Category Archives: work

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)

On being a woman in public

Dear friends, it was so nice to meet so many people in Herrang this past fortnight who said they read my blog, and that they liked it! It really made me feel good. It’s a little weird and kind of creepy to have so many people saying they’ve been reading things I generally think of as private thoughts, but it’s also reassuring to know you like it. And, after all, this isn’t private. It’s a blog.

It was especially nice to hear all this after thinking about that interview with Ryan for the Track podcast I did a few years ago. At one point Ryan was pressing me to explain why I wrote a public blog when I knew I’d be dealing with the hate mail I get. That little exchange really bothered me at the time (read: shat me to fucking tears), but I remember struggling to answer why.
Now, of course, I’d shout “WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I STOP WRITING JUST BECAUSE SOME ARSEHOLE MEN WILL SEND ME HATE MAIL? YOU THINK THAT IF I STOP BEING A WOMAN WRITER IN PUBLIC MEN WILL STOP HATING ME?!” With a follow up tirade about straight men tone policing women from the safety of their own international fucking platform.

After this week meeting a trans woman from China who read my blog, and then rereading her comments about how important it was to her to read something from a woman about gender in lindy hop, I am extra angry at Ryan for that rubbish. For her, it was enough to know at the time that she wasn’t the only one thinking about gender. For me, it’s hugely humbling to think that my rambling reached someone who could make use of it. After all, isn’t that why we all publish our writing – to make contact with other people?

One of my favourite ‘I read your blog!’ comments was from a bass player to muttered it in an aside, seconds before I introduced the band he was in in the late night jam. I do love using the mic, and it’s nice to have someone say “I like what you have to say!” seconds before I turn on the mic and say a whole bunch of silly things to a room full of people.

It’s also very lovely that you are all still reading it, even though I haven’t written anything new in… years. Yes, years. Friends, I can’t believe it’s been so long. But there was that pandemic. And I turned my attention to facebook, and to instagram. In fact, I moved into that area professionally. It turns out I love making ridiculous videos of myself speaking to camera as much as I like speaking into the mic.

Did you know I also send voice messages to my friends on messenger, and as texts? Of course I do. And my very favourite thing is to send recordings of me singing fruity versions of christmas carols and pop songs to my besties. If you ever need cheering up, remind me to send you a recording of me trying to remember the words to a Taylor Swift song in real time. It’s very quality. This point is pertinent because I am always tempted by the jams in Herrang. But not that tempted. I did a LOT of singing in school, from primary school to high school, from choral groups to musicals, and I can honestly say it traumatised me. All the joy I had in singing was squeezed out of me. I did go on to do other choral work, but eventually I gave up on that as well. My voice has also changed a lot since then (it’s definitely lower than that very high soprano of my adolescence), and much rougher. I also have a real problem finding a key and sticking to it :D That doesn’t stop me sending voice messages to my friends, but it does stop me getting on stage with a band and actually singing into a microphone. Ah well, perhaps I will give it a go for next year?

I can hear some of you saying that I should do it as a challenge, but friends, I’m not short of challenging and potentially humiliating things to do in public. It’s funny how I have no problem getting on a mic with zero prep to talk and make jokes, or getting up in in front of a crowd to dance. But ask me to sing? Yikes. That’s some scary shit. I still have nightmares about it.

Let me talk more about me for a second. I do love the mic. I don’t really know why. I do know that I try to speak slowly and clearly, and only get on the mic if I have a particular thing to say. I like to pause and wait, making eye contact with as many people as possible. Maybe mentioning them by name. I like to make jokes, but they’re more puns or plays on words. And I never try to prep and memorise a speech. That always goes badly (I have the worst memory ever), and always feels flat. When I get up there, I imagine that I’m standing with my friends (I am), about to tell them an excellent story (I hope). Something that I thought was funny, and which I hope makes them laugh. Or maybe something useful. Or perhaps a chance to say something reassuring that will make them feel a bit better in a trying moment. It could all go terribly wrong (it often does), but isn’t that also the point of it? The risk is what makes it so delicious.

I find that there are certain patterns and rhythms to public speaking that make it work. Repeating a theme, or returning to a topic about three times is one. You might not do that all in a single speech, but you’ll come back to that topic over the course of the night or the week. I don’t do it deliberately, but I’m the type of person who can’t leave a good topic alone. I can’t help going back to it, giving it another probe. Looking for another joke or something else interesting. I also really like the way we set up connections between topics when we read or talk or think or move. That intertexuality is how we make meaning in the world, after all.

