Category Archives: lindy hop and other dances

A Difficult Conversation About Sexual Violence in Swing Dance Communities

[EDIT 13/6/13: It makes me very sad that this post is still relevant. It’s been linked up again, by a few different people around the place, because those people are having bad times with arseholes in their dance scenes. So I think it’s worth bumping this post again. This is such heartbreaking stuff to talk about. But we have to. We HAVE to.

Please, if you’re in strife and need some help, call one of the lines I’ve listed below. And if you want to change things in your own scene, start working on constructive plans with women, not for them. We don’t need no white knights, here. And if you’re in a bad way, and need some help, I know that services like Beyond Blue here in Australia can help if you’re having trouble with anxiety and/or depression. And god knows the only sensible response to this issue is sadness.]

[EDIT 4/4/12: I receive emails about this post, or comments on this post every couple of weeks. I published it almost a year ago. It breaks my heart that this issue is still one we need to address.

Please, if you need help, don’t hesitate to call someone. Doesn’t matter whether something happened years ago or this morning – there are people who have got your back. Give them a call.

If you’re in Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore, or somewhere else, please do google ‘rape help line’.]

It was inevitable, really. But my thinking about slutwalk and my thinking about dance have finally gotten together in my brainz and become the Difficult Conversation About Sexual Violence in Swing Dance Communities. Despite my mixed feelings about slutwalk, it has meant that I’ve had more conversations about gender, violence, safety and community since it hit the media than I have in years and years. And most of those conversations have been with dancers who do not openly identify as feminist, or who aren’t otherwise politically engaged. To me, this is a marvellous thing.

Tim linked me up with this article about slutwalk by Jacinda Woodhead and Stephanie Convery, which links in turn to 4523.0 – Sexual Assault in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 2004, a 2004 ABS report on sexual assault in Australia. If you’ve been paying attention, most of the information in the report is depressingly familiar, yet in direct counterpoint to the myths surrounding sexual assault circulated in mainstream discourse. Key points for my post today are summed up on page 13 of this report:

For most victims of sexual assault reported to the police, the perpetrator is likely to be known to them. The most commonly reported location where the offence occurs is a residential setting.

This point is expanded on pg 24:

  • All available data sources indicate that over half of perpetrators of sexual assault are known to their victims. NCSS 2002 estimated that 52% of all adult victims knew the offenders in the most recent incident in the previous 12 months; 58% of female victims and 19% of male victims knew the offenders.
  • The most commonly reported location of sexual assault is residential, often the victim’s own home.

It’s important to note that these are reported assaults, and that most assaults are not reported to the police at all. The report continues (pg 13-14):

There is evidence that most victims of sexual assault do not report the crime to police, and that many do not access the services available to provide support. Factors affecting the decision to report sexual assault include the closeness of the victim-offender relationship and the victim’s perception of the seriousness of the crime.

Victims are more likely to report sexual assault to police if: the perpetrator was a stranger; the victim was physically injured; or the victim was born in Australia.

The ABS report also points out (on pg 32) that in assaults in the last 12 months, 60% did not involve alcohol, 38% did. The figures don’t indicate where the perpetrator or victim had consumed alcohol.

The following facts are also noted:

In Women’s Safety Survey 1996 data :

  • approximately one in six Australian women (16%) reported that they had experienced sexual assault at some time since the age of 15
  • one in six Australian women (15%) reported that they had been stalked during their lifetime
  • one in four Australian women (27%) reported that they had experienced sexual harassment in the previous 12 months.

It’s important to point out that men are also victims of sexual violence, though at lower rates, and with far smaller numbers of assaults reported.

It’s also important to remember that ‘sexual violence’ and sexually threatening behaviour is broader than the conventionally heterosexual definition of penetrative intercourse (where the p3nis penetrates the vag1na). So ‘rape’ or ‘assault’ leaks out beyond the heterosexual notion of ‘sex’. To talk about sexual assault, we need to expand our definitions of rape, and of sexual activity and of violence. This then allows us to talk about men as victims of assault (as well as perpetrators), and men as the victims of male and female violence. I think it’s also important to remember that the sexual abuse of children constitutes rape.

So, then, a useful point from the slutwalk protests and discussions around the place:

What you (male or female) wear is not the reason you were assaulted.

and

Yes means yes and no means no, whatever we wear, wherever we go.

and

Most assaults happen in the home (or domestic spaces), not darkened alleys, and most people are raped/assaulted by people they know. In most instances there’s no alcohol involved.

How does all this relate to dancing?

Sexual assault and harassment happens in the lindy hop world
Firstly, there have been sexual assaults in dance scenes all over the world. Most are no doubt not reported. I have personally heard of one incidence in Melbourne, where community discussion of the assault was not terribly useful, largely phrased in terms of a woman ‘being violated’. I don’t know if she knew her assailant. Perhaps the most widely discussed (in the United States and online) sex offence was Bill Borgida’s arrest for possession of illegal pornography (specifically pornography featuring children). This was discussed at length in the Yehoodi thread ‘Bill Borgida: Two Counts: Child Porn’. Borgida responded to the issue with a public letter to ‘the dance community’, also posted on Yehoodi, in the thread A letter to the Dance Community from Bill Borgida.

This second issue is particularly disturbing, as Borgida travelled internationally, visiting Australia as well as many other countries. I knew him quite well, and my own feelings about this issue are fraught. I felt furious, upset, sad, hurt, betrayed, guilty, anxious, angry, confused. I want nothing more to do with him, ever. But the responses in the open letter thread on Yehoodi are more complex. Many people feel still support him and forgive him. I cannot.

Most significantly, I’ve been stunned by many people’s regard for the possession of prnography as a relatively victimless crime. There seems to be a vast chasm between consumption and production in this thinking. They cannot seem to grasp the idea that possessing and consuming pornography featuring children is at once supporting a market for the material and endorsing its production. The production is beyond reprehensible: this is sexual assault. Of children. Many, many children, over many years. All recorded and distributed for adults’ pleasure. Possession of this material is equivalent to producing it.

