marketing and promotion

How do you tell the difference between an 8 count move and a 6 count move?

Well, how?
This is one of those questions that comes up in the Teaching Lindy Hop fb group over and over again. I hear people asking it in classes and workshops all over the world. It’s like asking ‘can I take knitting needles on a plane?’ It will always get a lot of social media traction. It’s a good idea for a banging post.

But I think it’s also a good case study for examining some of the problems with out lindy hop is taught these days. So let’s go there.

I’ve taken a number of workshops where the best teachers in the world teach 6 count and 8 count moves, and explain how a follow might know which is which, and how a lead might lead the difference. But I’ve figured out that it’s also a bit of a straw man question. Why?

It begins with the premise that lindy hop is a series of moves. And to paraphrase Adrian Warnock-Graham from Montreal, lindy hop is movement, not moves. It can take any number of beats to move from point A to point B, and in any rhythmic combination. We tend to favour blocks of 4 beats because swinging jazz is in 4/4 time (4 beats to the bar), and 2 beats because we have two feet, and swinging jazz usually has the emphasis on every second beat. But even a fairly canonical figure like the swing out needn’t be restrained by an 8-count (two bar) timing. It can be as many or as few beats as you like (or can make happen).

So why are people obsessed with this question of knowing the difference between 6 and 8 count versions of a figure?

Because that’s the way they’re taught. It is routine to see lindy hop classes all over the world marketed as ‘8 count swing’. Teachers talk a lot about ‘8-count swing’ in class, distinguishing it from ‘6-count’. There are a range of reasons for this, some rooted in the 1990s, some to do with the wider modern-day partner dance community.

Kenny Nelson has written a very good blog post about it, Social Dances Have Names, where he points out that white dance teacher repackage and market lindy hop (in the USA) as ‘jitterbug’ and ‘East Coast Swing’ as a way of explaining a dance product (lindy hop). Gaby Cook argues in a facebook post that ‘east coast swing’ is a product of the Arthur Murray company (she provides references in that post).
What is East Coast Swing?

A dance product created by Arthur Murray, a white American male dance businessman;
A repackaging of Black dance (lindy hop) to make it palatable for white sensibilities (an issue I’ve taken up in this blog a million times before, and which is the topic of a chapter of my PhD dissertation);
Predominantly 6-count;
Marketed to newer dancers.

The history is a little different in Australia. Yes, all the above holds true for this country. But the link to Arthur Murray and even the phrase ‘east coast swing’ has largely fallen out of use. It was definitely how I was sold lindy hop in my very first classes in Brisbane in 1998. But you rarely hear it used today.
Instead, the emphasis on 6-count figures is tied to the popularity of 1950s rock n roll dancing, which was huge in Australia in the 1980s, heavily promoted by large dance associations (like the VRRDA), and provided teachers for the very first lindy hop classes in the country.

In Sydney in particular, rock n roll classes (and rockabilly) are very popular, bolstered by a healthy (and very fun) 50s live music scene and vintage/goth culture. So it’s not uncommon for a new dancer to take beginner lindy hop classes and beginner rock n roll classes at the same time. The two dances are further conflated by:

The same types of music used on both classes (or at least a lack of real swinging jazz in lindy hop classes);
A lack of attention to timing and rhythm in swinging jazz, and how that affects the way lindy hop works;
A lack of distinction between 6-count rock n roll figures and 6-count lindy hop figures in these classes;
Teaching mostly 6-count figures in beginner lindy hop classes, which then leads to the idea that rock n roll is ‘easier’ than lindy hop, and lindy hop is therefore ‘much harder’ than rock n roll;
An almost uniform belief that the swing out is ‘a really hard move’ in Sydney lindy hop teachers, and consequently a reluctance to teach it to beginner lindy hoppers.

So you can see how newer dancers, dancers who aren’t plugged into an international lindy hop community, or dancers who don’t know much about the history and music of lindy hop draw a very deep line between 6-count and 8-count moves in lindy hop.

Other factors contributing to this strange way of thinking about lindy hop include:

An emphasis on teaching figures in classes;
Class content composed entirely of set sequences of figures (ie ‘mini routines’);
Teacher-centered classes, where these set sequences of figures are called by the teacher, students are ‘counted in’ by the teacher, and the music treated largely as a metronome for marking out ‘the beat’.

In this class environment a ‘successful’ dance is one where the follow gets all of the figures correctly, and the lead leads all those figures correctly. There is no room for improvisation, no room for counting yourself in or experimenting with different timing for a figure, and a very strong emphasis on the leader and leading. We also see language like “What is the lead for this move?” as though there is only one, fixed way for a lead to move a follow through a figure, and only one figure matched to each set ‘lead’. This approach tends to create an anxiety in follows about ‘following properly’ (ie executing a figure perfectly, and exactly as the leader wishes), and a complete inability for students to count themselves in, understand or predict musical structure (like phrases, choruses, bridges, intros and outros, etc etc), swung timing, or improvise with shape and timing.

One of the most annoying consequences of this approach to teaching (for me, anyway), is men who usually lead all the time wanting me to dance with them, so they can ‘try following’. I’m generally not a fan of this, and often say no. I’m not a fairground ride. But the part that really fricking irritates me, is the way these men don’t actually ‘follow’. They feel what they assume is ‘the lead’ for a figure, then execute that figure, completely independently from me. You feel it most in a circle (where it feels like they’re running backwards, pushing your right hand around), swing outs, where they send themselves waaaay out past the limit of my arm, execute a made version of a swivel, and then run back at me, and of course as they move themselves through under arm turns with no reference to me.
I do try to be sympathetic to these men who just want to try something new, and only feel comfortable dancing with women because GAYPANIC. But I don’t. I’d really rather dance with someone who only follows, or who has never danced at all. Sorry not sorry.

