘swing dance’ sound like?

linky

DCLX (The Washington DC Lindy Exchange) featured some seriously wonderful bands this year. I’ve never seen a line up like that here in Australia (though MSF and MLX have featured some really good bands). They’re not only historically appropriate, they’re also culturally and socially appropriate – the bands are engaged with the dancers.

This is the Campus 5, another band at DCLX:

linky

The two bands battled it out in this:

linky

Crytzer’s Blue Rhythm Band gave the Campus 5 a good pwning in the battle, and it’s really interesting to read the account of the battle by one of the musicians in Jonathon Stout’s band in The Power Of Jazz: DCLX 2011, and to read Crytzer’s take on what constitutes good music for dancing.

I did have a much cleverer post written up on this, but I lost it :D

I do want to say that I rarely see bands this good at Australian dance events. There are some really good bands here, but very few of them are actually connected to dancers. They’re used to playing for an elderly crowd of jazznicks, all of whom sit quietly in the audience, clapping solos. They may get up and dance, but they’re not actually all that good at connecting with the band. They’re also much older, and not really dancing the sorts of dances that the music was originally composed for, or in reference to.

I also have a feeling there’s some historical/cultural confusion going on here. Australia banned black American musicians from touring here between 1928 and 1954 (or so). While we did have bits and pieces of lindy hop happening in Australia during that period, we didn’t really have the sort of strong lindy hopping craze that they did in the States. People simply didn’t dance the same way here. And if they did, most of the biggest events were in Sydney and Melbourne. There was dancing in every other Australian town, though, and the international dance crazes did get here. But I think it’s a mistake to try to recreate 1920s and 30s American jazz dance culture here in Australia as though it was a ‘natural’ recreation of Australian dance culture during that time. It simply wasn’t. So we should approach this as transplanting music and dance traditions from another culture. When the oldies get up on the dance floor here, then, we shouldn’t expect to see ‘authentic’ Harlem style lindy hop. These guys are not only a lot older than the people in Hellzapoppin’, they’re also from a different dancing culture.

When jazz bands who do play for non-lindy hoppers and non-dancers do play for lindy hoppers – young, sweaty, crazed dancers who don’t stop to applaud solos, and usually take ages to applaud at the end of songs – they don’t really understand what they see on the dance floor, and they’re kind of resentful of the delayed applause. It’s a bit sad, because most dancers – most experienced, good dancers – let you know they’re enjoying the music in the way they suddenly get creative or energetic or enthusiastic. A lot of musicians don’t know how to read this dancing body language.

I also see a lot of musicians in jazz bands existing in their own little world. They don’t look at the dance floor, they rarely look at each other. They sit on stools or chairs, eyes locked on the score, or they kind of sink down into their solos. Solos which go on for hours. Hours and hours. Complicated, fiddly solos that show off dextrous fingers, which are too difficult for dancers to follow on the floor. They often build up the energy in the song then suddenly kill it with a complicated solo or a sudden change in pace. I don’t know what nondancing jazz fans think of this, but as a dancing jazz fan, I’m always disappointed. You’re telling a story here, bud. Don’t shaggy dog me. Don’t build me up to a great punch line then sort of mumble it then ramble on afterwards explaining why it’s funny.

I know dancers can be quite blunt objects. A lot of dancers aren’t much good at working with bands. They don’t clap enough. They just dance on and on like they’re dancing to a metronome. This can be because they’re rubbish dancers. It can also be because they’re not enculturated – they don’t know how to respond to bands. But it can also be because the musicians aren’t reaching out to them. The band asks the question, the dancers respond. Call and response, yo.

So a band can be really really good, great, historically accurate dancing music. But still be rubbish for dancing.

The best bands for dancing do these things:

  • They don’t use scores, but if they do, they’re still looking up and interacting as a group, with solos passed around and choruses repeated or skipped on the fly.
  • Someone actually leads the band. That person calls the solos, cuts things short, adds repetitions, and generally keeps it all together. This is important when you’re improvising, or when you’re responding to the room. I have no evidence for this, but I suspect a good band leader is like a good DJ – they watch the room, they keep an eye on the way it feels – as they work through the songs and juggle the musicianship.
  • They have dancers in the band or they work with dancers in close relationships. This is the most important part. Bands that work with dancers in putting together shows from conception to execution, or who work on putting together set lists for performances, and do it on a regular basis, tend to have a better understanding of how music-for-dancing works. They know how to tell if a dancer is exhausted, if they’re really feeling the music, if they’re interested in what they’re hearing.
  • They are historically accurate. This is a tricky one. But many of the developments in jazz from the 50s on saw a shift in jazz as music for dancing, to music for listening to. There are lots of reasons for this. But it meant that the music changed, and many of these changes made jazz more difficult to dance to.
    One of the most obvious is that the beat changed from being solidly chunk chunk chunk to a little more slippery. The rhythm section as a whole started doing different things. This isn’t a big deal if you’re a phenomenal dancer, or dancing slow, or in a small club. But in a big dance hall, packed with people jumping up and down, at higher tempos, a good, solid beat is really important.
    The musical changes in jazz were exciting and interesting, and no doubt made the music more interesting to play. They certainly reflect the shift in the way jazz worked culturally, from popular music for dancing to ‘art’ music for listening. Playing dance music no doubt feels a bit workmanlike. A bit plebian. But then, that’s what popular music is – it’s uncomplicated, it’s functional, it’s accessible. The trick is being exciting and interesting and innovative within those simple forms.

I think that the dancers organising events and booking bands should carry some of the fault when a band fails to rock at a dancing gig. Many event organisers don’t have the experience or musical knowledge to know how to ask a band to make the music work for dancers. How do you explain all these things to a band leader without being patronising or rude? I mean, you want to hire a band because you really dig their sound. So why ask them to change it?
Developing a good working relationship with bands is important. Bands need to see dancers at their weekly gigs. Dancers need to put DJed music in second place, and to seek out bands, and to make friends with musicians. I’ve been surprised by how important Faceplant has become in this regard: dancers and musicians – friends!

I also think event organisers need to get out and listen to lots of bands, and to dance to lots of bands. It’s too easy to just hire the same old stooges each year. This also means nurturing relationships with bands: getting phone numbers, shaking hands and buying drinks at the bar. Do you have musical tastes in common? Can you spend time talking about favourite musicians and bands and songs with the musicians and really communicate? When you say “Count Basie”, do you both mean 1930s new testament Basie? If you say “Glen Miller”, does the musician say “Chicago!” or “String of pearls”?

….at any rate, there’s plenty more to be said on this. But I have things to do!

slutwalk: but wait – there’s more!

@anti_kate has just drawn my attention to Four Brief Critiques of SlutWalk’s Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics, an article examining the way slutwalk fails to engage with race, class and privilege.

I do recommend reading this. It actually articulates a lot of the concerns I was having with slutwalk. It also makes me wonder: if it’s not plugged into the women’s movement, will it be as well organised as the Reclaim the Night marches? It’s a provocative theme, will the organisers have taken sufficient care with participants’ safety? I mean, will there be marshalls and safety plans?

…so I’m back to not being ok with slutwalk. It’s tiring, being so unsure of my feelings about this. But then, I figure that’s a good thing. It’s good to revise and revisit your politics and ideas about power and society. I am a work in progress.

slut walk: here’s my latest thought

1. If you can, go on the march. Take a sign that says what you mean. Wear what you like. Take a friend, so you can chat and take photos of each other. If you don’t have a friend, go on your own and make some new friends.

2. Make the rally what you need it to mean. Use your sign, do some shouting. I’m a fan of this old chestnut: “Yes means YES and NO means NO – however we dress and where ever we go!”

3. Be against rape, in any form, and against anyone.

4. Do not make excuses for people who rape. Just take a simple sign that is your whole philosophy boiled down to succinctness: “No excuses for rape” or “I abhor all violence” or “You are responsible for your actions”. I’m not sure “My mom is hot” is really going to go down the right way…

5. Listen to the speeches, and think about what you might feel.

6. Support all the people there, even if you might disagree with a part of their argument. Support them, because it’s ok to disagree. You are all there together, and you’re all mighty tired of the sexual violence that is perpetrated and excused in our community.

7. If this is your first rally, there are some things to remember. If it’s a well-run rally and march, there will be ‘marshalls’ (usually very capable women) with Marshall written on their shirt. Do as they say. If they tell you to stop, stop. If they tell you to get off the road, get off the road. The marshalls are usually well trained and know the march route and what to do if something happens. If you feel faint or scared or bad, tell a marshall.

It’s ok to step out of the rally or march at any time. You can just dissolve into the crowd if it gets too much for you. It can be pretty intense. I’ve always found women’s marches really exciting and invigorating. Everyone is friendly and supportive, and everyone feels good and positive. I’m not sure what slutwalk will be like, as some people will be very angry.