I don’t want to suggest that using prnography is the same as raping, or that using prn leads to raping people. It doesn’t. But the way we use prn and produce prn, and our attitudes towards sexual activities are informed by broader issues of gender and power and identity. So sexual assault becomes a symptom of, or expression of, a perpetrator’s ideas or feelings about power. Having it, not having it, taking it, fighting it. Child abuse, then, is about perpetrators with power harming less powerful people – children. Using child prnography is about finding violent power sexually exciting. These sorts of ideas and feelings about power and other people do not stay safely partitioned in your ‘private life’.

I’ve also been suprised by many dancers’ willingness to separate what happens on the dance floor from what people do off the dance floor, or in their ‘private lives’. I can’t. I increasingly believe that the way we dance reflects our broader ideas about the world, and about the way we feel about other people. For example, the rough or inconsiderate lead is frequently socially inept or clumsy and disrespectful of women off the dance floor. I am unwilling to disassociate dance from cultural context.

But I shouldn’t be surprised. Thinking about people you know – and like – committing acts of sexualised violence on other people you know – and like! – is really difficult. It’s so difficult and horrifying that many of us would just rather not think about it at all. If we make it disappear by defining rape in a way that simply ignores most assaults, the problem become manageable and less frightening. It won’t happen to me if I don’t wear a short skirt, if I drive a car, if I don’t drink, if I don’t talk to strangers. My wife/sister/friend/lover/daughter is safe if I walk her to her car or I fight off an attacker in the street.

Dancers do not challenge sexually inappropriate behaviour often enough.

I also frequently come across the sentiment in dance discourse (online and face to face) that swing dancers are ‘good people’. Yes, many of them are. But I am certain that many of them are also capable of, and do perpetrate, sexual assault. I think this is a difficult idea to talk about in dancing. So much of what we do is dependent upon the idea that we are all ‘good people’ who just want to ‘enjoy themselves’ in ‘harmless dancing’. We also trust the person we are dancing with, who we touch, intimately, and who we work with, creatively. I find it deeply disturbing to think about being in a closed embrace with someone who is capable of sexual violence.

There is very little violence at social dance events. I’ve only ever witnessed one incidence, in extreme circumstances. But I have witnessed many incidences of bullying and sexual harassment. There are endless stories about leads who physically handle women into lifts or air steps in dangerous contexts. Or followers who do not take responsibility for their own balance or kicks. We’ve all got a story about the guy with the tent in his pants who presses too closely to uncomfortable women in the blues room. We’ve all got a story about that guy who always ‘accidentally’ does the boob swipe in class or on the dance floor. Many of us also have stories about women who perpetrate an unwelcome ‘beaver clamp’ in the blues room or spend too much time draped over men off the dance floor. Though it’s difficult to compare men’s and women’s inappropriate behaviour, and they work in different ways within a broader context of patriarchal society.

Most disturbingly, swing dance culture advocates tolerance of these sorts of actions. We are told, repeatedly that we should never say no to a dance. Women in particular are encouraged in most scenes to wait for a man to ask her to dance, and then to be so grateful for the dance she should tolerate all sorts of inappropriate behaviour just to be dancing. Women are also discouraged from dancing with other women, where they might have the opportunity to dance in a clearly nonsexual partnership. And, just as worryingly, it is very, very rare for a man to talk to his friends or other women about women’s inappropriate behaviour. Men are expected a) to enjoy sexual attention, and b) to not feel threatened by women. I mean, when I wrote, explicitly and in detail about particular men in the post Hot Male Bodies, was I crossing a line? Was that inappropriate?

This raises yet another issue in dance. What does sexualised dancing mean? Is this public or private space? Is it appropriate to take something from the dance floor and then decontextualise it, take it away from the dancer themselves? Dancers seem to negotiate this stuff every day in sophisticated ways. I mean, there are millions of amateur clips of performances, but it’s much less common to find footage of social dancing. It is as though most of us have agreed that social dancing is ‘private’, even when it’s conducted in the exact same spaces with the exact same people. If it is regarded as private, then, is that why we have so much difficulty making clear, hardline condemnations of sexual harassment on the dance floor – the tentpants, boobswipes and beaverclamps which make us so uneasy, but are so unlikely to be openly and immediately censured? After all, our broader societies find it so difficult to legislate domestic violence and sexual assault…

There are covert methods for dealing with this sexual harassment and bullying. We tee up a friend to quickly intervene and take us to the dance floor if a ‘dodgy’ person approaches. We learn to physically ‘block’ a partner who wants to get too close. We hide ourselves in a crowd to make approach from ‘undesirables’ difficult.
I’ve also learnt how to deal with men want to bully me in a professional setting. I’ve figured out, for example, how to a) not let male DJs (and they are always male) bully me into letting them DJ when and how they want when I am working to an event coordinator’s brief, b) not feel obliged to hire difficult or bullying DJs, c) make sure everyone pays entry fee when they are required to, regardless of ‘status’, d) not to end up being overworked and exploited by event organisers (either by their design or their incompetence).
It’s important to note that most volunteers at dance events are women. And that we are engaged at all levels in the management and running of events. We have also managed to develop non-confrontational methods for dealing with difficult people. Unfortunately, these methods are usually ‘invisible’, so avoiding the public demonstrations of women’s conflict resolution skills. Their invisibility also maintains the idea that swing scenes are always ‘nice’ and ‘friendly’ and ‘safe’.

I’m framing these ‘everyday’ instances of sexually inappropriate behaviour as sexual harassment and bullying for a reason. Let’s remember those points from the ABS data. Most perpetrators of sexual assault are known to their victims. If we insist that sexual violence only occurs in public places, is only perpetrated by ‘strangers’ with weapons while women risk their safety wear revealing clothes on the street, we make real rapes invisible. We hide the fact that we are more likely to be assaulted by the man who has driven us home, walked us to our door, gone out to dinner with us many times before. We also discourage women from speaking up about inappropriate actions. Don’t make a scene – the Uppity Woman will not get another dance! It’s not sexual harassment if a man continually touches your breasts on the dance floor?! In this context, the sexual assault by a known person in your own home is also disappeared. The perpetrator doesn’t believe he’s raped someone. The victim is left wondering what she did to deserve this. After all, she’s learnt that she’s not to speak up if she’s touched in a way she doesn’t like or want.

