Author Archives: dogpossum

p>why yes, that is a broken template you see before you.
seems i’m not happy with a blog unless it’s goddamn BROKEN.

i am fiddling with dogpossum. it may or may not ever get fixed.
fukked if i know what happened.

and the comments on the recent entry have made me think perhaps i should respond in greater detail.

and then i got to making pumpkin bread and putting up dj profiles on FSP – check them out there on the right hand column.
this interests me for a number of reasons. i think it’s important to promote live swinging jazz to swing dancers in melbourne as part of an effort to Keep It Real, to keep us connected to the musicians. but i also think it’s important to hang on to the vast wealth of music produced in the 30s and 40s and beyond and before these decades. i mean, you could dj every night for a year and never ever play all the amazing swing danceable music recorded. this stuff was KILLER good (i almost typed killer-diller, but held myself back).
despite this cornucopia of goodness available, there’s an awfully big load of shit being djed in melbourne these days.
i am a purist when it comes to my lindy hopping music. if i’m going out to dance ‘swing’ dances – to lindy hop or whatever – i like the music to swing. sure, it’s fun to dance to other stuff, but i can hear that shit anywhere. there are so few places available for me to go hear some good swinging jazz and dance some good swinging dance on a decent floor with a crowd of fellow devotees.
i do also believe that the music you dance to informs the way you dance. so if you’re dancing to un-swing, your dancing won’t swing. etc etc.

i think that we need not only to teach new dancers ‘moves’ and body stuff and the history of the dance (i think we need to remember the afro-american history of this dance. it’s the scariest type of appropriation otherwise), but also about the music. swinging jazz isn’t popular music any more. young people especially don’t hear it much any more. they don’t know artists or styles or song names. they don’t know the difference between ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ jazz, they don’t know who count basie was and how important he was not only to jazz but also to jazz dancers.
so i think teachers should play swinging jazz in dance classes.
this helps dancers develop not only a knowledge about swinging jazz and ‘dance’ music, but also their own particular tastes.
this is important because one of the defences i’ve heard for playing bullshit unswing carp music at dance nights, is that the ‘new’ dancers want to hear stuff they ‘know’.

man. and these people call themselves a business? do they know nothing about creating markets for products?

so, i think – as well as playing decent music in classes – we also need to publicly discuss and demonstrate the importance of music and musical discourse through our attention to djs and djing practice. we should ask questions about how djs work, the music they play, their working conditions and levels of ‘professionalism’. we should value our djs and the work they do, encourage them to explore music and how to play it, value their own contribution and take their role in the community seriously.
and we should do this by talking about djing.

i also think it’s important for dancers to get critical about the music they listen to. they should start asking for djs to research music and seek out new material, to get historical relevency up them, as well as exploring contemporary works.

so i’m doing my bit through promoting local melbourne djs on my website. maybe providing a list of djs in melbourne as i do bands and venues.

i also have lots of ideas about fostering new djing talent in the community. about how to encourage women into djing, and how to make djing accessible for people without the funds to buy big on cds.
just ask me.

Thanks so much for making me read this, zot. sure, it’s a good looking site, but…

“I’m glad,” I told him, “that people like you and Bob Santamaria were around to fight against communism.”

Now, i wouldn’t mock this young man’s love for his grandfather, and i empathise with his loss, but this comment is laughable for so many reasons.

And it’s followed by:

A few months earlier weÂ’d had another conversation, where I told him how IÂ’d changed my mind about socialism, that IÂ’d realised how its proponents didnÂ’t tolerate dissent. He was so weakened by illness that our conversation couldnÂ’t last long enough for me to tell him that it was also because I finally realised that government interference in economic matters was inconsistent with my uncompromising insistence on maximum personal freedom (provided that oneÂ’s actions do not infringe anotherÂ’s right to self-determination). I didnÂ’t get to tell him how a colleagueÂ’s argument that to achieve socialism (a thing this colleague desires) we would have to abolish individual subjectivity, fills me with horror.

Again, not to mock his obvious grief for his grandfather, or his love for this man. But hell, i am mocking his politics. And i’m certainly mocking his turn of phrase, his knowledge of cultural studies and ‘knowledge’ of film. In the stupidest blog entry ever he writes in a review of the film japanese story (which i didn’t much care for either, but that’s not really the point):

The rest of the film, which is about an encounter between an East Asian man and an Australian woman, has little to recommend it. My first grievance, which I commonly hold against Australian films, is that it indulges in a view of Australia that is dominated by the outback. Since the majority of our population lives in state capital cities and their suburbs, this prevents such films from accurately representing Australian life even as they use farms or ‘the red centre’ to visually signify their Australian-ness.