But this approach to ‘following’ makes very clear the way these dancers understand lindy hop: as a series of moves (not movement), with set ‘triggers’ or leads for those figures that are performed at set times. There is no understanding of leading and following as a mutual process, where both dancers are communicating all the time, not only through those ‘leads’, but through every point where they touch, through looking at each other, laughing, smiling, talking, calling out, demonstrating jazz steps or rhythms, adjusting the way they move or groove in response to the music, and so on.

Surely you can see how all this sets dancers up for the idea that 6-count moves and 8-count moves are completely different things. And when they ask “How do you know the difference between 6 and 8 count moves?” they’re really saying “Give me a fail-safe, objectively neutral and fixed list of indicators so I can always follow/lead this move perfectly.”

So what do we do when students ask this?
I’d like to channel Sylvia Sykes here, who famously responded to the question “How do you dance lindy fast?” with “You do the same thing, only faster!” If Sylvia was asked “How do you know the difference between a 6-count and an 8-count version of this move?” I like to imagine her saying “The 6 count finishes earlier because the 8-count takes two extra beats.”

Because honestly, that’s the difference: one figure takes 6 beats, one takes 8 beats (and is therefore 2 beats longer). The 6-count figure is faster.
The follow up question, then, is ‘How do you know if it’s going to be a 6-count move or an 8-count move?” Because that’s really what people mean when they ask about knowing the difference between the two.
And my answer is: you don’t.

All sorts of things can change the length of a figure on the floor. A drunken random careering into your pass. Your partner losing their balance. A sudden urge to dance an iconic jazz step halfway through a bar. Random choice.
As a follow, you can’t ever know what a lead will do. And if it’s me leading, there’s no way I’ve planned any further ahead than the next beat.

As a follow, I just try to be mostly present in the moment. I feel that physical contact with my partner – their hand holding mine, my arm resting across their arm and my hand touching their shoulder, their arm around my side and back, their hand on my back. I look at their body and face to see how they’re feeling, whether they have a fun jazz to show me. I listen to the music and let it take me from point to point. I take care of the rhythm I’m doing (which is usually what the lead has suggested, but not always). I try not to fall over or run into anyone. I don’t know if this move is going to be 6 or 8 or 10 or 20 beats long.

But I do know if the lead is accelerating our movement, and I try to stay in contact with them so it can happen. Unless I don’t want to. Or can’t. So they may have aimed at a 6-count move, but it might become an 8-count move because I’m just too fucking tired to make it happen that quickly. Or because I need to add a couple of beats to make my logical-awesome jazz step work. Or because I missed the build up of energy. Maybe the lead thinks they’re increasing energy, but they’re just yanking me about? Who knows. And that’s why we can’t really know ahead of time whether a figure will be 6 or 8 count. Not if we’re actually dancing.

As a leader, I can choose to lead a 6 count version of a figure instead of an 8 count version. Maybe the music is telling me it needs a nice sharp BAM at the end of a phrase. Maybe I’m full of beans and dancing like a manic crazy person. If I do happen to be moving towards a shorter, faster shape, I need to start getting my shit together well before that point. I need to be properly connected to my partner, knowing exactly where their weight is, whether their torso and limbs and everything are safely under control. I have to have enough room on the dance floor, and be aware of the directions and speed other people are moving. You know, social dancing skills.
The magic thing about lindy hop and improvised social partner dances, is that all that stuff is happening usually outside your conscious awareness. If I had to consciously measure all these things, I’d die of stress and mental fatigue. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy dancing. When I’m dancing, there’s no planning. No thinking. Only feels. Which is why I need to practice if I’m going to dance on a busy dance floor in Seoul :D

There are lots of things that tell you, as a follow, if the lead wants to change the figure you’re doing at a certain point in time. They might have their hand over your head as you turn, and then bring that hand down in a comfortable arc to suggest and ending to your turn. Of course, you don’t have to do this; you can spin on forever. Or not spin at all. You are an independent, free and capable human being.
Or you might be in closed, and the lead uses the triple step after a step-step to make a send out from closed to open a faster movement, where that triple step is followed by another triple step. That’s a very standard way of feeding energy into a 6-count figure. Triple steps are, as you know, a very useful way of adding energy to movement, because you are adding an extra step, and you’re playing with the timing (making the rhythm slow slow slow quick slow) which makes it feel snappier and also swingier. This is, incidentally, why I RAGE OUT when I hear teachers tell students that they should drop the triple step when they lindy hop to faster music. What the actual fuck? That’s something a lead would say. A follow knows they need that extra step to haul arse. And we know that the triple step is the part of a swing out where we feed energy into the movement.

But I digress.

In sum, then, if you are asking ‘how do you teach the difference between 6 and 8 count moves?’, perhaps you should stop and look at your teaching, and consciously move away from focussing on moves, and towards movement. Move away from set sequences of figures, and towards ‘Try it in your own time’ sessions in class. And for the goddess’ sake, stop counting them in. Let them start ‘when the music tells you it is the right time’.

Could you just fuck off? Being a professional DJ when the DJ bros will NOT fucking leave you alone to do your job.