There’s something about repeated rhythms and elements that humans like. We love patterns. I guess that’s why we love the AAAB structure so much. Or the ABAB structure. I know I really like to use AAAB, where the A is a familiar topic or line, and B is a twist on that same topic. Like the punch line, but not that obvious. But I definitely don’t plan this out in advance. I just start talking. But I do think that learning jazz routines has helped with this sympathy for rhythmic pattern. Learning the step-step-triple-step rhythm (aka long long long short-long rhythm), which we do first on one foot then the other has certainly set me up for enjoying a nice bit of repetition. But there’s also something lovely about returning to a theme. We start to expect it, anticipate it, enjoy it, and then feel a bit of explosive HA! when there’s a final twist on it.
And of course, this is why reading Shakespeare, or dancing Frankie Manning choreography is so satisfying. They’re both just so good at rhythms, and making combinations of sounds and movements that are very satisfying in the body and mouth. Think of that last rhyming couple at the end of a scene in Will’s plays. The stomp off as Frankie finalises a phrase. Predictable, invariable, but also wonderfully satisfying.

Herrang? Oh yes, I was there again this year. It’s been five years or so, since 2019 since I’d been. I went this year because the administrative board has changed, and it’s as though a sudden wild wind has blown in, knocking vases off tables, billowing curtains, and getting in people’s eyes. Some things are the same: the organised chaos, the propensity for long, slow jokes and gentle pranks, the way we all slowly melt into relaxed bodies and slow talking after a week on staff. But many things are different. No more sexist jokes in films, no more misogyny in the meetings, no more relegating Black culture to the past (and the power of white men).

This isn’t to suggest that all is well in the camp. Misogyny and white supremacy still exist. This is still a strange and manufactured moment in the Swedish countryside. But now there’s music other than jazz all over the place, and people feel free to talk about Issues. Sex. Sexuality. Gender. Race. Antiracism. Racism. Power. Exploitation. Fear. Excitement. Kindness. And there are so many young people. In the first week there one hundred and fifty children and teens. It is as though the changes have reminded everyone that jazz is fun, and improvisation means taking new risks as well as remembering the past. I enjoyed it a great deal. And we must remember that these changes were not easy, are ongoing, and are the result of some very hard work. There are people who’ve been struggling to make things better there for years, but have given up. And there are people who will come along and think this is how things have always been. So we will have to work very hard to keep that steady improvement happening.

Speaking of how things usually go, what music am I listening to? Well, my obsession with Talking Heads goes on and on and on. Especially that song Home. It makes me feel enormous feelings. I did DJ a lot this past week (week 2), on staff, and that was a lot of work. I hadn’t prepared properly, and I felt out of practice and clunky. But I also had one of the best compliments on my DJing ever. No not as good as that time the child of Russian friends shook my hand very seriously and thanked me for the music. But nearly. A woman I didn’t know took time to say thank you for DJing, and that she really liked my music because “It feels so playful.” This is quite the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me about my music (except for that solemn handshake, of course).

I don’t understand why DJs insist that they are ‘educating’ or ‘pushing’ dancers. That doesn’t sound any fun at all. As I said on facebook this week, this conversation reminds me of something Ramona said once: when she’s in the studio she works very hard, practicing and training. But when she’s on the social floor, she just lets it all go and enjoys herself. In the moment. For me, this is the point of it all: to let it all go. To be present. For just a moment, there’s nothing but the way I feel, and that feeling is all major keys and swung timing, easy going home. For someone with a very busy brain, this is a real gift. A treasure. And I definitely don’t want to start messing with that feeling for other people. To paraphrase an Anthony Bourdain quote, I’m not there to be people’s task master or teacher. I’m in the pleasure business. And if we are talking about the Black heritage of lindy hop, we are, as Albert Murray says, stomping the miserableness and difficulties of everyday life in an ecstatic, cathartic moment of the body.

I suppose this is partly why Herrang felt so much better this year. In the past there had been this blind insistence (from the straight white patriarchal Board) that the camp only celebrate the good parts of Black dance. Not the real lives of Black people. Black dance mattered, but not Black lives. And now that it’s ok to talk about those everyday difficulties (and horrors and despairs), the sweet moments seem so much sweeter. A man respectfully address an older woman as ma’am. A young woman dancing with her friends, thoroughly enjoying being the center of attention. People’s bodies relaxing and melting into that perfect, sweaty happiness.

Don’t cringe when you hear the word marketing.

I know we all cringe when we hear the word ‘marketing’, particularly ’email marketing’ in lindy hop talk. But if we think of things like ‘audience segmentation’ and ‘tags’ for organising our huge list of contacts, then it’s less horrible. A lot of us work with about 2-3000 email contacts after a couple of years, if we run a smallish school. Less if we’re doing something more boutique, like an event (there we might work with 200-300 for a small local event). More if we’re lucky (diligent).

But not all those contacts want to hear about the 10% discount for returning students signing up for level 1 classes. And not all of them need to know that workshop registrants for Special Exchange should enter by the side door at the venue. This is why we use special email management tools like Mailchimp. They allow us to divide our email contacts into specific segments (or markets, or audiences).

