Author Archives: dogpossum

today i had a busy day inspired by Jane C. Desmond’s article “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies” in Cultural Critique (Winter 1993/94, pgs 33 – 63).

And IÂ’ve recently written an overly long post in this thread on swing talk about the charleston swingout.

charleston

The charleston – as you may or not know – was one of the key dances incorporated in the historical development. While the open/closed/open structure of the swingout (foundational step of the lindy hop) included the break away which so revolutionised partner dancing in the 30s (what, a couple dancing alone together?! improvising?!), I do suspect that the charleston contributed footwork and timing to the neophyte swing out. The break away was of course already living in the texas tommy and other pre-lindy partner dances. The charleston predated lindy, and gained mainstream popularity in the 20s though it did develop earlier than that and was initially performed in an Afro-American stage play whose name escapes me just now. The charleston itself developed from earlier Afro-American post-emancipation dances.

The charleston prevailed into the 30s and 40s, yet with a distinct style that differed from the early 20s charleston. The earlier version was more upright and with a different rhythm, while the later version is more syncopated and less upright. IÂ’ve heard this later style referred to as ‘lindy hop charlestonÂ’, ‘30s charlestonÂ’ and ‘flying charlestonÂ’. This final name, though used by Jacqui Malone in her credible book Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance is used by contemporary swingers in reference to another distinct step. In this clip Frankie Manning dances first the lindy hop charleston (primarily in profile) and the ‘flying charlestonÂ’ (in front-view). You can see why Malone refers to the lindy hop charleston as ‘flyingÂ’ charleston, as ManningÂ’s distinctive style makes his stretched-out upper body appear to be flying, while his lower body goes like the clappers – a rea
lly nice example of ‘cool’. ‘Cool’ is a concept used in Afro-American dance to refer to the juxtaposition of a ‘cool’ or aloof, or chilled face with a ‘hot’ body which is engaged in fierce physical exercise. Or some other similar juxtaposition of moods.

Charleston swingout?
The charleston swingout has come to contemporary Australian swingers post-lindy hop (ironically enough) and I doubt it ever made it to Australia pre-revival. Though I could be wrong…
It is essentially, the same movement as a swingout, where the partners come into a closed position and then out, but in the charleston swingout, the footwork is distinctly charleston-inspired and less of a ‘slotted’ movement.

I’ve been led the charleston swingout once or twice, but I wanted to learn to lead it myself. And it seems that there’s a deficit of weight change information in the explanations I’ve had. Or else I’ve not had it explained to me in terms that I can understand.

I am all about weight change, as per previous discussions on this blog and elsewhere.

ok, so back to the topic at hand…

I’m reading some really great stuff about dance at the moment. For a bibliography of stuff IÂ’ve read this past week or so, check out this file.

At any rate, IÂ’ve been really fascinated by all this stuff and have started to wonder about the way we dancers use archival Hollywood clips of swing dance as an authoritative source for dance. The California Historical Jazz Dance Foundation, of which the respected post-revival dancer and historian Peter Loggins is a part offers this fairly exhaustive list of films in which lindy hop and swing dance appear. HellzapoppinÂ’ is perhaps the most-used and influential of all these, and stars Frankie Manning.

In that thread on the charleston swingout, people suggest I look up After Seben, a clip which features Shorty George Snowden (I think it is) dancing the charleston swingout. Now IÂ’m have some concerns about this source, as an historical guide to dance recreation. Check out the extended version of this entry to see what these concerns are.

Continue reading “work thoughts”

over here, mig is getting into some serious prompting-creativity action. he’s decided to not watch telly, or read anything for a whole week.

now, i’m not sure about the rest of the world, but if i didn’t anything or watch any telly or read any internet, or listen to any radio, i’d be absolutely un-creative.
i wonder if art galleries and fillums and shows are out as well.

all those things are things that prompt me to write.
especially the reading thing. especially if i’m reading work stuff. i mean, look at the bibliography for the dance stuff i’ve read over the past week or two. that’s like 25 things i’ve read in a week or two, plus play books of course – so add about 5 more books on there, plus the internet (including a vast array of swing discussion boards for research), plus all sorts of other things.

and i’ve been writing like a dang fool all week. notes and ideas and emails and discussion board posts and everything.
i find that when i stop sucking up culture from outside-me sources i stop pumping my own words back out.
especially work words.
work words are all about discourse, not monologue.

guess that’s why i dig partner dancing and not something like tap… though it’s only a matter of time…

Ok, so IÂ’m doing some browsing through interesting blogs, via this blog, which I quite like. It seems IÂ’m actually not really pulling my weight as a feminista extravaganza. IÂ’ve gotten dull. IÂ’ve gotten domesticated. IÂ’ve gotten depoliticised.
Whatever happened to the hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners dogpossum who’d cheerfully roast fellow undergrads in English subjects, or take on arsehole blokes in my ‘peer’ group for their unsavoury comments?