If it’s a big rally or march, find a place and group of women who make you feel good. If you don’t like the super loud shouting, find some quieter people. There will probably be some peaceful, nonviolent protestors (like the Shakers) who’ll be there, so you might like to walk with them if you’re not ok with violent talk.

If you don’t like people on the side of the road yelling or looking at you, move into the middle of the crowd. If people do yell at you from the side of the road, the best bet is to just ignore them. You’re with a crowd of people who’ve got your back. Just marching out there is an awesome statement in itself: women! Out in public! Unafraid!

In my experience, women’s marches are very supportive and friendly, so you should feel ok about asking for help or making new friends.

If someone asks you for help, do what you can. Get a marshall, move out of the rally, whatever it takes.

The police are usually pretty good at women’s rallies (they even were in Brisbane). Be polite, and do as they say. They will be business-like. I’ve had police be quite rude and crude on Reclaim The Night marches, but that was Brisbane, and I was with a whole crowd of women who would keep an eye on me. Ignore the cops if they’re rude.

If you are of a mind to pull some civil disobedience, do make contact with the slutwalk organisers beforehand and find out what their policy is on c.d. Remember: you might be angry enough to act up, but at a rally like this, it is not appropriate to be violent or aggressive. Many women in the crowd will be survivors of rape or violence, and they will find your behaviour frightening or upsetting. Also: violence isn’t cool; most people find it frightening and upsetting. And that’s the point of this rally.

8. What will I wear?
Wear what you like. Personally, I like to wear good, comfortable walking shoes on a march. If it’s daytime, I wear a hat. I wear shorts and a tshirt and take a jumper if it’s cold. Use a good, solid backpack that’s not too heavy. Take some water and an umbrella if it’s too sunny. Make sure your hands are free so you can heft your sign. There are workshops on how to make signs; contact the slutwalk people for advice. I also like to bring a whistle. Shouting is fun, but it gets tiring and hurts your voice. A whistle is cool. If you need them, make sure you bring your ventolin or medications. Bring ID and have money to use a payphone, as well as your phone. Tell a couple of people where you’re going and what you’re doing.
If you are thinking of dressing up (costumes are fun), it’s a good idea to wear shoes you can walk in. Whatever they are.

9. If you’re a man, your best bet is to get some friends and stand in a key point on the march’s route. Make some good signs that say things like “I support your right to choose!” or something similar. When the march gets to you, cheer and cheer and cheer. Don’t yell out things like “you’re hot!” or wolf whistle. Yell out things like “wahoo!” and waggle your sign. Cheer as much as you can. I can tell you, this will make the women marching feel so GOOD.
If other people around you badmouth the women marching, don’t get into an argument or a fight with them. Just cheer the women on. Use only good, solid, positive words and actions. This march isn’t all about you, so don’t get into a fight and distract from the march.

I was all set to go, and then I realised I’d be flying back from Melbourne at just that moment. I figure: go, protest against rape and violence against women. Unpack it all later.

slutwalk thinking

[edit: I’m going to add links and thinks to this as I go. I won’t edit the content up the top, but will add stuff to the bottom. This is going to make this a poo post to read, but it’ll help me keep all my links in one place.]

I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about slutwalk. Part of me doesn’t understand why Reclaim the Night isn’t enough. The sensible part of me reminds the rest of me that we definitely shouldn’t be restricting ourselves to one act of civil action. And that RTN obviously doesn’t capture younger feminists’ attention the way it did mine years ago.

We’re still talking about women taking to the streets to raise the profile of bullshit attitudes towards sexual violence, and to make it clear that women are not responsible for the violence of men, no matter what they’re wearing.

But I’m not convinced ‘slut’ is a word that can be reclaimed. I’m also not ok with identifying myself as a slut. My sexuality is part of who I am, but it is not all that I am, and I like to use words that reflect that. I am more than the sex that I have or do not have. But this is, of course, to miss the point that these feminists are making.

I’m going to keep thinking about this. I would ordinarily leap at the chance to protest on an issue like this. So I need to find out why I’m not leaping now. Meanwhile, here’s an interesting post at Godard’s Letterbox, and a speech by Jaclyn Friedman.