Hello!
As you may or may not know, I had some issues with a DJ bro pulling acts of Massive Sexism in my work place at Herrang this year. Despite our managers’ best intentions, the Herrang DJ team is still home to extremely bro bros. It’s also home to some of the very nicest reconstructed men in DJing, but let’s put them aside for a minute.

What about these DJ bros? Why don’t we just ditch them completely?
Mates, if it was up to me (and it has been in the past), I would. You hassle a sister? You’re out. That’s it. And all the time and energy we put into dealing with these jerks can be put into fostering new DJs and new DJ cultures.

Anyway, because I’m me, and I can’t stop thinking about things (ruminations are us), I started working on a way to develop a healthy DJing culture at a big event like Herrang that also draws on cultures from all over the world. Now, local DJing in many countries is not male dominated. Godddess bless the young man whose response to my story about being told ‘Women DJs can’t handle the pressure’ was honest befuddlement. He’d grown up lindy hopping in the Melbourne scene, where almost all the organisers are women, and most of the highest profile DJs are women. This generation of young people (ie the 20 somethings) is doing quite well. And we DJs in Australia have put a LOT of effort into getting rid of rapists and misogynists, and pushing women into DJing. As a result, we have some truly excellent (and definitely world standard) DJs.
But it seems the rest of the world needs to do some catching up. In my week as staff DJ in Herrang, I was the only woman on staff. Which SUCKS BUTTS. I love men, I really do, but I also really need to NOT WORK WITH JUST MEN. Because I need someone who can do the proper in-depth chitchat that non-bros do as a matter of fact. I don’t know want to know who broke up with who, I want to know the when, where, why, what, and how of it. I want anecdata. I want speculation. I want personal commentary. I want backstory. I also want at least one other person who’d shout “THAT’S BULLSHIT” when told women can’t handle the pressure of DJing.

Anyway, if Herrang has a safe space policy, and a general (though not terribly well articulated or publicised) anti-racist policy, how is it enacted at a departmental level within this sprawling organisation (that has about 300 people on staff each week)?
In the DJing team: not very well.
There are:
– no posters on the walls about it in the DJ office
– no paper flyers on it
– no social media campaigns or content
– one or two somewhat unexcellent pages in the DJ handbook
– a passing comment in one meeting.

No practical tips for:
– not raping or harassing or disrespecting people
– making reports
– trusting your own judgement if you think a bro just disrespected you
– dealing with unsafe situations
– making spaces safer
– intervening if you’re a bro watching a fellow bro go fully dodgy.

So of course, I decided to make some. Because fucking hell, mate, this is not brain surgery, and the rest of the world has been doing this for ten years now.

I also think that a good safety policy should involve:

1. an organisation-wide policy
That is publicly available (that’s usually a mission statement or set of values that says things like ‘We are trying to be anti-racist. And we don’t tolerate racism or sexual assault.”) This big picture policy guides the decisions individuals and managers make at lower levels or other places in the organisation.

2. A transparent reporting process
So you know what’s going to happen if you make a report. NB this is my example from Jazz BANG, and it’s out of date. We need to update it. But since we haven’t run an event since 2019… we are behind. This lets people know what will happen if they make a report. Most people make reports because they don’t want to be near the offender again, and want to know if he’ll be at the event. The other common reason is that they want to protect other people from him. I’ve never heard anyone say they want him punished. Except me. I FUCKING WANT THEM PUNISHED.

3. Visible safety staff, with photos in public place everywhere uniforms or badges, contact phone numbers, emails, and social media addresses, as well as physical offices!
this one is super important, as most people eye off the safety staff before making a decision to speak to them. They might even save reporting til well after the event (for safety’s sake), when they’re sure the safety people are actually safe.

4. A clear guide to what is considered sexual assault, racism, etc.
This one is especially important for letting everyone know what the event’s policies and ideologies are, and whether they take this seriously or are just cutting and pasting a random document. It’s very important for newer dancers who aren’t familiar with the way these issues play out in the dance world, and it’s essential as information for potential offenders, so they know what we count as harassment or assault or racism.

This info also plays a key role in dealing with offenders: if you kick them out of your event, you can say ‘you broke the code’, they can look at the code and see ‘oh, touching boobs is not permitted’, and they learn not to touch boobs if they want to go dancing. Well, that’s the goal. I don’t think it works that way. In fact, I know 99% of offenders know they shouldn’t touch boobs without permission, but they do anyway because they legit think they can do whatever they like because MAN.

I do know that it’s more likely to go: person has boobs touched by man, person sees the code on the website and thinks ‘fuck that; i was RIGHT to be shitty that he touched my boobs’; person speaks to safety person, saying ‘i saw on your website that boob touching in lindy hop is not ok!’, and the safety person says ‘you are CORRECT’; and then that unsafe creep gets kicked out.

5. A solid policy communication strategy.
This is basically a strategy for telling everyone – attendees, staff, randoms reading on the internet – all about your policy. It should also outline processes (eg how to make a report), identify safety staff, etc etc. It should be practical, and on-brand for your event (eg it should sound like you and the voice of your event, if you want it to sound authentic and real and trustworthy, not just cut and pasted and a token effort).
I like this stuff to be super simple, engaging and possibly funny, positive and empowering, normalising this stuff (eg the tone should be ‘of course we kick rapists out’ not ‘omg rapists?! how even? what ?!’), using photos and images rather than words. Fewer words. A catchy slogan or mnemonic is helpful.

It’s worth noting that the way you communicate your policy to staff is not always the same as the way you communicate to punters. eg staff will need to know exactly what to do if a banned man comes to the door, but customers don’t.
So you might divide your communication strategy between internal communication and external communication.