So what are we to do?

This is all bloody depressing. It’s fucking horrible to think about my dance community this way. I do not want to think about the idea that people I know and dance with or share a room with, assault or harass people. I hate the thought that I knew and travelled and danced with Bill Borgida. But I’m certain he’s not the only person who has done these sorts of things. It’s not statistically possible. It’s like last night’s episode of 4Corners about live animal trade, A Bloody Business (Mon 30th May 2011). These things are happening in my community. I’m participating in their continuing by not asking about it, by not looking, by not watching. And, awfully, sexual assault and harassment can happen to me or to people I know and care about. Someone I know could do these things to me. Sexual harassment and assault are a real, immediate, visible part of my life.

So, really, what are we to do? What can we do?

Firstly, I think it’s important to think about broader social and cultural context. This is why I bang on about women dancing and the way we think about women dancing. Do we encourage passivity, acceptance, submission in women dancers? I think we do. Do we also encourage, or at least enable, inappropriate behaviour by men? I think we do. I also think we need to talk about these issues. And to do what we can. For me, that’s meant learning to lead. But it’s also meant asking questions about things like unequal divisions of labour in the dance community. Who is always working the door at social events? Do they actually want to be sitting there all night? Who does get paid and who doesn’t? Why don’t people get paid?

Secondly, I think that going on and on and on about the shitty stuff, getting angrier and angrier and feeling more and more upset without doing something is disempowering. It weakens us with despair. So we need to a) pay attention and ask questions, b) talk about this stuff and then, most importantly, c) DO SOMETHING. I’m a big fan of small, localised change and action. A rally was cool for getting us talking. But it’s not enough. We need to saddle up, friends.

There are things we can do.

I want to talk about how we get home from dancing, because it’s about getting from ‘private’ place to ‘public’ places. This is a tricky one. We’re out late at night, usually on public transport or walking to our cars alone. We’re out with a large group of people, some we know well, many we don’t. All sorts of people come to swing dances. Many of them are socially awkward or inept. Many of them already ring our internal discomfort alarms and have us avoid dancing with them. We go out to drinks or meals after dancing with large groups of people, many we only know by first name even though we see them every week. At the end of the night, how do we get to our cars, to our homes?

My usual instinct is to get a ride with someone in a car, or to organise a group to go via public transport, and then to call Dave so he can meet me at the station. But is it really such a good idea to get a ride with someone from dancing? Even if you’ve seen them every week for a year, what do you really know about them? This is where it gets really tricky. I don’t want to advocate mistrusting every man just because they’re a man. This is why it’s attractive to think ‘only strangers are a threat’. It’s impossible to be wary all the time. And being wary all the time is disempowering. If we’re spending all our time being angry or worrying about being raped, we don’t have time to be excellently powerful and strong. But it also makes sense to think about safety and to be safe. To be aware of our surroundings.

Perhaps a solution is to organise groups of women to travel home together, and to have clear sets of rules for how you get home. No one walks to the station or their car alone. Send a text message to keep in contact. Or to get help. I’m not sure how this should work, but I think we should organise these sorts of things! Sometimes it’s hard to get to know other women at dancing well enough to develop these sorts of support networks and practices. We dance mostly with men in class and socially, we women don’t develop solid peer networks of trust and confidence in each other. Although I have always found that leading, and doing solo stuff with women socially is a key part of developing creative and personal relationships with other women in dancing.

But this talk about ‘getting home’ is still accepting that myth that sexual assault is only done by strangers, only happens in public places, late at night. We should think about the idea that sexual assaults happen at dance events. When we walk to the toilets through the gardens to the toilets at the back of the hall. In the toilets. In the carpark. In dressing rooms. In empty ‘breakout’ rooms at late night dances. At the reception desk while everyone is in dance classes.
These thoughts are far, far more frightening than the idea that we’re only at risk for that 40 minutes on our way from dance to home.

We need to think about safety at dances. And, much more importantly, about dance culture.

So here is what I do.

  • I pay attention to the people at the dance venue. Who is in the room? Who are they watching? How are they acting? If a man slips into the blues venue on Friday night, asking me to “hold the door” which is usually locked, do I know him? If I don’t, where does he go? It’s harder to pay attention to the whole room when I’m dancing than when I’m DJing. When I’m DJing, I’m constantly watching the people in the room. I notice who sits and does nothing. I see the guys who watch women dance and move and sit and talk and walk. I recognise the difference between a sort of general interest and an unnervingly close attention. I take note of the men who boobswipe or target the less confident women, the newer women dancers, the younger women. I pay attention to men who only dance with these type of women or who stand too close to them. There’s often a reason these men are avoided by women dancers who’ve been around. Sometimes it’s just social awkwardness that sets them apart. But sometimes it’s a nameless, discomforting creepiness.
  • I call people on their bullshit. This makes me less popular. But what the fuck. I’m not 20. I don’t need everyone to be my friend. And if I see some guy picking up a shyer, less confident girl and tossing her into some sort of bullshit lift, I’m going to say to him “Stop that.” And I’ll say to her “He’ll hurt you. Don’t let him do that.” Then I’ll make sure I talk to her later, about other stuff, so she knows I’m not shitty with her. I won’t (for the most part) let some dickhead chuck me around. I will call attention to a boobswipe, even it’s to make a joke, even if it’s an accidental boobswipe. I’ll also call guys on sexist jokes or crude, cruel comments. I try to be gentle, but I’m often quite confrontational. This does mean that I’m not going to be asked to dance by some men, many of whom are the ‘best dancers’ or high status. But who gives a shit? And why would I want to dance with that arsehat anyway?
  • I’m also equally determined to appreciate and show my appreciation for positive, excellent behaviour and attitudes. I think it’s like applauding awesome boogie backs when you want to encourage solo dance. It’s easy to get angry. But it’s healthier to get constructive. Carrot rather than stick. This is where men come in handy. If we want men to be the most excellent men they can be, we need excellent men to model excellent behaviour. On the dance floor and off it. Men should call other men on bullshit talk or actions. They needn’t be stroppy. Jokes are very powerful. More importantly, men are excellent, and when they do excellent things and we all applaud them for their metaphoric boogie backs, we are showing other men that being excellent is a lucrative business. We need to change cultures of masculinity, not ridicule men. The challenge, then, becomes how we go about doing this. How, for example, should men express their sexual interest to women? Or appreciate a particularly fine frame on the dance floor? How should men and women do heterosexuality in a positive, empowering ways? We’re creative people, right? We can figure this out.
  • Dance classes are important. Dance classes are a key point in the socialising of new dancers. How do the male lead and female follower model appropriate behaviour on and off the dance floor? Who does most of the talking in class? Who interrupts who, and how often, and how? Who makes the jokes? Who’s the butt of the joke? What type of jokes are they? Is there sexualised talk or joking? What sort of language do teachers use to refer to gender or to leading and following? What analogies do they use? How do they dress? How old are they? What are their relative ages? Where are they teaching? What material are they teaching? Who are the dancers they mention?