It’s funny that there’s still this reluctance to think or talk about bringing people into lindy hop classes as ‘marketing’. We may have 100% good vibes, offering free classes to the local community youth. But we still need to get those yoofs into the class room somehow. And we need to keep in contact with them somehow. So good marketing is part of that, even for nonprofits and charities. And it’s even more important when you develop a list of contacts or benefactors for your charity, start doing tag-on services like health checks for adults who drop of kids.
I do want to note that we all know that the best way to keep a network of people or customers, is to use face to face, in person contact. An email is powerful in some situations. But it’s never as good as stopping to see if Mrs X has the time and date for the next potluck, and asking her, then and there, to commit to bringing her special meatballs.

As a dance organisation or business, we need to combine all these ways of communicating. A website. An email list. Speaking to people in person. A paper flyer. The tools we choose will shape our community: if we’re all digital, we’ll lose Uncle Z who doesn’t own a computer. If use all face to face, Mz G from out of town won’t know that the next party is on Saturday. So we need to make sensible choices about how we’ll speak to our audiences.

I also think that it’s ok to charge money and make a profit from your dance business. Most of the unpaid work (and paid!) in lindy hop is done by women. And I’m always a bit suspicious when I hear people argue (even implicitly) that those workers shouldn’t be paid/businesses shouldn’t make a profit/earn money. Because you’re essentially arguing that women shouldn’t be paid for their work in lindy hop. Only DJs or judges or teachers should be paid. All roles dominated by white men…

We can’t do equitable stuff if we don’t have cash flow. That’s the sad fact of patriarchal capitalism.

What of issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural appropriation? Is it ok for people who aren’t Black to make money from Black art?
That’s a tricky one. My first response would be ‘Be sure of your values. If you don’t feel it’s ok to make money this way, don’t start a business that makes money from it.’

I wouldn’t say ‘do the work for free’, because doing the work for free could undercut Black businesses and workers who _do_ charge for their labour. As an example, you may not charge for your DJing, white bro, because you don’t want to benefit from Black art. But if that means you’re then hired before a Black woman who _does_ charge, because you’re free, then you’re fucking over Black artists and workers. A better option might be to accept pay, but then to donate that pay to a Black arts or community organisation (this is an option I like, as a white DJ and worker – I often donate any pay to a good cause, or ask the person I’m working for to donate to a cause like a women’s refuge or Child Literacy fund).

Be mindful of how you enter into economic and cultural relationships. Understand where your power and privilege lies. As a middle class white woman, I don’t need that $20 DJ pay. But a Black teenager might. So instead of encouraging unpaid labour, I might opt out of the labour system (ie not DJ), or I might take that money and then send it on to someone who _does_ need it. That might be via charities, but it could also be via spending the money on CDs for a swing club’s library, or donating the money to a contest prize.

The revivalist narrative will not die.

I keep coming across white organisations telling a ‘history’ of lindy hop that gives ‘the revival’ pride of place. ie white people claiming the modern lindy hop world as their own altruistic work.
So the term ‘revival’ is problematic because it implies that lindy hop was dead (replaced by rock and roll and/or bebop) before white people came along and brought it back to life. In this narrative, white people are heroes for saving ‘this wonderful dance’ and bringing it back to life.

Black people are totally absent from this story, except as venerable elders who teach eager white people. The white people are also credited with bringing these elders ‘out of retirement’ and back to the dance floor.
It’s all very problematic.

1. Lindy hop wasn’t dead. There’s a whole family of Black social partner dances that are thriving (Tena Morales’ event the International Swing Dance Championships showcases them every year, but white people don’t go to that and aren’t involved, so it must not exist).

2. Because it wasn’t dead, it didn’t need reviving. Declaring lindy hop ‘terra nullius’ (ie no people living in this territory) was white people giving themselves permission to take lindy hop. So the white people who ‘went looking’ for Black elders were pretty much just out on a bit of a colonial expedition. Just like Captain Cook expanding the British Empire, ‘discovering’ a huge big southern continent (‘Australia’).

3. Those Black elders, like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller and so on were still dancing, but in their families and homes and community spaces. Black spaces, to which white people did not have access. The story told most often about Frankie Manning, that his working in the post office was somehow less important or lower status than his dance career is classist and racist. The US Postal Service has a long history as an important employer and union locus for Black communities. It was good, solid work. Norma, of course, was running a dance business (managing troupes), Mama Lou Parkes was still dancing professionally… and so on.

4. The Black dancers who were involved in lindy hop in the 1980s tend to disappear in these revivalist narratives. Angela Andrew and other Black women have lots to say about the number of Black dancers out there lindy hopping in the 1980s, but they somehow disappear when white people tell the stories.