These days I just keep on reading when the regular band of misogynists make comments on Swing Talk. And what the HELL am I doing with guys who continually comment on their female friends’ breasts, arse, body in my peer group? WHAT am I thinking? It is not ok to interrupt a woman-in-conversation with a comment that she should “keep doing that – you’re turning me on” when she’s demonstrating bounce in lindy hop. It’s especially not ok when the guy doing this has had a few drinks and is compensating for said woman’s demonstration of superior dance knowledge. It’s absolutely, 100% WRONG for me to sit there and say nothing when I see this clever, capable woman embarrassed in front of her friends. It is SO wrong it makes me gag that I don’t say anything – I don’t step up and call him on his bullshit – because, as with swing talk, I’m thinking ‘don’t rock the boat’.

GodDAMN IÂ’ve had enough of this shit.

And while I’m on the topic, what makes guys think it’s ok to sexualise a woman, to add a sexual subtext or theme to a conversation or general social interaction in mixed company? Now, I’m certainly no prude – hell, I’m the original Mz Potty Mouth – but why is it that 90% of the men in swing are incapable of making grown up judgements about when and where it’s appropriate to turn on the potty? Is every guy in the swing community locked into some scary adolescent world where women are really either potential-fucks, past-fucks, someone-else’s-fuck, or unfuckable?
I mean, HELL, can’t they just figure out that it’s generally not ok to initiate the dirty talk with a woman they don’t really know, in mixed company? Do they not realise that said talk will not, in fact, impress said woman, nor convince her that yes – judging from the aforementioned talk – this is a Man worthy of her time and interest. In other words: you won’t impress anyone – not that woman, nor any thinking man around you – with high school smut and social bullying.

Right. IÂ’ve had enough.

And for all the swing guys I know who read this blog: if you’re thinking about making some smart comment along the lines of “so you’re getting all radical, are you?”, be warned: I might not come back at you with a bad-arse wisecrack to devastate you in front of friends and foe alike, but I sure as hell will go out of my way to decimate your reputation amongst the sistahs after the show. While the not-so-radical sistahs mightn’t take public issue with your behaviour, and while they might even laugh along with your lame-arse jokes, they probably aren’t digging it. And they’re sure as shit not thinking ‘my, what a clever and observant guy he is. I’d so definitely want to spend some more time with him’.

So, if for no other reason than to keep in with the ladeez: cut that bullshit out. Only your dough-arse mates think its funny, and thatÂ’s only because theyÂ’re a) drunk; b) alcohol damaged; c) stuck in some weird-arse perennial adolescence; or d) pining on yo arse with some suppressed homosocial desire which is perhaps most likely a response to the populist misogyny that convinces them that all women are less than men because they are really nothing more than an object defined by their proximity to their dick, or to someone elseÂ’s.

Phew. So yes, IÂ’ve been sitting on some righteous feminist angst for a while.
And if I were any of the fuckwits in the swing community whoÂ’ve been shitting me lately, IÂ’d be watching my back. Or my front. Because IÂ’ve had just about enough. And MAN do I have one arse-kickingly fast wit. I will destroy yo ass in front of a crowd. I will reduce you to unintelligible grunts with my whip-like one-liners. And if I canÂ’t get you with the dialogue, I will SO fuck you up on the dance floor, motherfuckers.

I am totally up for some smiting. I have severe wroth to vent.

– i have caught two mice in my room in traps. i totally killed them.
– two bunnies came to stay with us while their owner is off at a dance camp. out with the old rodents, in with the new.*
– i got a new gym instructor. the lovely robert, who is – he informed me with justifiable smugness – a level two instructor. we speak only of centers, while i admire his marvelous moustache and struggle through core-endurance-inducing exercises involving swiss balls.
– i took The Squeeze to a tango lesson with jarny and he surprised me by thoroughly enjoying it. i forebore** saying i told you so.
– i became queen lead of the universe and in so doing made a Serious Point: men are not necessary for dancing pleasure.
– The Squeeze became tango following king of the universe, and heterocentric order was restored to the universe.
– i bought a big ham cheap and planned to bake it and feed it to people. the plan does not eventuate.
– the washing machine died (after surviving a house fire, years in a sharehouse and several moves) and i decide to buy a new one.