Incidentally, I have had some problems with the hollaback mission. Or rather, I remember reading a newspaper story recently (buggered if I can remember the article, though) where a wealthy white woman living in a large American city chased down a young white man who’d groped her in a public place, then loudly told him off and went to the police. As I read this article, my heart rate elevated, I got sweaty and felt really really afraid. Ordinarily, I’m in favour of talking back. But in a situation like that… well, as a woman with social power, she wasn’t in the most dangerous situations. But I think of the times when it can go terribly wrong. If you’re not physically strong or able. If you’re somewhere isolated. If he decides to ramp it up. That newspaper article declared that all women should do this sort of backtalk, or responding. Me, I think that women should think very carefully about their safety before they do. In that situation… well, maybe. But I’ve had that go wrong on me, and I’m sure I won’t be pulling that stunt any time soon. I think there are other ways of fucking their shit up. Direct confrontation is only one of those tools.

…I can’t believe that I’m taking such a moderate stance on this. But then, I am a woman who is out on her own at night, during the day, all over the place, on foot, on bike, on public transport. And I know that being safe is about how you act. While I hate it that I have to moderate my behaviour to accommodate the fucked up behaviour of others (men or women), I’m not about to start putting myself at risk to make a political point.

I will be aware of my surroundings at all time. I will not make eye contact with strange men out at night. I will walk with other women if I can. I will ride my bike where possible, I will assist other women when they need me, and I will learn how to defend myself.

More importantly, because most assaults on women happen in their homes, I will think about safety in my house, I will maintain relationships with my neighbours (many of whom are also women), I’ll take care who comes into my home.

I’m also committed to safety at dance events, and I strongly advocate women refusing to act in a way that accepts bullying or manipulation from anyone. I’m also going to continue to keep shouting about the way women represent themselves and are represented in dance talk and on the dance floor. We are more than sexualised bodies. We don’t need to decide whether we are sluts or not, or to reclaim the term.

We can just decide not to accept the premise of the question. I choose to dance in a way that assumes that I have more options for the way I present myself. This is why I like to use male dancers as role models, and seek out historical women dancers who do more than simper at men while tottering about on high heels in diaphanous gowns as they tipper tap across the stage. Someone else can fuck about with girlesque or suspender belts declaring that they are sluts. I’m going to be busy fucking up shit on the dance floor, demonstrating that there are other ways to be a woman that do not exist in a virgin/slut dichotomy.

[edit]tigtog has drawn my attention to “Sex, lies and slutwalking” by Lauren Rosewarne (9 May 2011)[/]

[edit: 15/5/11 8pm] I liked Reclaim The Night because it was for all women. Special effort was always made to make it accessible for everyone, no matter what their age, physical ability, etc. So you’d be walking along next to nannas and little babbies and kids and teenagers and all sorts of women. But slutwalk really doesn’t feel like the type of place I’d feel ok taking kids. I mean, I’m ok grownups talking about sex with kids (their own kids, mind you), but an angry, confrontational protest centred on sex… not really a happy place.[/]

hot male bodies

I talk an awful lot about women’s bodies, and women and the erotic gaze. I am, of course, working with the assumption that most dance performances are geared towards a male gaze, which Laura Mulvey introduces in her 1975 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, and which caused such a stir Screen then devoted an entire issue to the matter. But I wonder if that’s what’s actually going on in dance performances? Are we really that dull? In this post I’m going to look at some hot male bodies, and see how we might go about fucking up shit in the modern swing dance world. High heel shoes: for all!


This idea of the male gaze was originally constructed as a response to mainstream narrative cinema, and argues that mainstream narrative films are constructed (from story to shot framing and mise en scene) for an imaginary, idealised male viewer. In this context, men and male protagonists operate as the active, subjective heroes (the people the viewer wants to be) and the women are reduced to bodies to be objectified, acted upon by others (the object the viewer wants to possess or act upon).

You can see how this approach would stimulate lots of discussion. It’s an inherently heterocentric reading: what about queer women watching these female, sexualised bodies on screen? What about queer men watching and wanting to possess and be the male subject? And is it really useful to use this fairly fucked up psychoanalytic approach to cinema which boils everything down to sex? Whether you dig Mulvey’s approach or not, she certainly started people talking – in loud and quite excited ways – about the way cinema constructs stories and images of bodies and people, and she invited us to critique assumptions about gender and power in cinema studies. Which can only be a good thing.