5. The white ‘ownership’ (appropriation) of Black lindy hop in that 1980s period is not only about selling places in classes and workshops (and thereby ‘creating community’ via economic relationships), but also about the exploitation of Black dancers working for white troupe managers (we won’t go into some of the more troubling accounts from that period).

RE the USPS:
I came across references to the importance of the postal service in Hidden Figures and the way it provided a pathway to the space program for Black women (SUCH a good book).

There’s also Philip F. Rubio’s book ‘There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality’ (which I haven’t read, but have read _about_.
This all makes the US govt’s cuts to the USPS a matter of institutional racism and white supremacy, rather than a push for smaller government generally (though I’d argue the two are the same thing).

The more I learn about the USPS as a site for unionising, civil rights activism and Black community empowerment, the more troubled I am by white histories of lindy hop that devalue the USPS in Manning’s life. If the civil rights elements of this workplace are ignored, then white ‘historians’ can continue with their bullshit about ‘Frankie never talked about racism in lindy hop, so it didn’t happen’. I’d say that Frankie, as with any other Black worker in America then and now, was very much aware of racism in the entertainment industry and in America generally, and was very careful about what he said to white people about it, and when.

As with the workers who continue to go back to places like Herrang, despite unsafe or inequitable working environments, when you don’t have the financial and personal safety of white privilege, you have fewer choices about the work you can do. And teaching middle class white kids to lindy hop might have suited Manning.

Social media strategies and chillaxing the sales energy

Reading through a few different style guides by different brands, I came across the Mailchimp style guide.

One of the most interesting bits is the discussion of what they post on which social media channel:

Mailchimp has a presence on most major social media platforms. Here are our most active accounts and what we usually post on each:

Twitter: Product news, brand marketing, events, media mentions, evergreen content, “we’re hiring!” posts

Facebook: Product news, brand marketing, events, media mentions, evergreen content, “we’re hiring!” posts

LinkedIn: Product news, recruiting content, media mentions, evergreen content

Instagram: Design outtakes, cool office visitors, life at Mailchimp, cool stuff we made

This caught my eye for the way each channel has a specific job, and the brand has a specific type of content on each channel. So Linkedin mailchimp is all serious business time, and instagram mailchimp is fun and visual. Comparing facebook and instagram is especially interesting. Instagram reads as a ‘cool’ channel for mailchimp, whereas facebook is more serious. The biggest difference between the two is the way facebook works as an avenue for sales (product news), and instagram does _not_ do sales (it’s essentially about brand identity).

This caught my eye because I’ve been thinking about the way we need to develop an audience before we start to sell them things. Or rather, we create a relationship with people, and when they’re ready, they go looking for our products. This is a more long term strategy, but it’s also a less didactic, less aggressive relationship. Particularly in the dance world, where brands are often dance schools speaking to their students. We don’t see a whole lot of different brands using social media in a cohesive way in the dance world. There’re usually just bands, dance schools, events, teachers, apparel and footware brands, and perhaps DJs. There a couple of social enterprise brands (largely based on antiracism goals), and a couple of other odds and ends. But the discourse is largely dominated by pedagogy. Which brings with it a very… top down power dynamic and mode of address.

There’s also a degree of panic or anxiety about ‘time running out’ from the brand itself, as they fight to improve numbers for class enrolments or event registrations. Both have fixed due dates, and both tend to work with the assumption that more is better. I suspect this impetus is largely the result of a bigger narrative in the dance world: that we must ‘grow’ the scene. ‘Share’ the dance. It’s a powerful ideology, particularly when it’s coopted by businesses selling a product that can be attached to this discourse (classes in particular). And it of course brings a worrying blend of cultural appropriation, capitalism, and colonialism.

So if we are developing a brand or public profile for a business or entity (a dance school, a social enterprise, a band), how can we use social media to be economically sustainable _and_ socially sustainable? In other words, how can we not be pushing salesperson jerks when we speak to people via our social media.

I think that it’s most useful to remember a few key rules:
Build the audience before you start to sell.
There will be a lead time from when you start posting to when you should expect people to come looking to buy what you’re selling. So don’t try to sell your product right up front.
This holds true for brands that are doing things like anti-racist activism work as well. Speak to your audience, to your community before you start selling or asking for donations.

Devote an entire channel to the ‘other stuff’.
Offer stuff that you enjoy about dance, or that is central to your dance community (or community of people who also dance), and then create clear pathways to your product from there. Don’t push people to buy; let them come looking when they’re ready.

Don’t panic sell.
There’s a tendency in dance event social media in particular to suddenly ramp up the number of posts, and the urgency of the tone, the closer we get to the event date. Particularly if there’s a perceived ‘lack’ of sales. Guilt-selling is not a successful strategy.
Again, this brings us back to the idea that we devote our attention to nurturing the broader profile of the brand, rather than just focussing on sales.