*yeah, yeah, photos will follow. i promise.
**is that, like, actually a word? did i say that right. no, don’t tell me. i don’t care.

it’s never cool to see your blog is just a big white space surrounded by (entirely accurate) self-portraits.

but i have a belated breakfast to eat.

i’m still fussing over my notes, trying to figure out exactly what i’m going to write about in this chapter. it all seems a fair bit more bullshitty now than it did when i was writing the notes.
but i’ve managed to put together a decent sort of chapter layout. it might be a big chapter, but i know where i can cut stuff out.
sigh.
story of my life.

tomorrow might be a better working day. though i think i’ll get some stuff done tonight. the hardest part is always starting the chapter, though i think i’ve pretty much gotten onto that with my plan. i do need to do some serious research on afro-american vernacular dance. see what sort of theoretical work is kicking around… so i can substantiate some of the stuff i’m writing about.
sigh again.
i am SO in the wrong country for this type of research. i’m SURE i need another research trip.

OK, so it seems this chapter on the dance act has two parts or key points.

1. Presenting an argument for contemporary swing culture as an Afro-American vernacular dance. Or a dance drawing on this heritage.
2. Presenting a discussion of contemporary social and face to face dance practice and culture.

I am interested in the role of the media in these two areas.
In the first part, I’m interested in the extent to which history is present in contemporary swing discourse – how is swing culture historicised or, conversely, ahistorical?
With that in mind, I’m examining the ways in which a sense of historical context or history is communicated within and between swing communities. I discuss sites like Savoy Style whose emphasis is on the history of the dance and swing websites which provide briefer, potted versions of history like mine on
Free Swing Press. Interestingly, the Melbourne schools aren’t too keen on providing any history of the dance on their websites, though it’s a fairly common feature on sites like the Perth Swing Society’s website, and on similar sites overseas. IÂ’m wondering if limiting the dissemination of this knowledge – or deprioritising it in favour of group/school identities – is a useful way of fixing the groupÂ’s identity on certain terms which emphasise the closed, school-identity, rather than a wider, more decentralised sense of ‘swing community identity’. Obviously, it’s harder to control the interpretation and meaning of history in the latter state, which might lead to a re-construction of power dynamics and systems of privelege in swing communities.
On the other hand, Jive Junction, an American site, provides a fairly authoritative history of lindy hop styles in Peter Loggins’ article on this page. The key point of issue here, lies in Loggins’ engagement with the way histories of the dance have been employed by various groups to cement their own authority. ‘History’, here is not so much distinctly Afro-American or reaching into the pre-history of lindy hop, but concerned more with the geneology of lindy hop itself.

In this discussion of the uses of different media forms in historical swing discourse, IÂ’ll also mention of the role of archival footage from the ‘original swing era’ and discussions of musical geneaology in swing culture, though IÂ’ll leave more complex discussions for later chapters.

All of this is relevant to a discussion of face to face dance acts – actual, real-life dancing. The first section argues that swing dancing today is a contemporary incarnation of Afro-American vernacular dance. And that Afro-American vernacular dance embodies various discursive themes and ideological approaches not only to dance but also to communication and community which are fairly exciting for a feminist project like mine.
This attention to Afro-American history also allows me to manage some of the issues surrounding positioning swing culture as a diaspora. Diaspora is almost always a racialised or ethnicised concept in cultural studies. While I don’t have a strong history in race or ethnicity studies, I don’t think these matters can be overlooked in swing: this was a black dance developing from the slave history of an oppressed American people. And it’s been adopted by white, middle class kids in urban Australia. I want to know how this history is present or managed or re-presented or negated or whatever by the contemporary cultural context. Is this another example of cultural imperialism or appropriation, or perhaps an interesting example of a more dynamic cultural process? I see media forms – mass media communication – as playing a part in this use of Afro-American vernacular dance culture by contemporary Melbourne swingers.