6. A solid process.
You have great ideas and policies, but what will you actually do? So, in my case, a guy spent a week pushing me about, challenging all my actions and thinking, making very sexist comments, and ultimately making me feel like shit. So I spoke to my managers. Who…. didn’t know what to do.

In this case, they clearly weren’t trained, and there was no internal documentation for practical responses to a report. I wasn’t sexually assaulted, so we didn’t need the cops or a doctor. All my managers and the rest of the team were men, and they hadn’t experienced or even noticed any of this shitty behaviour, so they didn’t really understand, or even know what I meant.
Because I’m experienced, and I am so fucking DONE WITH THIS SHIT. I refused to just leave it with my managers so they could quietly ignore it and move on. I spoke to the camp’s safety officer. Who also didn’t know how to deal with this. And now I am bloody well developing documentation, because if I’m dealing with this, imagine what it’s like for a new DJ who doesn’t speak English, in Herrang for the first time, dealing with a bossy white man (who isn’t a boss, but likes power) who keeps telling them what to play and that they aren’t actually capable of DJing under pressure?! Somebody needs to fucking well get this shit done.

I JUST WISH THE OTHER DJ MEN WOULD DO THIS WORK SO I COULD GET ON WITH BEING AWESOME.

Anyway.

7. Solid documentation.
Processes have to be recorded somehow. How do we handle reports? What’s the process for dealing with a rape versus a week of sexist harassment? What happens when the DJ managers change over at the end of the week, or resign from Herrang forever? Where are the reports stored? How do we measure the success of our response? And for me, specifically, how do I know this man won’t be on staff again next year the same week I am? Can I be sure he hasn’t read the report and correspondence? Will I be safe from his reactions? What if it happens again? At this point, neither Herrang nor I can answer any of these questions.

8. Retraining and retention or kick that fucker out?
You can see my position on this. I don’t think they’re worth the effort. These men know their behaviour is fucked up. But they keep doing it, because they think they’re fine. And retraining them takes SO MUCH WORK. So much time. And who’ll do that retraining? PLEASE don’t tell me it’s a woman (it’s always a woman). What are the metrics for gauging his ‘retrainedness’? What’s the time line? Where will he be trained? How do we deal with the effects of his mistakes (he will make mistakes)?

I would much rather spend all these resources on supporting those young women from China or Korea, that young Black man from the US, that clever and attractive middle aged feminist from Australia WHO JUST WANTS TO DJ FUCKING MUSIC AND NOT HAVE TO FEND OFF UNWANTED MANSPLAINING AND OTHER PEOPLE TOUCHING THE FUCKING SOUND DESK.

But that’s not the end!
What else do I look for in an event, to be sure its safety policy is both legit and 4real?

Other stuff:

A diverse staff cohort. eg if it’s all straight white bros, shit will not be safe there;
The organisation communicates about safety stuff. eg they have social media posts on the regular, talking about what they’re doing, introducing safety staff, marking milestones, etc;
Responding staff are trained in practical responses;
Staff making responses can access help and make reports quickly and easily;
Staff know how to make reports and are happy with the responses they get;
Workers feel safe enough to make reports;
Data is collected and used to improve policy and practice.

[all this stuff is from this pdf called ‘Good Practice Indicators Framework for Preventing and Responding to Workplace Sexual Harassment’ from Respect at Work.

So here we are. I’ve been at an event, had a moderately good time, dealing with the irritation and stress of making a report. And I’m going to make bloody sure no one else has to go through this again. I go through the DJ handbook (which the most excellent Yana developed in previous years), and I see some room for improvement, specifically in terms of safety stuff. So I write up some recommendations.

Here is a… probably third draft? It is just in what I call the ‘raw script’ form. From here it needs to be written and simplified, changed into pictures and photos, translated into at least Korean, Mandarin, and French, and then inserted into the relevant documents. To make this really work, it needs to be:

– In the official handbook in a ‘serious’ official form (that is still on-brand for Herrang);
– Made into a funny and accessible comic on a paper flyer to hang out in the DJ office, and in each of the four DJ booths;
– Made into a funny and accessible poster to be stuck up in the DJ office, in the DJ booths, in the staff lounge, the tech lounge, and music department offices (with extras for replacing them);
– Actually printed, then stuck up everywhere;
– Monitored for vandalism and graffiti (this tells what people are thinking about the issue and initiative) and replaced when it’s torn down or damaged.

All this, and it also needs:
– A script for managers to present it in meetings and revisit during the week;
– A script for DJs who are responding to harassment;
– A script for DJs who are intervening in bros’ behaviour.

And this is just one document that basically says ‘DON’T BE A FUCKING ARSEHOLE, ARSEHOLE.’
Anyhoo, here is the first draft.

Additions for DJ Handbook

Being a good colleague
DJs come from all around the world, and are all different ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual identities, and personalities. Hoorah! But this means we can occasionally miscommunicate or confuse each other. Here are some tips to make your work week extra smooth and fun.

Respect your colleagues.

Assume every DJ is as capable as you are. That means you treat every DJ (even brand new ones!) as your equal. They will know things you don’t!
Don’t lecture or offer advice without first having enthusiastic permission (“Yes please!”) Had permission before? You need to ask every time.
They don’t need to tell you what song they’re playing now, what song they’re playing next, or what song they played last night. But if you’re a good colleague, they’d probably love to tell you!
Don’t like a DJ’s song choice? Keep it to yourself.
Love a DJ’s song choice? Tell them! Tell everyone!