And of course, this all brings us back to the point of the mailchimp style guide: plan ahead.

  • Plan your social media strategies well in advance.
  • Think carefully about your ‘brand identity’.
  • Make clear decisions about what role each social media channel plays in your overall strategy.
  • Let your content do its job; don’t force every post to sell sell sell.

All this will make your social media work much less stressful, and make engaging with your channels a lot more enjoyable for your audiences.

And if you are working with a social enterprise brand, then you’ll find your social media strategies fit more comfortably with your ethics and values. In particular, you’ll see your relationship with the people in your local community not as a series of chances to raise money or recruit volunteers, but as a network of relationships that build and sustain a community.

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

The effects of Long covid on lindy hop

If you catch covid, you have a 10-30% chance of it becoming long covid. One of the most comment symptoms of long covid is fatigue.

If we work with those assumptions, what does that mean for a community of dancers?

Let me be clear: I not an epidemiologist, a health specialist, a physiotherapist, or a disease expert. And I’m not sure if this long covid symptom is true across all covid variants and communities. But I am a cultural studies researcher. I have a lot of experience looking specifically at cultural practice within a particular community of people. So let’s start with this: what could happen to a community of dancers where some of the community members are living with long covid, and those people are representative of the different groups within the community? Teachers, performers, organisers, students, new dancers, experienced dancers, old people, young people, cancer survivors, volunteers, business people, trans people, everyone.

We’ve already seen the consequences of managing covid risk: massive financial loss, spacing requiring larger (more expensive rooms), crowd size management, no partner changing, no partner dancing, mandatory masks (and the effect on vigorous exercise), no social dancing, increased workloads for organisers, etc.

But what about the effects of one symptom of covid itself, specifically, fatigue?
Fatigue is not just being tired, where you can push through. Fatigue means you sit down to eat your breakfast, but afterwards you’re so tired from eating you can’t get up from the chair. You have to sit there for a couple of hours. Meanwhile your body cramps and you’re in pain. But this exhaustion is mental as well – you cannot concentrate, cannot follow ideas, and so on. What does this mean for a dancer?

If you’re a professional lindy hopper (a teacher or performer, or someone working in film or television), living with fatigue from long covid, then you cannot dance. You cannot work. Your income is gone. You cannot perform, you cannot choreograph, you cannot practice. Your body, already affected by illness (respiratory illness being the least of it), loses muscle tone and fitness. Your memory and ability to retain choreography disappears. That ‘muscle memory’ stuff (which is actually your brain working) dissolves. Not only can you not train for the hours every day your work requires, you cannot even coach other dancers and earn an income for choreographing for other people. Living will illness, and being separated from your support networks result in serious mental illness. Depression. Anxiety. And it’s impossible to do creative work living with an illness like this.

If you’re a new dancer who has to live with long covid, then you simply stop dancing. And probably never return to it. New dancers are the bread and butter of most dance classes and dance schools today. Dance organisations often fund their social events and weekend events with income from beginner classes. Without that cash flow, the parties dry up. Work for musicians and DJs dries up. The ability to play for dancers dries up.

What does this mean for dancing in the rest of the community? Even if those dancers falling ill are local teachers rather than traveling professionals, all that accumulated teaching knowledge, which lindy hop is notoriously poor at retaining and sharing, will be lost. All that historical and cultural knowledge is taken out of the community. The musical knowledge and dancing knowledge is gone. Not only in that one person, but in all the people they taught, danced with, inspired, and provoked into rivalry.

This is a little like having the Black men removed from jazz music and dance by conscription during the second world war. Whereas jazz music and dance at that time were actually real social practices, happening in sustainable social spaces (families, neighbourhoods, thriving businesses, cross generational gatherings), modern lindy hop in many scenes is not socially sustainable. It collapses when just one or two key people in a local community disappear.

Most lindy hop communities are small*, with perhaps a few hundred dancers, and classes and events run by two or a handful of people. Lose one or two or a handful of those, and that local scene will crumble. If that scene is socially sustainable, with different aged people, a sharing of power and responsibility, etc, then it may be fine. But we have seen over the past ten years, particularly in discussions around sexual assault and racism, that the modern lindy hop world in most cities is not socially sustainable. Patriarchy (and late capitalism) is doomed to collapse under its own weight.

But is it so dire to see a community based on white supremacy and patriarchy break down? Nope. But the thing about covid is that it infects everyone. Even rich white men. The real, serious difficulty with covid is that vaccination and risk management is much harder when you’re poor, you’re disabled, you’re homeless, you’re marginalised.