This imbecile is teaching at unimelb?
Check his IQ: top zillion percentile. Says so right there, under ‘skills’ in his resume. I want to marry this guy.

No wonder unimelb shat me. I have only this to say:

Australian films which do not feature the outback (that i can remember):
‘Death in Brunswick’
‘strictly ballroom’
‘dark city’
‘ghosts of the civil dead’
‘children of the revolution’

i could go on and on and on… and i’d like to say to this misinformed fool: you need to get some australian cinema up you, cultural studies boy.

things that have happened lately:
– we buy a breadmaker. i know, i know, it’s almost like we want to be mocked, but hell. i had some cash, the squeeze eats more bread than a dutchie and the p’s were in town and we all know what the p’s are good at. yes. shopping. so we did. we could have done with a larder to put all kitchen shit in, but it was not to be.
– i make lovely multigrain bread.
– i burn my left forefinger on the breadmaker badly. enough to make me take pain killers and sit up to watch an extra hour or two of battlestar galactica until it was waaay past my bedtime. it makes typing hurt.
– the p’s visit, we go see cirque de soleil, we go out to eat a lot.
– we go (with the ladies) to eat roti at the amazing roti joint on sydney rd (east side, south of melville rd but north of albion). we eat muuuucho. food = excellent. joint specialises in malaysian, indonesian, indian and singaporean food. clientele reflect this. except for squeeze, crin and i: 100% skip. will return. especially as it was chhhheeeeaaaap and ‘just like home’*.
– i work on freeswingpress but really amn’t very good at it. the more i learn, the higher my ambitions. the less done it gets. i get cranky.
– i ignore dogpossum.org.
– i go nuts for yoga at the rathdowne yoga room. i love it. the gym is abandoned. utterly.
– i learn to do the waggling swivelly foot thingy in 20s charleston. despite having ‘learnt’ the dance about 4 years ago, i haven’t learnt the proper feet before. i have no excuse but laziness. but now i can.
– i teach a couple of chicks the ‘swivels in 60 seconds’ technique (a la bill borghida, current teaching idol) at a dance night and see one do the most amazing swivel i’ve ever seen, ever. truly amazingly amazing. the other huzzahs and adds it to her lesson plans for next week. thank you bill borghida: bringing de lindy hop in all it’s technical goodness to dancers everywhere.
– we barbeque a lot. the xmas bbq is thoroughly worked. cancer seems ineveitable.
– i make amazing salad. virgin olive oil or macadamia nut oil = A1.
– the squeeze gets into tango in a big way.
– i lose interest in tango owing to extreme tedium of following at total beginner level and lead-heavy numbers making leading in classes frustrating. i don’t go to tango classes and the squeeze, guilt-ridden begs me to come so teacher will have students. i fob him off with ready-made excuse about yoga obsession.
– i miss out on seeing the lovely grace at tango (back from europe).
– i plan a hair cut.
– i put photo of self on front page of freeswingpress and wonder if it’s wrong. but secretly admire self dancing with lovely zee-from-singapore.
– redefine meaning of secretly
– i admire self with short hair and long for hairdresser appointment.
– i write two chapters in a fortnight and gloat.
– i do no uni work for a week and find it difficult to get back into work.
– i procrastinate. to the degree of writing on blog after extended hiatus.

*D says

For those of you who’ve been worrying, i’m actually ok.
the chapter is ok (well the first chapter of the Chapter That Is Now Two Chapters, anyway). sure, it made me cry. but i’m not crying now, am i? no!

i’ve done some work on freeswingpress, so, while it now has a psychadelic colour scheme, it also has a far fancier layout. i suggest you check out the navmenus. i made them MYSELF.

we have nice things in the garden at hte moment. cherry tomatoes growing out of the concrete and producing enough tomatoes to turn my tongue to furr. herbs like crazy. beans. the passionfruit vine is doing well (ah, nostalgia). and we have these AMAZING peas!!! they look just like snow peas, except for the fact that they’re a delicious shade of mulberry. absolutely fantastic and wonderful. i have photographed them, but can’t find my card reader for this computer, so you’ll have to wait. but they are truly very special and wonderous things. i go look at them everyday just to see how they’re going.