Don’t twiddle someone else’s knobs.

Don’t adjust the mixing desk or sound gear unless you are DJing, or the current DJ has asked you to. Exceptions: the booth will catch on fire if you don’t.
Don’t tell another DJ what to play, or what to do with their set. They’re DJing, not you. Yes, even if they’re a brand new DJ. Step back.

Sex and the Herrang DJ.
Attracted to your colleague and want to take it further? Stop and think a minute.

They’re working, asleep, drunk, high, or injured: The answer is no. Nope. No way. Someone in this position cannot give you consent.
You’ve asked once, and they did not say “yes please!”: Back off. They’ll tell you if they’re interested.
You’ve had sex with someone once, and you’re keen for more: Use your words, ask respectfully, and if they don’t say “Yes please!” it’s time to back off. If they do say “Yes please”? Wonderful news – enjoy!
You want to ask someone about their sex life, relationships, body, sexual preferences: Not while we’re working, buddy. You might get to ask once, politely, and if they don’t want to answer, you stop! And don’t ask again.
No touchy! Don’t touch another DJ’s breasts, bottom, groin, genitals… without enthusiastic permission (“Yes please!”) And not while you’re working, please.
What about touching the rest of their body? If you have power in this situation (eg you’re a cisman, straight, white, an experienced DJ, on staff, older, and they’re not), you need to back off. If you’re equals and friends, maybe it’s ok? Remember that different cultures have different rules about touching other people, and always use your words if you’re not sure. It’s ok to say “Hey, I just patted your shoulder. Are you ok with that, or should I use my words next time?”
You’re a manager and you’re hot for a staff DJ or guest DJ: Think carefully about this. Let the person with less power (not you) make the first move. Check in with the Safety Boss Daphna to get clarification.
You’re a staff DJ or guest DJ and you’re hot for a DJ manager: Think carefully about this. Check in with the Safety Boss Daphna to get clarification. But if you make a move and they don’t say “Yes please!” say “No problem!” and back off.
Someone touched you/said something sexy/showed you sexy pictures or video/asked you about your sex life or sexuality, or did something that made you feel ‘urk! No! Unsafe!’: If you feel safe, say “Stop! I don’t like that”, holding up your hand like a stop sign. If you don’t feel safe to do that, leave the room straight away. Find or call Daphna and the Safety team straight away, even if you don’t think it’s important enough.
Someone said “Stop! I don’t like that!” to you, and held up their hand like a stop sign: Stop what you’re doing immediately! And you need to back up so that person can leave. Then you need to go to Daphne and the Safety Team and figure out what you did. If you’re not sure, they’ll help you figure it out!

Be helpful.

Your colleague’s forgotten their record, the DJ phone, a bottle of water, a power cord, an adaptor: Offer to fetch it or find it. Team DJ: activate!
Finished your set (and your beers, dinner, and snacks)? Take all your junk with you. The only thing a DJ should leave in the booth is a bad smell.

———————————————–

You can see as you read through this that the beginnings of catch phrases are emerging: “Yes please!” is a good example. Here we’re trying to get people thinking about and practicing enthusiastic consent. So we practice saying ‘yes please!’ and ‘no thanks’ long before we get to the sex stuff. Hopefully. It’s important to practice these little scripts in non-stressful (safe) spaces, so when it comes to a stressful situation (300 dancers high on adrenaline staring up at you at 3am), you can say ‘no thanks’ and that DJ bro will FUCK OFF BACK TO THE DJ OFFICE and quit asking you what you’ll play next, and you can get on with being fucking awesome.

You should know that while I’m typing this up, I’m also assisting my male partner in making dinner (how could he not read the recipe? I don’t know. We will have a little fucking talk after this), booking a physio appointment for that goddamm sore hip, planning a balboa party, corresponding on this incident, asking a music friend to trust me with his CDs the way I trust him with mine, and trying to get it all done before I do my weights workout.

References:
This document ’Sexual harassment: practical resources and tools’ from Disrupting the System (a pdf https://championsofchangecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Disrupting-the-System_Sexual-Harassment-Practical-resources-and-tools.pdf) gives a good overview of things to look for to see if your workplace is enabling sexual harassment and sexism. Much of it applies to assessing workplaces for racism as well.

This document ‘Everyday Respect: it starts with understanding’ from Champions of Change (a pdf https://championsofchangecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Champions-of-Change-Consult-Australia-Everyday-Respect-Report.pdf) gives a good overview of understanding exclusionary behaviour in a workplace (including sexism and racism).

And the Champions of Change coalition also have this guide ‘Building confidence and trust in workplace responses to sexual harassment’ (pdf https://championsofchangecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Building-confidence-and-trust-in-workplace-responses-to-sexual-harassment-1.pdf) which is very helpful.

This document ‘good practice indicators framework for preventing and responding to workplace sexual harassment’ from the Aus gov body Respect At Work is also useful (pdf https://www.respectatwork.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-12/Attachment%20B%20-%20Good%20Practice%20Indicators%20Framework%20for%20Preventing%20and%20Responding%20to%20Workplace%20Sexual.pdf)

How to be a professional lindy hop teacher. How?

A famous international teacher wrote this in a public post on facebook today.