Now I don’t have much patience with psychoanalysis as a tool for analysing film and performance. I don’t think it works, mostly because it boils everything down to sex, and I think that this approach tells us a lot more about 19th century middle class Austrian men than about cinema. But I do think there are some interesting starting points, here. And I want to apply them to dance. Because that is what I do. I’m also interested in the way vernacular dances – on-stage and off – allow the audiences and performers to interact, in a way that cinema does not. In a dance performance, the sexualised body (be it male or female) is capable of physically, verbally and discursively interacting with the audience whose gaze they’ve invited. I think this adds a really interesting and exciting element to the fairly dull model of visual pleasure.

…I have to mention, much of this discussion draws – in a fairly long distance way – on Judith Butler’s talk about gender performance in Gender Trouble. If I had room, I’d go into that, and then into transgender performance, but I don’t think any of us could be bothered with that now. Another time perhaps.

It’s tempting to leap into a discussion about burlesque here. But I’ve done that already (in this post ‘My concerns about burlesque’), and I’m kind of over it. I want to talk about something new. I want to remind people that it’s not only women who are sexualised and men who are sexualising. Just as Mulvey was a starting point for discussions of cinema, I want to move on from talking about sexualising women’s bodies in dance (in the context of contemporary swing dance culture) and talk about sexualising men’s bodies.

I’d like to pause here, and note that I once delivered a conference paper on the sexualised male body in blues dance performance. I was squished, once again, into a panel that featured no other dance talk. In fact, I was after a woman talking about child rape and sexualised children and before a woman talking about literature by women who’ve survived rape. The crowd was all women, with one or two scared young men, and these were hardcore queer studies women, who were absolutely disinterested in men. Sexually, socially or academically.
At one point during my paper, as I began a section discussing the appeal of a young, well-muscled man performing a highly sexualised solo blues routine, I thought “aw fuck.” Needless to say, my lines about the pleasures of gazing upon Falty’s fine young frame and his own pleasure in his body and performance did not go down well.

But, then, this is the point of it all. We are not all watching cinema in the same way. Each text yields – encourages! – a range of viewing positions and ways of looking.

But let’s pause and consider the clip with which I tried to excite those angry lesbian separatists:

linky

The nice thing about this clip… well, hells, there are plenty of nice things about this clip. But the one I most prefer is the way solo dance is more accommodating of a queer gaze than partner dance. In fact, solo dance gives us a chance to side step heteronormativity. Here is a young, healthy man dancing for his own pleasure, and engaging with a range of discourses about gender and sex and sexualised bodies and audiences and performances. He is not anchored to a particular partner (and associated sexual preference). He is autonomous, sexually complete in himself. Which is pretty interesting, as women-as-sexual-object are pretty integral accessories to the heteronormative, hegemonic Man that patriarchy digs.

Despite Mike’s independent display, this is also definitely a performance for an audience – the audience in the room, watching, the audience behind the camera, the other dancers in the performance itself, who are following and imitating his movements. The last is especially interesting: here is a young, white man modelling sexualised dance movements for a range of women and men.

Fascinating, much?

Most importantly, though, Mike’s performance climbs and climbs and climbs, the tension increasing, the sexual show exaggerated and exaggerated until it suddenly tips over. His taking off his shirt is met with screams of delight and excitement, embarrassment, laughter, clapping – all the lovely responses this sort of display requires. It’s not until we see his grin that we are let in on the joke. He knows that this is exaggerated play, and we are allowed to see that he both enjoys the attention (as he should – this is the point of it all, right? Pleasure in being the object/subject as well as pleasure for the observer?) and has performed for us. He doesn’t quite slip out out of character, but it’s very clear that this has all been framed as performance. It’s not, for example, a real performance of sexual invitation. … is it?

[Note: understanding the difference between real sexual invitation and, well, just being there in your body, is something a lot of men have trouble with. They assume that all women are constantly available. If they are outside their homes (or inside them), wearing revealing clothing (or not)… hellz, just breathing. I feel the urge to explore the currently-raging slutwalk debate, but I don’t have the energy. But I would like to link to this article to suggest my concerns about the topic.

But all this makes it clear that we cannot compare male and female sexualised performance in a cultural vacuum. We need to remember context. And for me, that is patriarchy.]

Well, the point of my using this clip here is to say, well, fuck. That conference paper failed. Can you see how it went down awfully in that session? Right. Framing is everything for this sort of show.

So let me show you three other clips. They’re all blues dancing performances. Two are partner blues, one is solo blues. But to frame that one as ‘solo’ blues is a little misleading. The most successful of these types of solo blues ‘battles’ or competitions rely, utterly, on engagement between competitors, and between competitors and audience. Visual play, but also aural and oral engagement. Between dancers and audience, but also between musicians and dancers. There is no solo in solo blues competitions. Not if you’re doing it right. This is not a self-contained performance of sexual immanence. It’s a battle, a demonstration, a performance of sexualised movement which requires interaction. Demands it. This is the call; you bring the response.