I could go on and on and on with this. But I think it’s important to figure out ways of making this work in your own life, and own social context. But, mostly, we need to be Excellent To Each Other.

We also need to be aware of the fact that dance scenes are not all flowers and ponies. Bad shit does happen, and we should do something about it.

No Meat Week: Monday (& Sunday)

We’ve been living the CSIRO lifestyle for a year or two now, and while I like the lighter evening meals (without carbs), we’ve been struggling, ethically, with the amount of meat the diet includes. Also, it’s bad for your guts. So I’ve instituted a week without meat.

I’ve lived the vegetarian lifestyle here and there over the years, most prominently in a share house in Melbourne between 2001 and 2003. I’d moved to Melbourne from Brisbane, taking the coward’s approach to ending a long term relationship, and moving into a huge terrace house in North Melbourne with a bunch of younger students. They were all about 20 and I was about 26. I loved it. It was a delight to no longer be living unhappily in an New Farm flat with one other person. It was wonderful to suddenly be eating with a household of 5 other people (including ever-present boyfriends and girlfriends). I had my own shelf in the larder, my own milk in the fridge. I took my trolley to the Vic Markets every week, and I walked everywhere. I gave up meat. Alliances shifted within the sharehouse, and two of us began cooking together, tired of being third or fourth in line at the stove each night. We now occupied two shelves in the larder.

At the end of that first year, two of us left the strange sharehouse anchor guy to set up house in another, smaller terrace in Carlton North with a new housemate. Vegetarianism turned into vegan coeliacism as one of us discovered gluten intolerance and hardcore eating issues (masquerading as ethics). Each week I bought a trolley full of veggies from the Vic Markets, a trolley full of tofu, various not-wheat grains and dried goods from the Melbourne uni co-op and a trolley full of assorted canned goods and giant bags of rice and rice noodles. We were three fairly hardcore athletes. I was a newly addicted social lindy hopper, dancing two or three nights a week and walking or cycling everywhere. One housemate was a serious cyclist/climber/runner with a similarly-afflicted boyfriend in his very early 20s. The other house mate was equally active, but male and voraciously hungry. All. The. Time. We ate all the time. I ate two dinners almost every night. I got skinnier.

In 2003 we moved to another house – a gorgeous free standing colonial in Brunswick. We gained a house mate, the coeliac’s boyfriend. I gained a Squeeze. Eventually the coeliac had to call defeat as her doctor gave her supplement injections and demanded a return to nonveganism. Eggs entered our diet. Milk.

During those three years we ate a lot of what we called ‘veggie slop’ – misceleneous vegetarian curries drawn from Kurma‘s book or our increasingly beleagured imaginations. I remember one particularly awful meal in our third share house together. Kidney beans. Rice noodles. Some sort of rubbishy greasy sauce. But those years also brought kicheri and a new appreciation for tofu. Firm tofu, cubed, thrown into a coconut milk/tomato based vegetable curry. Tofu marinated in lemon juice, honey, miso and ginger then stir fried with vegetables. Brown rice. Basmati rice. Jasmine rice. Arborio rice. Pulao. Biriyani. Fried rice. Rice pudding. Rice noodles: flat, narrow, sheets, fresh, dried. Mung bean noodles. We made delicious dinners, for the most part, though I’ve never really eaten that way since.

But this week we’re going to revisit the vegetarian days of yore. We’re going to eat the way we used to in Carlton North, crowded around the dining table or camped out on the second hand, re-covered sofas in front of the television.

It’s already been a bit of a trip down memory lane for me. Last night we had spinach and ricotta cannelloni. Something I started eating in Brisbane, along with a million zillion other people, when San Remo included a basic spinach and ricotta recipe on the back of the cannelloni boxes. But we substitute a chunk of fetta for some of the ricotta, and we use fresh spinach rather frozen. Delicious.

Tonight we had this easy Cauliflower (queen of vegetables) and onion dish (recipe c/o Madhur Jaffrey’s Invitation to Indian Cooking):

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped coarsely
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped coarsely
2 inch long, 1 inch wide piece ginger peeled and coarsely chopped
1 large head of cauliflower (I just used half a big cauliflower)
8tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 medium fresh or canned tomato, peeled and chopped
1 tbs chopped fresh coriander (I used more than this)
1 fresh hot green chilli washed and finely sliced or 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I used 1/4 ground chilli)
2tsp ground coriander
1tsp ground cumin
1tsp garam marsala
2tsp salt
1tbs lemon juice

Blend onion, garlic and ginger with 4 tbsp of water and blend to a paste.

Break cauliflower into small flowerets, not longer than 1 to 1.5 inches, and not wider at the head than 1/2 to 1 inch.

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed 10-12 inch pot over a medium flame, pour in the paste from the blender, and add the turmeric. Fry, stirring for 5 minutes.

Add the tomato, green coriander, chili or cayenne, and fry for 5 minutes. If necessary, add 1 tsp of warm water at at time and stir to prevent sticking. Now put in the cauliflower, coriander, cumin, garam masala, salt and lemon juice.
Fry and stir for 1 minute.