Hey y’all, real talk. I have encountered multiple people this week who have never taken classes from me, are not signed up to take classes from me, yet have told me they have seen my class recap videos and been practicing from them. The purpose of my recap videos is to help the people who actually have bothered to become my students and who have shown up to learn from me. Believe it or not, this is my livelihood, I make a living from teaching dance. I sell instructional videos from my website. Undermining that is an incredibly shitty thing to do. The same way I would hope you wouldn’t buy a friend’s band’s CD and then just turn around and burn copies for everyone you know (and would hopefully encourage them to actually support the artist and go buy their own copy), I would hope you would encourage folks to actually come take a class from someone who has built a career doing a thing. The easy option is I just don’t do recap videos anymore (shocking concept, but for much of my dance career, video recaps just weren’t a thing). But I actually care about students’ improvement and would love to provide that as a resource because I think it is helpful (as many folks also seem to), so the option I’d rather pursue is just be respectful of artists. Thanks.

This post was shared by a mutual friend. This was my comment:

I don’t buy this argument at all.
Recap videos are a brilliant way to market a teacher’s skills. They get people gigs, it gets people into workshops at events.

Recap videos often circulate between people who don’t have the money or opportunity to go to big workshops, and they’re an ongoing resource for a local scene. It’s also super common for someone to take a recap video back from a weekend to their home town, and then work on the material with their friends and dance partners (who may not have attended the workshop!) This is how dance knowledge permeates and spreads. It’s also a good strategy for people with low incomes to access knowledge.
To be honest, I have zero problems with people of colour, women, other marginalised folk doing this sort of ‘textual poaching’ from a white man 😃 😃 😃

This is not the same as people filming you while you’re teaching a class. That’s fucked up and not ok.
If you’re not ok with the way video footage circulates in the community, don’t let people film your recaps. Boom.
If you want to capitalise on the fact that your fanbase is sharing videos of you, learning from you, emulating you, get onto it! That is some powerful audience-engagement!
Things you can do:

Follow up on that conversation with that fan
(which, tbh, is a hugely flattering thing for them to do), by saying something like “Oh, that’s so good to hear! We should organise a zoom session so you can ask questions as you work through things! I have pretty reasonable rates, and we can make it work for small groups.” This is effective because this fan is clearly ok with working from a screen (usually a tiny phone screen!), and a zoom session would be a step up! It’s not often that an audience makes their preferred mode of engagement so clear!
Regard that conversation as a fan being brave enough to approach their hero
and respond with positive enthusiasm. Ask them questions about their dancing, ask them what they liked about the video, and what they’d like to do next. That fan will remember that conversation, take it home, and tell it to zillions of people. That sort of interaction gives teachers a rep as ‘a nice person’ and that rep convinces local organisers to hire teachers. You don’t have to put on a fake cheery persona; just respond like a decent human being to someone who’s telling you (in so many ways) that they think you are amazing.
Rethink the way you structure your recaps
to take advantage of this free circulation and marketing. Add a little intro with details of how to reach you. Limit the content in the recap. Have students dance the recap material instead.
Don’t do in-class recaps at all
but release them yourself from your own website (or a third party site), where you say to the group: “Give me your email addresses, and you can have access to the recap videos on my website” and then you can garner their email addresses for your marketing!
Be very clear in your T&C with organisers about recaps and filming them.
I personally say to teachers that they are not obliged to do recaps, filmed or otherwise, and I make it very clear to all registrants that teachers may not offer a chance for them to film recaps (ie their registration fee does not cover the chance to film a recap).

The more I thought about this, the angrier I got.

In the replies to his post, where people offer suggestions for monetising or controlling the circulation of this footage, he says “I’m old school. I teach dance classes. Not trying to be a youtube/insta/whatever power user” and then another big name teacher chimes in with “this is great but it’s a lot of – more – work” and this made me furious.

Most of the people who put on events that host these sorts of teachers do it for free. They work very hard to give these teachers work and provide workshops for their local scene. There’s very little money to be made (most people hope to break even, or subsidise with other stuff). It _is_ a lot of work. And they do this _in addition_ to their day jobs, caring for families… and often, teaching weekly dance classes.

To hear a high profile teacher denigrate this type of work makes me VERY ANGRY. And yes, it is lots of work to do this sort of management and promotion. HAVE THEY ONLY JUST REALISED THIS?!

I hear this bullshit from white man musicians all the time. As though being ‘a musician’ means that you just ‘do art’ and the audiences magically come to hear you ‘do art’. NO BITCH, THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS. Being a working artist means you WORK. You work on your craft, but sorry, white man, that means doing promotion, profile management, networking, all that distasteful plebean stuff. You also put work into being good at working with others (sound crew, venue managers, promoters, bar staff), you develop a sense of brand or how you want to be promoted, you develop actual promotional material (a bio, some photos, and – god forbid! – a website).

Argh this makes me so, so angry.

Anyway. This is why over the years as an organiser, and as someone who’s also been the ‘talent’, I’ve realised that the ‘talent’ is interchangeable, but the people on the ground who run events, who work the door, set up rooms, and clean up after parties, are the really irreplaceable people.

Digital business tools for dancers: Sam’s hack.

Topic: useful admin tools for dance businesses

[NB not tools for social media marketing or graphic design. Just basic business tools]

Last year I did some research into the various tools a dance business uses, and discovered some useful things. Note, I am based in Australia, so some of our laws RE storing personal data aren’t shared by other countries.

If you’re running a business that teaches dance and runs parties and workshops, you need a few digital tools:

– a website
– an email tool
– a way to take payment digitally
– a way to organise registrations
– You’ll also need some sort of accounting software too, but your local tax laws and accountant’s preferences will help you decide what you’ll use.