When a local cultural community collapses, we also see innovative and new types of work in that local field disappear. The modern lindy hop world is dominated by the concept of historical reenactment, with the implication that the best lindy hop is old lindy hop. This ideology in practice (as many people have pointed out elsewhere) is racist, as it privileges the white people who’ve been lindy hopping the longest, and marginalises (discredits! devalues!) living modern Black culture. As Thomas DeFrantz said in his Collective Voices for Change talk, Black dance is a medium for change, for innovation, for action and activism as well as cherishing history and preserving legacy**. Long covid threatens this new and radical work.

Cancelled in 2121 by the rising Omicron wave, the Belgian event Upside Down has determinedly shifted online. But though online fun is still fun, the face to face necessity of lindy hop suffers.

I mention Upside Down for a few reasons. It is rooted in live music, with the organisers working closely with local musicians. Musicians who are some of the best and most talented in Europe. These musicians lose a weekend of work. Upside Down features some of the most creative promotional design, art, and social media engagement in the lindy hopping world. But while some of this might flourish online, the face to face element (the decorations, the unusual party structures, the creative energy and excitement) does not. Upside Down focusses on its local city, and on local dancers. It’s smaller scale (a few hundred rather than a thousand), and it aims to be environmentally sustainable. It’s also responded to the Black Lindy Hop Matters movement by asking its staff and attendees to engage with race and history and social power. This type of energy and enthusiasm is staggering under the pandemic. And individual cases of long covid in key personnel could be disastrous.

The greatest consequence in the cancellation of events like Upside Down is not in the loss of the event itself. It is losing those moments of creative catalyst that result in waves of new thinking, new creativity, new activism, that spread out into the wider community beyond Ghent.

Photo of Jazz Dance Continuum dancers at Jacob’s Pillow May 19, 2021. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.

Think of the Jazz Dance Continuum project spearheaded by LaTasha Barnes and her crew. I’m knocking on wood and tossing salt over my shoulder as I type, but imagine an actor like Barnes catching long covid? The woman is a force of nature, working in so many areas of jazz dance, and the wider creative world. She’s also a social agent of good, working with the Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, Frankie Manning Foundation and beyond. And what if Julie Living in New York, or Tena Morales-Armstrong in Houston became ill? These women are the backbones of their local and wider communities (once again, fucking hats off to Black women for being true forces of nature… and hardcore professionals). If we lose these types of people, the truly innovative work will be lost.

If you’re a Black American, catching covid is a very, very dangerous thing, for you and your family. The disease is bad enough, but the American ‘health’ system has never been kind to the Black community. The people most likely to be exposed to covid (the breadwinners and caregivers in the family) are removed from the family structure. Feeding nanna or putting food on the table gets harder. And if you catch covid, you still have things like long covid to consider. Individuals are going to be devoting what little energy they have to sustaining family, neighbours, parish, school, and friends. So the Black dancers and Black culture which have begun to make a difference to modern lindy hop are once again marginalised. This is, of course, a familiar consequence of racism. Racism makes people sick. Racism reduces life expectancy. Racism destroys communities.

I’m writing this now in Sydney, where our government has decided not to enforce lockdowns or other restrictions. Our covid case numbers are higher than they’ve ever been before, and we are behind other countries in vaccination. Two years into the pandemic, the national lindy hopping community has been fragmented into local, capital city based scenes. The live jazz scenes in the bigger cities is also suffering. I fear for the future of lindy hop and jazz dance. Mostly because I think that any future ‘revival’ will be based on the white dominated communities of the 80s-2010s, as we move further and further away from the swing era.

Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Avoid crowds.

*If most lindy hop communities are small, them most teachers are teaching locally for smaller groups, most DJing is done for local crowds and smaller crowds, most of the live music dancers listen to is played by local musicians, and most of the venues they use are smaller. The budgets are smaller, most labour is unpaid, and most of this unpaid labour is conducted by women. This is is something I learnt during my doctoral research (pre 2006), but which has remained the case in the following fifteen years.
If most teaching is done locally, then the most valuable teaching skills center on attracting and retaining newer dancers, or local people (rather than margeting to the more experienced market for weekend events). This type of teaching must, by necessity be locally specific: catering to the culture, values, and people of it’s home society.

**This idea of Black dance embodying opposing forces like preserving the past and fostering innovation is not new. Embodying ‘hot and cool‘ is a feature of Black dance, as DeFrantz, Malone and countless other point out. It is, again as Malone points out, almost the stamp of a vernacular dance to take elements of the past and rework them for current needs and wants. In other words, lindy hop wants to preserve the past and innovate and create. It is the quintessential modern dance of the 20th century.

References:

Ayah Nuriddin, Graham Mooney, and Alexandre I R White, “Reckoning with histories of medical racism and violence in the USA,” The Lancet, October 03, 2020.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32032-8/fulltext

Note: this article contains some important key references to other works on this topic. Content warning for descriptions of sexual violence, racism, medical violence… heck, all of it.