Add 4 tbsp warm water, stir, cover, lower flame, allow to cook slowly 35-45 minutes. Stir gently every 10 minutes or so. The cauliflower is done when each floweret is tender with just a trace of crispness along its spine.

Easy.

We had it with rice: brown half an onion cut into rings in some olive oil, add some finely chopped spinach, half a tsp of ground coriander and half a tsp of sweet paprika. Mix it all in. Add some washed basmati rice, mix it all up. Then add water and cook it absorption method style. I do all that in the rice cooker.

And finally, I grilled some haloumi cheese we’d bought on impulse. And we ate it all. The rice was particularly delicious – the browned onion and greasiness of the olive oil making a perfect match for the cheese. The cauliflower was just a little sour around the edges, from the lemon and ginger. Delicious.

I’d had dodgy rice cooker risotto for lunch, using up tomatoes, zuchini, capsicum, mushrooms, some herbs from the garden. It was a bit boring. Needed some rehydrated porcini mushrooms.

I’m not used to all these evening carbs and feel decidedly full. Tomorrow I’m going to reduce portions and drop the hardcore dairy. I’m thinking the ‘asian style’ pumpkin soup from Stephanie Alexander’s big orange book. Or something involving chick peas. I adore chick peas.

old school v even older school

Streets R Us v Harlem Hot Shots in the 2010 Oldschool Battle #2 – Round 16

How many times will I watch the clips from this competition? A million? A million billion? I love love love the Hot Shots’ action, but I’m even more excited by Streets R Us. I especially like this clip because Streets R Us are working with music which is probably much less familiar than the hippity hop the Hot Shots dance to later. But they really bring the right feel to the music. I especially like the way they work with the different rhythms in the song, picking out the half time, the ‘organised chaos’ of the final chorus, the insistent bumpbumpbump of the beat. It looks utterly modern and contemporary, but at the same time, it’s absolutely right.

i vant to be alone

I began this as a post where I’d just link up some badass solo comp clips from Lithuania. But it has become a sort of hardcore manual for feminist activism. Geez, bloody feminists. With the raging and the ranting. And the badass fall-off-the-logs. These are the things I say to myself; where I say ‘you’, I’m talking to myself. I’m encouraging myself to be more awesome. If this is too much for you, go back to the post full of clips. Or you can keep reading about how I love jazz dances because they’re built for feminist badassery.

A year or so ago, after I came back from about nine months off dancing with a shitful plantar fascia injury, I discovered the thing I’d missed most about dancing was the solo stuff. I love lindy hop. I love it so much. But I think, ultimately, I want to dance alone.

I like dancing alone, as in, not with a partner in a formal lindy hop dance (I do like dancing with other people on my own) for lots of reasons. One of the things that pushes many women in particular into solo dance is the lack of leads in their local scene. I use the word ‘push’ deliberately, because I suppose most women in a lindy hop scene approach social dancing looking for some partner dancing. Dancing alone is not always taught as a staple in regular classes, so most new dancers don’t feel as comfortable dancing alone as they do with a partner.

I like dancing alone because I’m often frustrated by leads who don’t listen to what I’m bringing, or more often, I’m frustrated by leads who just roll us through a series of fairly set combinations of moves without listening to the music. That drives me NUTS. For me, it’s the music that makes me dance. So I like to explore everything a song has got. If I’m being rushed through swingouts one after another, bang-bang-bang, there’s no time to explore the delaaaay that’s so central to swung rhythms, let alone all the other lovely layers in a song.

I do a lot of leading when I social dance. I get asked to dance by followers a lot, I ask other women to dance, and I also follow myself a lot. But I do like solo dancing most. I could WILL! make arguments about how women leading and solo dancing fuck up gender and power dynamics. In fact, I’ve done so, many times. And if you go out dancing in a scene where there are women leading, you can actually see how this shifts the social dynamics. Women aren’t just standing about on the side of the dance floor waiting for a dance, wondering if they’re not being asked because they’re a crap dancer/too fat/too old/too uncool/too weird/too horrible/wearing the wrong clothes, etc. Women aren’t rushing at male leads, competing for a dance. Women aren’t basking in the attention of a lead on the dance floor, grasping at a moment of confidence and self worth.

When women lead and solo dance in a scene, you see a shift away from bloke-centred social dancing dynamics. Suddenly all those women standing about on the side of the dance floor have moved onto the floor, experimenting with movements and rhythm, becoming better dancers, enjoying each other’s company and generally having a bloody good time. The blokes are no longer the centre of their universe.
I’m sure you can see how I then get particularly shitted off when a bloke wades in and drags a woman out of that sort of setting to dance with him. Back off, motherfucker! The hot shit is being brung!

How do you get to the point where you have lots of people (male female and inbetween) solo dancing as well as partner dancing at a ‘swing dance event’? Well, firstly, it’s worth pointing out that there’s next to no solo dance in rock and roll and the RnR type ‘swing’ dancing, at least not here in Sydney. When you go to those dances, most people only dance with people they know or even with just their own partner. Because that scene tends to be a bit older, a lot more conservative, and also rooted in a different dancing culture. I think that if you ground your lindy scene in vernacular jazz dance, then you’re setting yourself up with some nice conditions for solo dance as well as partner dance peppered with wonderful improvisation.

So how do you do that? Despite what you might think, reading this blog, I’m not actually a big fan of preaching at people. I like to work out my thinking and ideas in word-form, especially in places like this blog. But I firmly believe that if you want to initiate cultural change in a dance scene, you need to get your bad self out there on the dance floor and do it. Talk means nothing when you’re making a point about dance. Dancers are very much influenced by what they see on the dance floor. Duh. So if you want to see more solo dance in your scene, you need to get yourself out on that dance floor and do that solo dance. You need to do it with confidence, and with as much skill as you can. Work on that shit and be as good as you possibly can be. And if you can’t get any better, enjoy what you do badly and let that pleasure show.