We’re all usually bound by pretty tight budgets, so it’s fair to say that we want the best we can get, for the least amount of money. And we all know that the cheapest isn’t always the best.
But we also know that not all of us have the technical skills or experience running a dance business (not to mention time) to learnt to use a bunch of new computer things.

Anyway, this is what I found. It’s not an exhaustive list, and it’s pretty much just for me here in Australia.

Let’s assume we have two users.
User 1: New to running a local dance business, lots of good _dance_ and teaching skills, very little experience marketing, handling income and expenses, no real experience dealing with computer software, etc. Limited budget, time-poor. So, a regular dancer.

User 2: Experience running a dance business, experience with a range of software tools, dance and teaching skills. Time-poor, small budget. Wants to upgrade from older tools, reduce admin hassle, and streamline the process. So, the other type of regular dancer :D

From what I’ve seen, there are a couple of ways to get all the tools you need:
1. An all-in-one tool that handles email lists, digital sales (both online, or via a phone in person at a dance), a nice looking website (with the analytics you need)

2. A host of individual tools (eg a sales tool, an email tool, a website tool (whether it’s one you build yourself, or one out of the box)

The first option can be (and usually is) more expensive. There are cheapy options out there, but most of them don’t do all the things a small dance business really needs. Sometimes the more expensive complete packages are a bit limited (eg the email option only lets you have 500 addresses on your list; the website sales integration only works with a particular bank or shop front app).

But the first option is easier because:
– you don’t have to spend lots of time learning to use a lot of different tools.
– you have one account that you log into, from which you can add other users/admin accounts
– the integration of all the tools means you can see when user X buys a product, cross reference it with how often they open emails from you, and track their progress through your site. To my mind, this is the BEST thing. But it’s not so useful if you’re not at the point where you need or can make use of this data.
Downside of this option: price. It can seem super exy for a small business that doesn’t have any seed money.

By far the best of these options is Squarespace. It’s not the cheapest, in fact it’s quite expensive, but it saves you a lot of things:
– security is better because you don’t have a heap of random tools with different log ins that you share with everyone in your team;
– security can be weaker, because you only have that one point of entry to all these essential tools. Good thing is that squarespace is pretty secure.
– the website templates are really really nice, and look really professional. This is essential for a business that needs customers to trust it’s online shop.
– the website design can be changed via the code directly, or using the design tools in the main dashboard. You can create a page quickly, and move images and blocks of text around quickly.
– the shop front tool is beautifully integrated from the front end (the customer’s point of view). It looks slick and professional, which is good for developing trust.
– you can add approximately one billion trillion ‘extensions’ to the basic website. ie you can integrate a bunch of other tools, from accounting software, to email marketing, store fronts, your social media accounts, and printing. Yes, you can create your own tshirts and sell them through your site without having to handle printing or inventory.
– it will help you through buying a domain, which is often another sticking point for new businesses.

The downside of squarespace:
– it’s expensive
– learning to use the website building tools can be tricky (I found it challenging, and I have a lot of experience building sites from code to using builders)

The second option (lots of different tools) is often the cheapest option. But it’s ‘messy’. If you go this route, these are the tools I’d recommend:

– Square for sales. It’s secure, it has good support (ie people to help you), you can use it with your phone (so you don’t need to buy any sales hardware). It has a simple online shopfront (very basic, but serviceable, and not too ugly), and it’s the cheapest. Cheaper than paypal or Trybooking. And more flexible.
It is ‘basic’, but that’s it’s appeal: it’s not too hard to learn to use. But don’t expect too many bells and whistles.
You can take your phone to class, and then when people arrive and want to pay, you can do it all right there with just your phone. No cash, no extra hardware. Game changer in a covid world.
Equity: many of us offer free or discounted tickets for students, low income, etc. I haven’t checked it, but I’m certain Square would offer a ‘reduced’ or ‘comp’ sales option for your items.
– Does it handle your inventory (eg how many items you have left to sell, etc)? I assume so, but I’m not sure.
– Does it handle registrations (which is another way of talking about inventory)? I haven’t tested this.
I haven’t used a separate registration tool for years, as most of the modern online sales tools handle that as a basic feature. As dance event organisers, we really want to know how many people are coming, how many tickets we have left, and then we want to know info about each sale (lead/follow, etc). Not very complex stuff, really.

– Website.
I’d go with squarespace. I’ve used a range of website building tools, from blogging tools (eg wordpress), as well as building my own from scratch (and hosting on my own server at home), but I think that for the time and energy, squarespace gives you something beautiful that’s quick and easy to administer. And because you can create multiple accounts for the one site, you don’t get that ‘webmaster bottleneck’ that has plagued the dance world. It also handles all that domain purchasing stuff, which is SO important.
There are cheaper options (eg Square’s simple website option), but Squarespace also has some nice analytics in the basic package, so you can see which page is getting the most traffic, etc.

– Email. You must have a proper email tool (you can’t just create a list in your apple Mail or Outlook Express; that way lies horrific privacy and security dramas). Email and website are the two most important things you must have as a small business. So people can find you, and then you can reach out to them directly.

Mailchimp is still the big email player. It’s recently gotten more expensive (ie your basic account gives you a smaller number of email addresses in your basic list), but it has wonderful features. You can see who’s opening your emails, and which links are getting clicked in your analytics. The template building tool is lovely, and the emails come out looking really slick. It has some lovely automated features (eg a series of automated emails to help customers; a series of automated steps that create lists of people who open emails quickly for you).
But if you’re not doing any of this email marketing stuff, it’s probably overkill for you. And it’s expensive once you get past X number of email addresses.