DeFrantz, Thomas ed. Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

-. “A conversation with Pr. Thomas DeFrantz on African American Social Dances, hosted by Breai Michele,” Collective Voices for Change, 17 October 2020. https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-2a-defranz

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

—. “Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance.” Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World. Eds. David Gere, et al. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995. 95 – 121.

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

—. Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Malone, Jacqui. Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

A known offender is teaching at a local event. What do you do?

A known offender is teaching at an event in your area. What do you do?

I’d probably think local. You can’t change the entire world, but you can be useful to local people. You know you and your mates won’t go (because you know who he is and what he’s done), but do the people outside your immediate peer group know? I’d imagine newer dancers don’t.

You don’t need to risk repercussions by telling people what he’s done. You can turn the issue upside down, and ask ‘what has he done to fight the fucking power?’
In less radfem sweary terms, maybe check in with them about what to look for in a teacher at a big event. Dancing ability isn’t enough. We need more. Who are they as a _teacher_ and person?

1. Are they straight, white, men?
If so, they need to prove themselves _better_ than anyone who is queer/poc/women/enby.
-> if he has no record of working to dismantle oppression. He’s not an ally.*

2. Do they do racist/sexist/homophobic stuff in public?
– Have they performed in black face (including ‘brown’ or ‘gold’ paint), a fat suit?
– Do their routines involve gay panic/homophobic jokes?
– Do they rely on sexualised jokes for their routines’ punch lines?

I have a one-strike-you’re-dead-to-me-policy. No second chances from me. So Ksenia Parkhatskaya is on my ‘no’ list because she’s appeared in black face in performances MULTIPLE times. Doug Silton is on my no-list because he appeared in black face on stage at a huge event (2013). Dax and Sarah are on my no list because they performed in a fat suit (2011) to recreate a Black dancer’s dancing, and stated that women should dance in high heels (2011). The list goes on and on. And all of these incidents are documented in footage from high profile events.

-> One of the things that WM actually did, and is recorded on film doing, is making a nazi salute (quenelle) during his performance at ILHC in 2014.
That’s enough to convince me not to attend an event he’s at. But are the other peeps in your scene also setting that as a baseline? If not, is it because they’re not Jewish, not people of colour?

3. If they’re white/straight/men, are they antiracists, anti-homophobic, and anti-sexist?
– Are they using their privilege in good ways?
– What do they post about on fb?
– Do they only work on all-white event staffs?
– Do they have a T&C document that says ‘I will not work at events that hire [known sex offender], [known racist]’ ?
– Do they post about antiracist efforts on fb?
– Do they donate money to, attend workshops with, or otherwise support projects like CVFC – Collective Voices for Change, Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, Maputo Swing, etc?
– Do they use their channels to advocate for marginalised people? ie do they suggest poc, women, queer, people for teaching/DJing/admin gigs?
– Do they give blog/media space to anti-racist actions, or do they devote that space to discussions about ‘technique’?

4. Are they white/straight, and have teaching styles and classes that are anti-racist, and advocating for students’ empowerment?
– Do they stand in the middle of the class and push you through a routine, or do they encourage students to explore ideas?
– Do they only teach moves they ‘invented’ or learnt from a modern day white guy, or do they continually name check Black dancers and musicians, giving a sense of history?
– Do they use racist/sexist language in class? eg do they use gendered language for leads and follows, sexualised jokes and metaphors, position a white man as the ‘norm’ in their anecdotes and metaphors?
– Do they ignore racism/sexism/homophobia in their classes, or do they call it out (even if from students) students in a productive way? If they ignore it, they are _condoning_ and enabling sexism, homophobia, and racism.

You’ll find that the sexual offenders, the bullies, and the bastards are fuckheads in a whole range of ways. Their sexualised violence is just one of the ways in which they exploit others.
In other words, we should all be asking ‘is this person being a force for good, or a fucking jerk?’ before we attend an event that’s promoting this teacher, musician, DJ, or MC.

Things that do not make you an ally:
– Having a photo taken with a Black dancer like Norma, Frankie, or other OGs.
– Wearing a Tshirt that features a Black dancer/musician.
– Standing by while bad shit goes down.
– Hiring one poc for your event.
– Posting a black square on your fb profile.
– Having women friends that you like.
– Having a Black friend.
– Teaching in Asia this one time.
– Knowing a gay person.

*you can’t just ‘be an ally’. You have to _do_ ally-ship.

Spreading stuff in families, workplaces, and other networks

“Lock Down Smarter, Not Harder” (DANIEL REEDERS 24 AUGUST 2021) is a really great article by a very clever friend.

Of course, as soon as I read Daniel’s original tweets on this, my brain started thinking about the way dance steps/styles travel between communities. Dance steps are units of meaning, ways of communicating ideas, who we are, and what we value. In Australia our local lindy hop scenes are separated by huge distances (the two closest scenes are a 3 hour drive apart; most are ~1000km apart), so they tend to have distinct local flavours, even with The Internet. We can think of these as functioning the way a workplace does. For many of us, these are our workplaces. Our germs and dance steps circulate within that local community, which expands into our homes and family circles.