In other words, you need to model the behaviour you want to see.
Same goes for women leading. If you’re a woman tired of the bullshit gender dynamics in your scene, get your fine self out there on the dance floor and model the shit you want to see. And do it well and with confidence. Own it. Work on it in your own time or in classes and improve. Don’t let your leading be a novelty. Let it be a legitimate act. Don’t enter comps hoping to get noticed just because you’re different. Go in comps and bring the best shit you’ve got. The novelty will wear off; you’re going to need to back up your claims with some pretty good stuff.

And I also think it’s important to say positive, encouraging things to people who are doing awesome stuff. Or, really, if you see the awesome, applaud it! Rather than getting shitty and snarky about something that shits you (eg not getting asked to dance by blokes), get positive and supportive. There’s no point continuing the nastiness of dodgy culture by making yourself unhappy. After all, that’s how patriarchy works: women and men collude in their own oppression. Seek out the unusual and the wonderful. If someone has a brilliant idea, tell them it’s brilliant! Don’t get jealous and resentful! Sometimes being an audience – the response to the call – is more important than being the performer. In practical terms, if you see someone do a rockhardawesome boogie back, cheer them, loudly! And then tell them, later, that you thought that was totally cool.

I think of this as a very nice approach to all sorts of social activism. Just talking about this stuff is fairly useless. This is why I think that we shouldn’t just be doing scholarly writing and talking about gender and power. We also need to get out there and do feminist stuff. To be feminists, with our bodies as well as with our brains. I know a lot of academics feel that theorising activism and culture is how they contribute to feminism, but I feel very strongly that this only touches a small proportion of our community directly. No, writing newspaper articles isn’t a way to ‘engage’ with the wider community. It’s too safe, yo, and too distant. Take a risk. Let yourself be changed.

I think that we need to bloody well open our eyes and engage with the everyday places in our lives where we can make a difference. On the bus. At the shops. In cafes. On the dance floor. Make eye contact, hold doors open, step in when someone needs a hand, ask your employer if they do maternity leave, even if you don’t need it yourself. And I also think it’s a good idea to make it as fun as you can. Getting angry is useful. But in and of itself, it’s not productive. You need to be an agent for positive, constructive change, as well as a mighty smashing force of rage. Find small ways, everyday, where you can fuck shit up. Or at least vibrate at very low frequencies until you rattle that patriarchal bedrock to bits.

That’s why I like dance. Fucking up the patriarchy, smashing gender binaries and generally being difficult can be super fun. It can also be positive, friendly and engaging. You won’t win friends to your cause by being rude and aggressive. But you will by making jokes, being kind and friendly, and by being sneaky. Jazz dance is built for this stuff. As the public discourse of an oppressed people, African American vernacular jazz dance has all the tools you need for misbehaving.

Ok, so yes, modelling stuff in a social setting is important. What if you’re a teacher and you want to see more solo dance in your scene, regardless of gender? Same goes. Get out there and do it. Do it in a social setting, but also get out there and do performances. You need people to see what makes solo dance so awesome. And then you need to make them want to do it too. It’s no good you just getting out there on your own every week if you want to see new stuff in your scene. Other people have got to want to do it too.
Running classes in solo dance is the next obvious step. I’m a big fan of classes devoted to solo dance. But I’m even more a fan of classes which work on combining solo and partner dance. How do you fit a shorty george into your swingout? Why is the shim sham an absolute gold mine for steps to add into your lindy hop? I don’t like to use the phrase ‘variations in a swing out’ because it suggests that the swing out is still the centre of the dance and the jazz steps are ‘variations’ on that single step.
Yes, swing outs are central to lindy hop. But this isn’t a one note song. I think that jazz steps – dancing alone – is just as, if not more important than, the swing out. So when you use jazz steps – things like shorty george, suzy Qs, kick-ball-changes, broken-legs, crazy-legs, and so on – think of the swing out as a framing device for your hot shit jazz step. Or better yet, deliberately choreograph sequences that break partners apart and require some sort of solo bling. I think that if you’re teaching solo jazz steps – jazz steps – as an integral part of your lindy hop, and as key part of your classes, you’re setting up students with the skills and materials for dancing alone on the social dance floor. You’re creating the expectation of improvisation. You’re provoking creativity.

So, to sum up, this is what I say to myself when I’m going dancing or working on dance:

  • Solo dancing is good. It’s good socially and culturally (diversity! creativity!). It’s good for your lindy hop. It’s good for your dance skills. It’s good.
  • Lead by example. That’s a very patronising way of saying ‘convince people solo dance is awesome by getting out there and doing awesome solo dance’. Quit bitching and getting unhappy; get out there and fill yourself full of glee.
  • Without jazz steps, your lindy hop is flat. You will never really fulfill your potential as a partner dancer if you can’t dance alone. Or, in other words, learn how to dance by yourself so that you can actually dance with a partner.
  • Don’t accept any arguments that start “Men only do…” or “Women always do….” You don’t want to be like everyone else. Be like yourself.
  • Your body is a brilliant tool. This is the one that’s most important to me. If ever I start thinking ‘oh, I’m too fat for that’ or ‘I don’t have long enough legs’ or ‘I’m not fit enough’ I stop myself and say, very sternly, “Self, you have a unique body shape, and a unique approach to music. Stop bitching about not looking or feeling like everyone else, and START exploring what you are capable of. That short, square body you have? What can it do that no one else can? How does it let you move in ways that are utterly unique? How can you emphasise your short legs or your wide arse or your round belly? How can you exaggerate these parts of yourself in ways that no one else will be able to copy?” The goal is to be utterly unique, not to look like everyone else. You want to get people’s attention, to arrest the eye. Patriarchy demands women make themselves invisible, make themselves simulacrum of some impossible ideal. Why not fuck that shit up by making yourself defiantly unique? And, best of all, enjoy sticking out?

I don’t know if this is a useful approach for everyone. It can be tiring, being so determined. Sometimes it is nice to just sink into following, and to become the extension of some bloke’s creative vision. But I figure, that’s ok. Just don’t make everything you are the result of someone else’s ideas. Do misbehave. Do be that Difficult Woman, if only in a little way, sometimes.