I’ll begin with that other solo performance, then. This is the solo blues final from the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in New Orleans, 2009. I’m most interested in the first minute of the competition. You might be interested in the rest, to compare the male and female performers/performances, but I just want to talk about the men, here. Though I have to note: it is rare to find men in solo blues comps. And their style is very, very different to the women’s. And don’t get me started on the whole not wearing shoes thing.

linky

That particular dancer is Dax Hock. He’s been a professional dancer and performer for years, and, obviously, possesses the mad skills. I like the way he engages with the other (women) performers, and the way he displays his body (and mad skills) to the audience. This is at once a highly sexualised male body, but also a very professional demonstration of performance and dance skills. He won that competition.

As you watch, listen as well. Listen to the audience’s response. To the band and consider the way Dax engages with both. This, to my mind, is where the real skill lies.

There are so many things to talk about in this performance. The references to Snake Hips Tucker, a frightening, mesmerising performer. The moments where Dax spreads his legs ridiculously wide, from the hip, suggesting invitation and echoing a woman’s spread legs as invitation for penetration. In a man, this is transgressive: he invites the gaze, the penetration. But it is also aggressively hegemonic masculinity: admire the phallus (down here!). This is sex talk. With the body. He makes eye contact with the audience, with a suggestive/aggressive invitation to admire him (a cocked head, a nod, the eye contact). He repeats this when he turns to address the other competitors, but his more blatant hip thrust (and display) is less a marker of sexual invitation as an invitation to compare sexual/dancing ability in competition. It’s derision dancing at its finest (I’ve written about derision in dance in regards to race and violence in blues music here, and there are links to references there).

The comparison of male and female sex/groin/performance is interesting as well. A man asking a woman to compete with him for the audience’s attention… is he asking the women to compete with him for the male gaze? For a male/female gaze? Really, I think this is where the term ‘queer’ really comes in useful: he’s inviting women to participate as equals (well, as not-quite-equals) in a performance/display/competition to be both sexual object and subject for a male/female/straight/gay/bi queer gaze. He’s fucking up gender norms here.

But it is the music that makes it all wonderful. The song is shouting ‘sex!’, but it’s also shouting ‘humour!’ and ‘laugh!’ and ‘shout!’ and parody and engagement… so many things, so many different points from which to engage with it, that it defies that heteronormative, male gaze narrative. Which is how blues and jazz roll, really. Slippage. It has it. And Dax, wonderfully, extends that aural invitation with his body.

Do note, here, that we are looking at two young, fit, healthy white male bodies. Not too transgressive, huh? But perhaps it is…?

Let’s move on. Here’s something different. Another competition from that same ULHS 2009. This time it’s partner blues. So we see heterosexuality on display. Or do we? As with most of these sorts of dance competitions, I always wonder if the men are really engaging with the other male performers and with the men in the audience (who are also ‘dancers’) more than with the women they dance with.

linky.

So let’s look at the point where Peter dances with Ramona. They’re the second couple, entering at about 0.24 (and yes, Todd’s exit, facing them, his back to his own partner, legs spread, does invite some discussion of phallic competition, yes?). The point I like most is at 0.29, where he breaks them into open position – they’re not touching – and he proceeds to perform for her, and ultimately for us within the frame of their heterosexual pairing. Yes, this is for her (and she responds), but ultimately, we all know that this is for us, the people watching and judging. How are we to assess his performance? In part through Ramona’s response to him. She likes it? He must be hot/good. But we’re also invited to see how his sexualised display (more hips, more pelvis) invites her creative response.

With all this to-ing and fro-ing between Peter and other male competitors and the audience, I’m seeing a whole lot of queer, right here. Particularly when you think about the dance partnership as a professional, working creative partnership. It is always implied, but a professional dancing relationship like Ramona and Peter’s, is not necessarily sexualised. So while Peter and Ramona present as a nice, straight couple, they don’t work that way on every level. So they become available for a little queer co-opting.

The best part of reading on the slant like this, is that I’m pretty sure the men involved wouldn’t be comfortable with my reading them this way. Straight man panics! omg! they might think I’m gay! I’d better butch up! And NSFW!! there’s nothing queerer than the hypermasculine, right? SFW Right? And I have a feeling they’d be equally uncomfortable with the thought of straight and queer women and straight and queer men (let alone transfolk) finding this queering hot.