yesterday was the sydney road festival, and what began as a trip to yoga and then brunch at a cafe became an all-day visit to the markets. i’m not sure many people from brunswick were there, but it sure was fun. we gathered up the Ladies and watched chinese ribbon and plate spinning, bands galore and ate a lot of things. it was sweet. we also looked inside the church hall where i do tango, the brunswick town hall and the mechanics institute. all on sydney rd, and the last two ones i’ve always wanted to look into. the town and church halls look like fantabulous dance spaces. the mechanics insitute a cute little performance space. i don’t know why there aren’t more dance things put on in brunswick. we could have the whole goddamn exchange on one street, where people wander in and out of all those different venues, as well as the streets.
sigh.

the brunswick lindy exchange is only a matter of time.

the gym no longer pleases me. it’s kind of exercise without a clear purpose.
i like yoga, but have found it tricky to find just the right class.
but tonight i will try the rathdowne yoga room’s drop-in beginner class.

i am doing so little exercise, i’m really getting stiff and sore. and that contributes to … wrrrritter’s blooock.

iyengar yoga = A1

the rathdowne yoga room is lovely, and you have to love an instructor called frank who wears purple bike pants. and recognises my overly-turned-out right hip/knee straight off. very reassuring. though of course it meant i had to work extra hard to keep that side of me sitting properly.

thesis? hmmm. maybe. poor worklog. neglected.

a few people have asked about the stuff i’ve learnt from bill borgida lately. so i’m going to add it in a link.
it’s fairly scatty, and could do with some editing, but people want it ASAP, so they’ll have to just cope. i’ll see what i can do about adding photos/demos etc later.

please note: while i’m keen to help, learning to dance from a bunch of notes on the internet is not going to work. you need to do it with your body, see people move and learn to see how things work in other people’s bodies. otherwise, i hope this is a bit useful. it is also only part of a basic approach, and only half way through.

i’m drawing extensively on bill borgida’s work, and stuff i’ve learnt about tango from jarny and i’m really only beginning to learn all this myself. so please allow for errors as i muck through all this.

finally a bunny photo. the squeeze is enamoured. and obviously the bunnies reciprocate: they mark their mates and favoured people. with urine.

this bunny is pumpkin. it was her cage-mate spud who decided the squeeze belonged to her.

My chapterÂ’s focus on the Melbourne lindy hop community is reflected in my choice of texts which address ethnicity and cultural appropriation in af-am vernacular dance.
The texts most likely to appeal to the general reader or lindy hopper are marked with an asterix. These are also perhaps the most important books of Afro-American vernacular dance available. I have included no autobiographical works in this list

Card, Amanda. “The ‘Great Articulation of the Inarticulate’: Reading the Jazz Body in Australian and American Popular Culture in the 1960s.” Journal of Australian Studies58 (1998): 18 – 28.

Copeland, Roger, and Marshall Cohen, eds. What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

DeFrantz, Thomas. “The Black Male Body in Concert Dance.” Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance. Ed. Gay Morris. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 107 – 20.
[not entirely relevant, but de FrantzÂ’ interest in contemporary Afro-American vernacular music and dance and film are worth following up]

Desmond, Jane C. “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.” Cultural Critique (Winter 1993 – 94): 33 – 63.
[an excellent essay addressing dance as a cultural practice. Uses cultural studies theory to consider how dances are transferred across cultures, and addresses issues of gender, class and race with satisfying depth]

*Emery, Lynne Fauley.Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970. California: National Press Books, 1972.
[another key historical work addressing Afro-American vernacular dance. More rigorously researched but still some minor flaws]

Friedland, LeeEllen. “Social Commentary in African-American Movement Performance.” Human Action Signs in Cultural Context: The Visible and the Invisible in Movement and Dance. Ed. Brenda Farnell. London: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 136 – 57.
[a really interesting article discussing the ways Afro-American children use dance and dance movement in every day life. Focuses on tap dance and contemporary dance, but fascinating for its attention to cultural, ethnically determined dance aesthetics and the socialization of dance movement in Afro-American culture]

Gere, David, et al., eds. Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995.

Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance. Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. “Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in
American Concert Dance.” Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World. Eds. David Gere, et al. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995. 95 – 121.
[somewhat ambitious in some of its claims about the influence of Afro-American dance and song in western culture, but worth reading for some of its discussion of ethnicised dance aesthetics.]

Griffin, Sean. “The Gang’s All Here: Generic Versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical.” Cinema Journal 42.1 (2002): 21 – 45.
[another work discussing Afro-American dance and song in Hollywood film. A useful read]

Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. “African-American Vernacular Dance: Core Culture and Meaning Operatives.” Journal of Black Studies 15.4 (1985): 427-45.

*Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
[another of the key texts dealing with the history of Afro-American vernacular dance. Hazzard-Gordon, unlike many of the other historians in this vein, is Afro-American. Her book is fascinating for its emphasis on everyday dance spaces in af-am culture, rather than more elite institutions like ballrooms and studios. Her work is well researched and interesting]

Jackson, Jonathan David. “Improvisation in African-American Vernacular Dancing.” Dance Research Journal 33.2 (2001/2002): 40 – 53.
[a fascinating and easier to read academic work on the topic of improvisation. Worth reading]

Kealiinohomoku, Joann. “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. 533 – 49.

Knight, Arthur. Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.
[a book considering the representation of Afro-American dance and song in Hollywood film. An interesting background for dancers when watching archival film]

Koritz, Amy. “Re/Moving Boundaries: From Dance History to Cultural Studies.” Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance. Ed. Gay Morris. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 88 – 103.

*Malone, Jaqui. Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
[the most authoritative and well researched of the histories of Afro-American vernacular dance. Worth researching, particularly for its consideration of Afro-American marching bands]

*Murray, Albert. Stomping the Blues. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
[another of the key historical works on Afro-American vernacular jazz dance. Focuses primarily on music, but fascinating for its definitions of ‘blues’. It is not, though an example of solid research. Despite this, it is easier to read and worth looking through]

Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. “Embodying Canadian Multiculturalism: The Case of Salsa Dancing in Montreal.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Canadienses nueva época, número 3. (2002).
[considering salsa dancing in Canada, but interesting for the parallels between that dance community and Melbourne’s swing community. Especially in reference to the discussions of schools and cultural ‘authenticity’ in teaching]

*Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. 3rd ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.
[one of the longest-standing and most useful histories of Afro-American jazz/vernacular dance. There are some sections which have been queried for their historical accuracy (most notably the sections describing the ‘cat’s corner’ in the Savoy ballroom), which emphasise an inadequately rigorous research methodology, but still a useful, and easier read]

Thomas, Helen. Dance, Modernity and Culture: Explorations of the Sociology of Dance. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.

Thomas, Helen. “Do You Want to Join the Dance? Postmodernism/Postructuralism, the Body, and Dance.” Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance. Ed. Gay Morris. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 63 – 87.

Usner, Eric Martin. “Dancing in the Past, Living in the Present: Nostalgia and Race in Southern California Neo-Swing Dance Culture.” Dance Research Journal 33.2 (2001/2002): 87 – 101.
[a somewhat dodgy article which does not demonstrate adequate field research. Still one of the few academic articles about post-revival lindy hop]

Influential films which feature lindy hop and are reasonably easy to get hold of:

*Potter, H. C., Dir. Hellzapoppin’. film, 1941.
[Includes perhaps the most important lindy hop film sequence featuring Frankie Manning and the WhiteyÂ’s Lindy Hoppers. This film also stars Dean Collins, who is probably the most important dancer in smooth or Hollywood style lindy hop. Collins is a white dancer generally credited with bringing lindy hop to the west coast of the USA].

*Woods, Sam, Dir. A Day at the Races. film, 1937.
[another important film sequence, featuring the same dancers

*Mura Dehn, Dir. The Spirit Moves: Part 1: Jazz Dance from the Turn of the Century ’til 1950. Film, 1950.
[this is an excellent film, but relatively difficult to get hold of. It may be in your local or state library, and can be purchased on video from the savoy style website]

Some useful websites with reliable information about lindy hop
*Pritchett, Judy. Archives of Early Lindy Hop. website. April 2004. http://savoystyle.com/
[features some nice historical clips and with excellent information]

*Loggins, Peter. The California Historical Jazz Dance Foundation website. The California Historical Jazz Dance Foundation. January 2004. http://caljazzdance.com/.

*”Progressive Era to New Era, 1900 – 1929. Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform. Harlem Rent Parties.” webpage. The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress. January 2004. http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/progress/prohib/rent.html
[an example of archival material available online which refers to lindy hop and Afro-American communities of the ‘original swing era’]

*Loggins, Peter. “Informational: Styles of Lindy Hop.” webpage. Jive Junction. Reuben Brown. Jive Junction. January 2004. http://jivejunction.com/informational.htm http://jivejunction.com/informational.htm.
[An interesting article about the history of lindy hop styles. Loggins is one of lindy hopÂ’s most respected historians, and justifiably so]