When we travel to meet each other and dance together at exchanges, we literally exchange a whole bunch of things. Dance moves, strategies for preventing sexual assault, hospitality, songs, germs. We make jokes about things like ‘exchange flu’ or ‘Herrang flu’, but this is precisely how covid works: we move out of our own bubbles (local networks) and interact with people from other networks. Boom, new dance steps, new musical trends, new germs.

Daniel’s article does some fantastic work explaining why each local network is different.

Estimating transmission rates depends on understanding the network landscape, and that’s exceptionally difficult to map in real time. You can’t do it using the abstract mathematical models that dominate our public debate.

You and I, lindy hoppers, could do a very good job of explaining the internal relationships of our dance communities. The number and types of classes and parties. The formal dance troops gathering regularly to practice. The casual ‘sessions’ where people get together to jam and practice. Regular live music gigs where we interact with nondancers, venue staff, and musicians. Friendships. Romances and hook ups. Employer/employee gigs. After-dancing snack spots. And so on.

When I was doing my doctoral research, a big chunk of it was ethnographic mapping of local and global dance scenes (pre fb and youtube). To get an accurate picture of how a scene worked, I had to do participant-observation, and then have community members engaged in the ‘mapping’ process. I went from very big survey samples, to a series of smaller focus groups and discussions. Because each human is different, and each local community reflects not only the society in which they function, but also the particular dynamics of each local scene.

If I went in with the assumption that every local scene relied on live bands for social dancing, I’d have no way of describing places like Seoul. If I went in with the assumption that every scene had only male-female dance partnerships, I’d miss… every single dance scene that actually exists 😃
The way lockdowns are enforced in Australia at the moment, there is the assumption that every local community works in the same way. This ‘way’ reflects a particular type of family and culture: white, middle class, suburban, patriarchal.

As Daniel says, the structures within a local network are even more complex than a dance scene. Particularly migrant, outer-suburban communities. People taking turns bringing elders food. Sharehouses where everyone works at least 2 jobs in an ‘essential’ industry. Crowded apartments where more than one family share a shower, kitchen, and common areas. Informal childcare arrangements. And so on.
In the white nuclear family model where four people live in one house in the relative isolation of a suburban house, the father/husband goes to an office job, and the mother/wife stays home to look after the kids. This fits very nicely with the lockdown model. You can order people to work from home, to order groceries online, and stay home together, getting some sun in the garden every day.

Extended family networks don’t look or act like this. So they need different models. Curfews, cops on corners, and other draconian lockdown features won’t (and can’t) stop these people meeting.
The truly interesting part of Daniel’s article is where they point out that a relatively limited number of germs circulate within a smaller network. Even if you’re caring for nanna, living in a crowded house, or going dancing every week, practicing with your buddy, you’re only interacting with a set number of predictable people.

The difficulty comes when you go to work. In workplaces we see a number of the contained networks overlap. People from different networks interact and share germs. And not just on a one-to-one basis, where one father-worker shares their germs with another father-worker and his nuclear family. Boom. Exponential sharing.

In a dance scene, this might be a dance class where not only does everyone learn the new dance step from their partner, but everyone learns how to dance with a million other people. ‘Learn how to dance with’ = become more open to sharing and learning ideas (both physical ideas and creative ideas). Then they get onto the social dance floor and this sharing of moves and movement goes superexponential.

If workplaces are where smaller networks interact, then workers need safer workplaces:
– Shorter shifts, so they are exposed for less time;
– Better pay, so they need work only one job, and at that job for fewer hours (ie 8 hours a day);
– Paid sick leave, and leave for testing (or on-site testing) so they can go get those covid tests;
– Job security, so they aren’t fired or lose income if they miss a shift.
But none of these things are present in casualised work, or workplaces that have been de-unionised.
As a sort of extension of my doctoral work, I’ve found that a top-down response to sexual assault and harassment in a dance community is highly ineffective. Simply having a code of conduct where organisers lay down the ‘don’t rape people!’ rule does not prevent sexual assault.

Again, if we want to control a negative factor, we need to get highly specific, we need to give individuals the power to make decisions about their own lives and actions. Rather than a top-down, blanket order to ‘stop touching each other!’ we need to give people the freedom to avoid contact in ways that preserve their local support networks (families, or peer groups), and even more usefully _use_ their local networks to spread information, resources, and support. The agility of the Sikhs delivering meals safely. The authority of an aunty putting teenagers to work. The collaboration of girlfriends stepping in to divert a creeper from a new dancer. And so on.

Capitalism, patriarchy, however you like to think about these bigger, authoritarian hierarchies, are bad for people’s health.