Here, a short aside. There’s nothing new about straight women imagining straight male pairings as gay. Queering them. Camille Bacon Smith writes about it in her book Enterprising Women, in relation to Spock/Kurk slash. Personally, I enjoy the thought of Sam and Dean Winchester as secret boyfriends. And I’m not alone. But for me, the real pleasure lies not so much in what they actually do together in this imaginary sexual(ised) relationship, but in the thought of their queering – their fucking up – the heternormative world. I like imagining that Dean and Sam have whole lives beyond the television episodes we see. And this enriches what I do see on screen.

I mean, to make alternative readings of women and women’s sexuality work, we have to have alternative masculinities as well. It’s the subversion, the transgression, the rule breaking and naughtiness that I find so appealing. I especially like the way we can read against the grain this way and no one can stop us.

But let me give you one final clip. This one is another partnered blues performance. But it’s not in a competition. So there’s display, but not the same sense of competitiveness.

linky

This one is interesting for the fact that this is a white woman dancing with a black man. There are all sorts of discussions about the young African American man as hypersexualised ‘buck’ to be explored here (check out Donald Bogle’s work on stereotypes of black American identity for a starting place). But I don’t have the references to hand. But I do think it’s cool to see the way this performance subverts that mythology. Here is a young black man with seriously mad dance skills. He has brilliant control. We can see culturally specific as well as gendered movements and bodily awareness at work here. But they are working together as partners. The difference in style is what makes this work. The humour – the parts where we laugh or smile at the jokes – defuse the sexual tension, but at the same time heighten it. It’s the adrenaline and chemical high of laughing that makes us feel good, and we’re more likely to read sexualised subtext as sexualised if we’re feeling good. Or so the theory goes.

This is my favourite partnered blues dance performance. I like the humour, it reflects the things I like about a lot of blues music. I love the use of solo and traditional jazz steps. I adore the use of tango rhythms and styling, as tango was massively popular at the same time as blues music in the 1920s. This is recorded music, not a live band, but it’s a modern performance – Winton Marsalis – covering Jelly Roll Morton’s song ‘New Orleans Bump’. Marsalis himself suggests an engagement with race and ethnicity (though he never seems to gain any sense of reflexivity about gender and sexuality!). And Jelly Roll Morton? Well. He’s all about braggadocio and sexualised masculine performance.

There’s lots more to say about all these. But I think I want to end here, pointing out that my favourite parts of all these are:

  • The male bodies (rather than female) presented for an eroticised gaze.
    Men are presented (and presenting themselves) as sexual objects as well as subjects. I think that this transgression is a useful model not only for other male dancers, but for women dancers as well. As I said on FB, these guys make it clear that the sisters need to put their shoes on and get their action in gear.
  • The invitation to play and to laugh is central to the sexualised display.
    Laughter is about rule breaking. It interrupts power and control. It is power and control. For many women, their greatest fear is being laughed at or ridiculed because they aren’t sexy/beautiful/young/skinny/white/whatever enough. I think that we can gain some sense of self power to engage with the humour in an assertive way. Combining humour and dance is very difficult. It requires a great deal of skill and confidence. Why not model our dancing on the example set by men, and then twist it, queer it, to undo the traditional gender and power dynamics?
  • It’s all about breaking rules.
    I really, really like performances which break rules. I don’t like to see people hurt or humiliated. I do like to see assumptions about what is ‘proper’ tipped upside down. I do like to be surprised. Patriarchy is boring. Heteronormativity is dull. I want to be entertained. And these are performances. If I’m going to stop dancing and sit down for 3 minutes (or longer), you need to make it worth my while.
  • It moves us away from the boring, stupid idea of sexualised performance embodied in boring second rate burlesque. Yes, ladies, there are other ways of being powerful, sexually, than just presenting your body like a big present for male audiences.

Do, please, go on and seek out other images of men dancing that subvert the hetero stuff. There’s plenty about, from both present day dancers and historic dances. Why not start with these:

[EDIT: I would really like to engage with the race stuff in the final clip, but I don’t feel I’m properly up to date on the literature, so I’d just be bullshitting my way through. But race is absolutely central to this stuff. Contemporary American swing dance culture (accommodating all the related dances) is dominated by white, middle class young people. Dancing dances that developed in black working class and working poor American communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This has to be addressed, if we are talking power.]