Squarespace does have an email option, but it’s limited in terms of analytics. And it gets expensive when you add heaps of email addresses. And you WANT to have a zillion people on your email list. That’s the gold.

Personally, I go with Mailchimp, as I have had an account for years, and it’s been grandfathered in. And because I’m super interested in learning about email marketing. ie more than just spamming your audience with ‘buy! buy!’ emails. I’m interested in sending the right message to the right audience. eg sending links to the new beginner course rego page to the people who registered in the last beginner course of 2022.

Promoting your dance or jazz music business online

Here are some things I’ve learnt about promoting dance or music related businesses online. I’m not a marketing specialist, but I am a media studies specialist who’s been promoting dance events online for about 15 years now.

You need a website.

You need an email newsletter.

Why?

With both of these media, you are the producer broadcasting a message to your readers.
Audiences tend to regard these as authoritative sources, unfiltered by social opinion.
If a social media platform collapses or moves out of vogue, your data won’t disappear with it.

They don’t need to be fancy. In fact, the simpler the better. A single page website with clear headers and a simple structure is best. A newsletter can be sent out maybe once a month. So long as it’s sent out _consistently_, at the same time each week or month, it’s all good.

What about social media?
Important, but in a different way. Think of your behaviour on social media as your brand (which is the public version of you and your business) interacting with lots of real people and other brands out in public. It’s a way for you to develop personal and professional networks in your community or industry. And social media get used a lot, by a lot of different types of people, of all ages and demographics. Perhaps the best thing about social media, for marketing and advertising, is that it allows you to know who’s seeing your ad, when, and where. Something that was harder to judge before social media. Before social media, a brand used social media to ‘broadcast’ a message. With social media, a brand can interact with audiences in a much more complex way.

Websites are important.
Of the two, the website is most important. If you do a tiny bit of audience research (eg we used a very simple survey to routinely ask all our dance class attendees how they found us), you can see which media are most important. For our dance classes, a ‘google search’ accounted for 90% of our attendance. Even if they saw a post on facebook first, they still used a search engine to actually get them to class (and make the sale).

This is where we talk about SEO. Search Engine Optimisation. It’s not magic, it just means ‘make it easy for search engines like google to find your website’. We know a lot of things about google. We know that when it indexes your website, it pays attention to the words you use. ie it ‘reads’ your code. And google tells you how to make it easier for their search engine to find your site.

What should your website include?

Your name. The name you want people to use when they announce you over a microphone or list you on a program.
Your contact details. A phone number, and an email address. Right at the top. And in the footer too. Make it really easy for busy bookers, festival programmers, and prospective clients to find you. If someone’s prepared to pick up the phone to talk to you, they want information quickly, and they’re close to making a decision.
Some useful key words. What do you do? Dance teacher? Then you need ‘dance teacher’ right at the top of your page. Are you a lindy hopper? A jazz musician? Do you run weekly balboa classes? Then say so, right there in text on the page. Make it easy for google to find you when your audience does a google search.

Pictures?
Most importantly, don’t hide information away in images. Search engines like google can’t ‘find’ your information if it’s hidden in an image. All google knows about your lovely instagram graphic is that it’s a .jpg file, 1080px x 1080px, created on 2 January 2022. Even more importantly, people who use screen readers can’t find your information if it’s locked inside an image.

Do use photos on your website or newsletter, because they look nice, and it’s easier to sell a product if people know what it looks like.

Don’t hide information in an image.
Each image should have a ‘title’ tag, and ‘alternative’ text (‘alt’ text) to that tag. If you’re writing your own website code, that’s easy to do. You just add alt=”the information from your image” to the image element. Most website building tools (like squarespace) and newsletter tools (like mailchimp) offer you the option to add alt text as well. Yay!

As an example, this little graphic is very effective for instagram. It has all the information we need – there’s a party, when and where it’s on, and bring cake!

But without alt text, all your web browser knows is that this is an image, 812px x 812px, called ‘Screen-Shot-2022-04-06-at-2.30.41-pm.png’. No one will come to your party.
If you add alt text like “party time! Monday 3pm, 11 Streetname St, Bring cake!”, then a google search will be able to find the information and serve it up as a result in a google search.

What about a newsletter?
Don’t underestimate the value of a newsletter. People actively choose to sign up for your newsletter, which is a way of signalling to you ‘I am interested enough in you and your product to give you access to my inbox’.

Newsletters give you lots of useful information about your subscribers as well. How many people click on links? Or open the email at all? How many unsubscribe? How many ‘bounce’? All these analytics can help you improve your newsletter: which subject lines convinced people to open the email? Which calls to action in your newsletter got a response?

If you use a newsletter service like mailchimp (and you really should. For privacy, security, efficacy, and ease), you often have the option of displaying an archive of your past emails. Each of these past emails is another tool for improving your SEO: another hundred or thousand times a search engine will read your name on the internet and add that page to its index.

Most of all, a newsletter lets you speak directly to a group of people who are even just a little bit interested in you and what you do. Gold!

Take this seriously
If you’re going to stand up on stage and play, or run a class for people to learn to dance, you have to let people know. Even if your business runs mostly via word of mouth, having a solid website can work just like a nice business card. Something that means a lot more in a world where most people have a smartphone in their pocket (or hand!)

If you need a hand with this stuff, drop me a line I can give you some tips. For a very reasonable rate :D