So in the first part of this chapter I outline lindy hop and swing dances in terms of their history as an Afro-American vernacular dance. I make an argument for this history or context or identity as potentially subversive, dynamic, transgressive, etc – really, a dance-form which does ‘textual poaching’ in a very satisfying way.
In the second part I discuss the extent to which this potential is actually realised in contemporary Australian swing communities, by discussing f2f swing dancing in Melbourne on these terms.
I look for instances of poaching, tactical resistance, feminist-friendly stuff and – conversely – structural strategies of discursive control in contemporary, f2f swing dance.
I do all this through an analysis of f2f dance interaction with pays particular attention to the themes raised by the first section. How are elements like derision, challenge, imitation and mocking present in contemporary swing dance? how are these tools for subversion (or disempowerment) taken up by different dancers?
My analysis in this section centres on gender and sexuality, primarily in response to the limitations of space and time, but also as part of my own project as a feminist swing dancer to find a tenable position on the dance floor for myself. But attention to gender and sexuality is also useful in a more general sense, as the employment of various strategies and tactics in the negotiation of gender and sexuality in swing discourse indicates the more general ideologies at work, and their notion of identity and what it is to be a swinger. Swing dance culture, around the world, is heavily informed by gender and gendered identity. It simply makes sense to hang a discussion of identity and shared, communal identity on this issue.

ok, so i’m back ‘at work’. i’m sitting in front of the computer, notes open in front of me, most pressing of procrastination activities completed (blogs read, discussion boards perused, laundry flapping on the line), stomach full and kettle on.

do you think i have even any clue as to what my thesis is actually about? it’s been so long, i can’t even remember what i was writing about.

right now i’m looking at these notes on the dance act itself, ready to hoe into an argument about afro-american vernacular dance and what that actually means to a bunch of middle class white kids in melbourne, and i just can’t seem to remember what it was that made all this so important.

i think i need to re-read past chapters.
surprisingly, though, i’ve found writing about my work on this blog is actually conducive to good thesising. don’t have a postgrad community to discuss readings with? why not crap on to an imaginary audience on the internet. kewl.

i know it’s been a long time since i last posted, but things have been busy. i was in tasmania for around 6 weeks – 2 months, christmas happened, then new years and now. well. there was mlx in the middle, which was far funner than expected, probably owing to the fact that i was thrilled just to be in melbourne and having a break, as well as being gleefully responsibility-free, as a non-volunteer and non-hoster. ah, me-first. what bliss.

then i did some workshops in tasmania with bill and julee and the tasmanian dancers. the tasmanians do truly rock. i am also enjoying something of an extended dance epiphany. the secret? dancing is simpler than you’d think. phew.

now i’m back in melbourne, and will start work on the thesis again on monday. or perhaps tuesday, as i’m slotted in for an appointment at the gym. max has left the wick baths, but i’m settling for disco-moustache man. hopefully he’ll be as good as max. hopefully.

this year sees me thinking about taking up tap (still), african dance (possibly), hiphop (again, possibly), yoga more intensively (as it rawks), more swimming, and most interesting of all, sword fighting for the stage. i’m facinated. but not sure where to begin.

but in celebration of the new year, i’ve added an ordinary-quality photo of crin and i being pirates at the mlx ball. there were other pirates in our gang, but they were either taking the photo or in the hall already doing performances.

for all those who’ve asked, here’s an update on my mum’s progress…

oh, if you haven’t heard, my mother went into hospital last sunday night, with suspected chicken pox. by the following evening, when i arrived in hobart on the first plane i could get, she was unconcsious, incubated (that means they had her sedated, with a tubey thing breathign for her), in severe respiratory distress, had a weirdo rash, was on dialisis and had scary low blood pressure. they knew she had an infection, but no idea where it started or what it was. they still don’t know.
but unlike that monday, this monday, a week later, she’s out of danger and doing much better.
she’s now doing some breathing for herself, has some good colour, her blood pressure is returning to normal, so her temperature is much better. she is being taken off sedatives, so beginning to make involuntary movement on her own. we are vastly relieved, and no longer nuts with worry. the doctor expects her to be in hospital for a few weeks more, then home for months of recuperation.

so thank you so much for all the kind thoughts and phone calls from all the jillions of people who’ve gotten in contact. our friends have given us invaluable, hell WONDERFUL support, hosting my brother in melbourne at short notice, holding me while i bawled like a baby in the hospital while i waited for the other family to arrive, sleeping cuddled up with me like puppies every nap time and every bed time this week, calling me with kind words, bringing round cakes, strudel, biscuits cherries and so on, giving me information about hobart’s yoga (rock on the hobart yoga room – go there for ACE iyengar yoga), offering generous favours, and generally being kind. we really couldn’t have managed without you all.