References

Bacon Smith, Camille, Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth, Pennsylvania Press: USA, 1992.

Bogle, Donald, Uncle Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in Films, Viking Press: USA, 1973.
(this topic is introduced in the chapter ‘Origins of Black Body Politics’ of Jackson’s book)

Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge: USA, 1990.

Jackson, Ronald L, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media, Suny: USA, 2006.

Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Screen 16.3 (Autumn 1975): pg 6-18.

LOLMulvey image from alibosworth

LOLFreud image from you are doing that wrong

-> both c/o LOLTHEORISTS

LOLButler image from thrownoverboard

8track: everything i do gonh be funky

My current musical interests. New Orleans, for the most part, but not exclusively.

Image by Luke Fontana, from his very excellent site.

Clarinet Intermezzo: Peace Like a River Black Swan Classic Jazz Band Feel the Spirit 2007 1:43

Eh la bas Preservation Hall Jazz Band Shake That Thing 191 2004 3:52

Shave ‘Em Dry Donald Harrison Jr. Indian Blues 98 1992 2:53

Shallow Water Donald Harrison Jr. with Dr John Indian Blues 1992 3:04

Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky Lee Dorsey Working In The Coal Mine / Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky – S 135 2010 3:11

Things are Slow Barbara Dane I Hate the Capitalist System 91 4:17

Backlash Blues Nina Simone Nina Simone Sings the Blues 78 1967 2:32

Knock on wood Ike And Tina Turner The Ike & Tina Turner Archive Series : Hits & Classics Vol.1 119 1998 2:31

pork cooked slowly in milk

This is a Stephanie Alexander recipe. Or maybe it’s Maggie Beer’s. Buggered if I can remember.

Shoulder of pork. Any size, but I get a biggish one as you really really really want to eat leftovers. With the curds. On mashed potato. Fuck YES. Get an organic pork shoulder if you can afford it. I’ve done it with organic, and it’s so good it melts your brain.
If you can’t get organic, or can’t afford it (it is much more expensive), you can get a good one from a Chinese butcher. Get one without the bone, as that shit is annoying. Leave the fat on, but make sure the butcher scores it (ie cuts a heap of slices in it). If your butcher is Chinese, like mine, and doesn’t speak a heap of English, and you don’t speak any Chinese languages, be cool and use hand gestures. They’ll know what you mean. You can do this yourself, but your knife will have to be fuckoff sharp. It’s maddening otherwise.

Get these things and put them in a fry pan (no oil or any of that stuff):

2tbs fennel seeds
1tbs sea salt
zest of one lemon

-> dry fry all that stuff. You want it to get hot enough so the flavours really rise from the pan. But don’t burn anything. If you do, chuck it all out and start again.

Tie the shoulder up with string. Not plastic string. This string will stop it all falling to bits. Which it will. Rub all the fennel/salt/zest into it, esp in the fat. If you can be arsed, leave it overnight in the fridge.

In a big, heavy pan (with a lid), plop the pork on the middle. Pour milk around it. I used about 3/4 of a 2litre container, because I needed some for tea. You can use it all if you like, it won’t hurt it. Use organic milk. Really – do it. It’s more expensive, but only about $3. It makes a HUGE difference. They sell organic milk at Coles, but not Woolies near us.

Squeeze the juice of a lemon into the milk. This is important, as the acid makes the milk split into curds and whey (no way! WAY!).

Put it all in the oven on about 150* – a low heat. Let it lie like a pig in the mud for as long as possible, with the lid on. I went four hours this time and it was neat. Every hour or so, peak inside, spoon milk over the meat, turn the meat over. The milk should split into curds and whey. The curds are big, soft white blobs. The whey is watery. This is where the organic milk is awesome – the curds are bigger, softer and fluffier, more succulent and richer in flavour. It all makes the meat taste better. Also: leftovers in mashed potatoes. YES!

For the last hour, cook with the lid off so the milk evaporates a bit, and to make the meat taste better. Make sure the fat side is up out of the milk. This way it’ll get a bit hotter in the oven. and this makes the fat get richer and caramelly. It’s fucking great.

When you serve it, make sure you eat the fat. It’s amazing. But so rich. I found the organic milk made the whole thing much richer, so maybe eat it with some sort of veggie dish that’ll cut the fat. I reckon a fennel dish might be nice. It’s the sort of dish that you’ll really want to eat and eat and eat, but you should be careful. It’s really rich and will make you chuck. So go easy. Or, you know, don’t.