Speakeasy Superbad

Here’s the setlist I did at the Speakeasy on Saturday 21st May and talked about in Everything I did was funky: Cell Block Swing & Speakeasy.

The photo Tina Turner was taken by Barry Wentzell at the Odeon in 1971. I found it in multiple places online. You can buy prints, too. Tina Turner: extreme awesome.

title – artist – album – bpm – year – song length

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

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

Respect – Aretha Franklin – Greatest Hits – Disc 1 – 114 – 2:25

Waitin’ and Drinkin’ Di – Anne Price – 88 Steps to the Blues – 126 – 2009 – 3:16

When I Get Low – Gordon Webster (with Jesse Selengut, Matt Musselman, Cassidy Holden, Rob Adkins, Jeremy Noller, Adrian Cunningham) – Live In Philadelphia – 107 – 2010 – 5:27

Let’s Do It – Terra Hazelton (feat. Jeff Healey, Marty Grosz, Dan Levinson, Vince Giordano) – Anybody’s Baby – 126 – 2004 – 4:28

Lemonade – Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 5) – 117 – 1950 – 3:17

What A Man – Linda Lyndall – The Complete Stax/Volt Soul Singles Volume 2: 1968-1971 – 86 – 2:42

You’re Losing Me – Ann Sexton – Stone Cold Funk – 113 – 1971 – 2:22

Chain Of Fools – Aretha Franklin – Greatest Hits – Disc 1 – 116 – 2:48

Here I Am (Come and Take Me) – Al Green – Greatest Hits – 95 – 1975 – 4:15

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

Black Rat (take 4) – Big Mama Thornton (with Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Otis Spann, Sammy Lawhorn, Luther ‘Guitar Junior’ Johnson, Francis Clay) – With the Muddy Waters Blues Band, 1966 – 101 – 1966 – 2:53

A few of my current favourites, a few of my really old favourites (Anne Sexton), a few overplayed soul classics. But really, when does ‘Respect’ get old? When we live in a postpatriarchy, baby.
You can read more about my DJing this set at the above link where I go into the night in lots of detail. But for now, this’ll do.

Everything I did was funky: Cell Block Swing & Speakeasy

This is going to be a crazy, incoherent post about how much fun I had last night.

First, there was a dance at the old Jail in Darlinghurst, in the National Art School‘s Jail House Theatre. Amazing venue. Amazing:

Secondly, the band were the Ozcats, who are a Bob Crosby tribute band, and feature some of the best musicians in the country:

Bob Barnard – trumpet
Trevor Rippingale – tenor saxophone
Paul Furniss – clarinet
Dan Barnett – trombone
Dave MacRae – piano
Stan Valacos – bass
Lawrie Thompson – drums
John Blenkhorn – rhythm guitar
Ron Falson – arranger and 2nd trumpet

I’m a big fan of Bob Crosby, and I really like the Ozcats I have one of their CDs, but I wasn’t all that excited by it. But I’ve seen them live before, and they’re really, really good. This is a very professional, very tight group of musicians who really know their shit. But they’re also very inspired (and inspiring) and really make fabulous music.

From the first song last night, I was enraptured. It was my perfect tempo for the first few songs – about 180 to just over 200. Beginning dancing, I was prepared to just have a nice time. But by the final chorus, my mind was BLOWN. This was the best band I’d lindy hopped to in… well, ages.
I looked around at the dance floor, though, and saw only about ten couples. There were 200 or so people in the room. Uh-oh. After about 4 songs, the band played a version of… ‘Makin Whoopee’. As I heard the first few notes I thought ‘Oh no. Sell out.’ But the dancers (who were mostly beginners – this was a beginner-focussed dance) suddenly surged onto the dance floor. And by about a chorus into the song I had revised my opinion. This was an interesting, exciting arrangement and performance of a (fairly tired) workhorse. And, wonderfully, the dance floor stayed CROWDED for the rest of the night, though the tempos were quite high on average (though there were plenty of slower songs dropped in). It was cool to hear a band do what a DJ might do – play an old favourite in a basic tempo range to fill the floor, then follow up with something fun and high energy to keep them there.

I did hear a dancer say they thought the band was “a bit samey”, but I pointed out “They’re a tribute band.” I refrained from pointing out that, you know, they’re a band and not a juke box. And a good band puts a lot of effort into developing a unique style and sound. But it did really draw my attention to the fact that the acoustics in the room weren’t brilliant. When you got further to the back, the sound lost a lot of its richness and layers. So from then on I danced up against the stage, destroying my eardrums and yelling up at the band between songs.

In fact, I’m embarrassed now by the number of times I told different musicians how much I loved their set, their band, their solo. Nerd. Nerd. Nerd. I was a total fangirl nerd for these old blokes. Eventually I spent the last few songs just pressed up against the stage jiggling about and yelling “YAY!” I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not usually so shamelessly fangirl for a band.

Thirdly, three of us did a performance at the dance, and it went well. This probably accounts for some of my crazed love for the band. It’s hard not to love music and musicians when you’re pumped full of dancing and performing adrenaline. But I loved them before we performed (which was at 10:45, with the dance starting at 8). We:

  • had proper matching costumes,
  • did the Tranky Doo (because we know it and we wanted to do a famous routine for our first go),
  • had a special announcer (Jase! Excellent! Host with the most) who we’d prepped with a special speech,
  • organised it so that we sort of waded into the crowd, clapping and clearing space, rather than turning on all the lights, having everyone move back and sit down,
  • organised it all with the DJ, carefully, so we were framed properly (yay Tim! Yay!),
  • did quite a bit of yelling during the performance – stuff like “apple jack!” to each other and “I’m looking at you, Sam!” before our solo and “Again!” before the repeating section. We did that mostly because we’d done it during the practices to remind us of the bits we forgot, but also because we watched the clips of our practices and thought it seemed fun,
  • followed it up by calling out to the crowd “Do you know the shim sham?! Can you bring the shim sham!” and initiating a shim sham, in honour of Mr Frankie Manning of course. That was a fun thing because it’s Frankie’s birthday on the 26th, and teachers have been running shim sham classes the past few weeks, so the beginners were all excited about it.

It was brilliant fun. It felt as though the crowd really enjoyed it. There felt like lots of energy, and while we did about three phrases of our own (very basic) choreography to get into position, when we started the Tranky Do, the crowd just SHOUTED. It was so exciting. I like to think that people shouted because they recognised the dance, and were all ‘yeah! old school routine!’

It was very nice to have such support, as I haven’t done any performing in ten years, so I have next to no performance skills, and I was rusty. I also made mistakes. We were pretty nervous before hand, and all the shouting and support felt very friendly and was very encouraging. I think of this as a beginning place. We weren’t brilliantly perfect, but we got up there and had a lot of fun, and did a very honest performance that was actually solid and people enjoyed. No cheese. Just a lot of love for the routine and the song and for dancing.

What I hope now, is that other people think ‘hey, I could that!’ and put together something. We’re not a formal troupe or anything (though we used the name ‘the Harbour City Hot Three’), but we did get together and work on the routine pretty thoroughly. We didn’t choreograph a new routine, we used a famous routine. So I hope other people have ideas for a little performance and do something. I’d like to see some more grass roots type performances by people doing shit they just love. Especially if they’re not already performing.

Incidentally, the song we used was ‘Milenberg Joys’ by Gordon Webster‘s latest album Live in Philadelphia, and it was wonderful. It’s a live recording, with lots of energy and a good, exciting finale, so it felt just right. I do recommend that album if you don’t have it – it’s really good stuff. Lots of good songs for lindy hopping, blues dancing, balboaing, everything good.

But my night wasn’t over yet!

After the dance, a few of us had organised a late night dance – the Speakeasy! – at the studio where I did my hip hop class this week. We’d run one at this venue before, and it’d been very popular. This time it was even more so! It’s a really fun party type dance, lots of people help organise it, do door shifts, set up, DJ, cook food and generally help out, and it’s good because it isn’t like a hardcore lindy hop late night.

What makes it good?

The room is a really good shape. The elevator to the venue opens straight into the room, onto the registration desk, which is an island in the middle of the room (where we put the DJs). So the ‘bing!’ of the lift is exciting as it opens and a whole group of people pour out. You’re also immediately in the party. There are lots of couches to sit and talk, room for some dancing (but not a whole big, empty space), and there’s also a smaller room off to the side, through a big archway, where the ladies set up a table for food.

There are a lot of keen bakers in the Sydney dance scene, and this time people went all out. There was a table of really top notch baked goods (cornbread, brownies (two types!), cupcakes, muffins, biscuits, YUM!), all marked with a little sign saying what they were and who made them. That was a really nice touch – it was nice to know that all sorts of people had contributed. That little room had a nice couch in it as well, so it was a nice little place to find some food and move around.

The music is ‘party’ music, and stays below about 150bpm. This is nice, because it feels really accessible, tempo wise. After such a fast, exciting band, it was nice to have less intense music. The DJs usually play a combination of blues (all types, usually higher than about 90bpm), early rnb, some soul, some funk, a little hot jazz, a little swing. There were even a couple of slower songs by neo bands. It’s a really good mix, because the DJs all favour really good songs, and they’re really high energy and lots of fun.

I’m ordinarily a real purist, and hate a DJ who plays unswing at a swing event. But this isn’t a swing event. It feels like a house party. When I walked into the room from the lift, it felt like a real party. Most of the room was standing about scoffing yum baked stuff, drinking beers, and talking really loudly. There was very little standing about awkwardly. It’s a hot, sweaty room, so it feels kind of good on your skin. People tend to get really loud and shouty.

After a little while, while the DJ was playing the sort of good music that gets the room warm, and a few people danced a little bit, the DJ (Tom) changed gears. It was like the bass got deeper, and the music suddenly made me want to dance. The dance floor filled a bit. It’s a good venue, though, because the dance floor is kind of just one space in a range of types of spaces in the room, so you don’t feel as though there’s nothing to do if you’re not dancing. A lot of people were standing about talking and laughing, though they were happy to have a dance or two if they were asked. But it definitely wasn’t the sort of gig where you feel you’ve had a shit night if you didn’t dance every song. But there’s still lots of energy and lots of good dancing going on. Watching the dancers, I was struck by how much fun they were having. There were no serious, worried faces. Just lots of laughing and talking and shouting on the dance floor, as well as people really getting down.

Because the music is varied, people dance in lots of different ways. I saw some bal, some hardcore lindy hop, some blooz, the VERY BEST HIP HOP by one of the studio’s teachers, some kids dancing de disco and getting down, some kids jumping about and just jiggling with fun. It was a nice mix. There were lots of people sort of grooving it while they stood and talked as well, which was nice.

I’ll do a separate post with my set list (and perhaps an 8track) so you can see what I mean when I talk about the music. It’s a BRILLIANT gig to play. I really feel as though I do my best work there. I feel like I connect with the dancers, and keep the energy high, but also working an energy wave. I like the challenge of working between styles – hot dirty old school jazz, 60s protest song blues, super-familiar soul and funk favourites and early r n b. It’s tricky to make all these styles work together without abrupt, clutch-less gear changes, and I like the challenge. I like it that I’m DJing standing up and in the very middle of a crowded room, literally a hand’s breadth from the dancers. It’s exciting and I really feel I can connect with the dancers. But it’s also a very tiring gig where I work really hard. And sweat!

After I DJed (at about 12:45am), I ate some more cakes, then danced about like a fool. Dave and I danced together a LOT, like Uma and John Travolta, like our own bad selves, and like idiots. I talked and shot the shit, I sat on the couch and watched people having a great time on the dance floor, I heckled the DJ and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

At 3am, we admitted exhaustion, hunted down a cab and went home. Happy, achey and very very tired.

Hippity hop: In which I get jiggy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After an hour I was queen of sweat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bands for dancing

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

linky

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

This is the Campus 5, another band at DCLX:

linky

The two bands battled it out in this:

linky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best bands for dancing do these things:

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

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

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

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

slutwalk thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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