Jeeeeezuss!

I did a gig at the speegs during MLX which wasn’t really very great. First, there were no dancers there but The Squeeze and I. So my swingin’ jazz went down like a lead balloon. Thank heavens for James Brown, or I’d’ve been lynched. Though they booked me for a jazz gig, I just couldn’t bear the empty floor any longer. So I played the very few soul and funk songs I had. And the punters loved it.
A bit later, some dancers arrived, so I started in with some good dancing from the jazz tradition. After ‘Lavender Coffin’ and midway through ‘Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho’ some drunk prick tried to climb up on the stage (I dealt with that, quick-smart and used my scary body to move him back). “Are we going to be subjected to this gospel swing all night?” he demanded in a pleasant drunken slur. And I sort of shrugged it off with a tight smile. He kept lurking and I gave him the super snub. A few minutes later he returns with the same charming line. And I reply “If at all, possible, YES!”
What could be better than an evening of hardcore New Orleans Jeeeeezuss! music? I can’t imagine. Then I gave that prick some serious snubbing.
There’s nothing worse than a know-it-all jazznick heckler who thinks he knows better. Prick. Hope I never see that loser ever again.
But speaking of gospel, I’m quite struck on Mahalia Jackson live at Newport. I want it. At first it was just for that version of Jericho, but now I just want it. Not necessarily for DJing (though the Jericho would go down well at a blues event). The Basie Live in Antibes CD got me keen on Jackson, and I think I could well get over this swing malarkey and return to my soul and funk roots. Sigh. More obsessive collecting to come.
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So, anyway, to finish off that bit about the speegs gig, Trev and Russ came in later and played the other bits of the set for me. If you look at the pic there (courtesy of Wendy), you can see me DJing (and probably freaking) and Trev leaning over my shoulder with beer in hand (there are no DJing rules at the Speegs).
Trev played excellent party lindy, moving into formerly uncharted territory, and Russ then decided it was partyhardy time. Yes, we did hear the theme from Footloose, amongst other 80s party anthems. The punters went nuts. The lindy hoppers went nuts. The speegs staff were very happy with us (I did check with them that it was ok to move on down this motown/stax/disco anthem track, and they approved), the pay was good.
I’ve done a few sets there, and I have to say I approve. Nice people, nice gear, fun crowds. Except for the stupid pricks. And I’ve been offered other DJing gigs (fielding phone calls all over the place), but I think I’m going to keep it real and only play for dancers. Unless the pay is good. Real good.

copying is easier than creating

Mz Tartan has posted a post about conferences that applies quite nicely to lindy exchanges. So I will now infringe her intellectual copy rights with some select copying and pasting.

  • thinking of holding a conferencen exchange? Best not. It is a far, far better thing to receive conferences exchanges than to give them. I can’t really remember what people actually said the dances I had, in most cases. I do vividly remember various people telling me that it is incredibly anxiety-producing to organise a conferencen exchange. That’s the truth. And all the while one is industriously producing anxiety one is well aware that the anxiety is ridiculous: one is not actually the person whose academic standing DJing or dancing has attracted people to this event, nor the one behind the microphone giving the talk good oil which is being intently listened danced to, let alone the person who wrote these exquisite novels songs and/or dances in honour of which everyone has gathered.
  • But here is a specimen of the type of situation which feeds anxiousness. I did not mention this en blog at the time, but back in April of this year, I came into my office one morning to find six or seven messages on my answering machine from a person who seemed to be saying she’d showed up at LTU on the weekend for the conference, and she was standing outside the venue right now and could I call her back straight away to tell her why nobody was around – where it had been moved to? Oh, and she’d come from Italy to attend. FROM ITALY. I was DJing at set in one room when the DJ from the other appeared at my side to ask where the DJ for the set following his was at. Can you imagine the abyss of horror which opened up beneath me? Can you? I’m sorry, but you can’t. The original call for papers, sent out eighteen months earlier, had indeed mentioned this weekend as the probable date, but we’d changed it very quickly to coincide with the English Teachers’ meeting. And of course nobody else had turned up. And of course ALL the subsequent promotional stuff very clearly gave the proper date. And of course it is incredible to simply turn up to a conference without at least re-checking that it’s on, or even attempting to register, or looking at the conference website. Yet, still, here she apparently was. FROM ITALY. All of the DJing rosters had been sent out ages ago and approved by all DJs concerned. We did manage to find the DJ (asleep somewhere), but it was a near thing, and yet another opportunity for public humiliation before an audience of my peers and international and interstate guests.
  • She apparently turned up again last Friday afternoon. The person on the conference desk said she’d appeared and wanted to know where her name tag was. Then we lost track of her again. I would have liked to sight her, from a safe distance (from inside a bird observation hut perhaps) but it was not to be…next time, no doubt.
  • If, in spite of this potent warning, you still want to do a conference n exchange, overbook your speakers DJs. Out of thirty-five two dozen, two will withdraw for good reasons and in plenty of time for you to make other arrangements; two will courteously let you know that they won’t be coming in time for you to pull them out of the program, one will pull out a week before, and one will pull out by email at 6:24pm on the evening before the day their paper set is scheduled at 10:45 1:30 am. This person will be emailing you not from the Australian city where she resides, but from a country that is nine hours’ flight away. How did she get there? you will wonder. Didn’t it occur to her as she got on the plane….etc
  • The sick feeling you will acquire as you contemplate what looks like the complete disintegration of your carefully assembled program will make it impossible for you to write play your own paper set with any degree of competency, so you will withdraw it, bash it out any way thus making you feel like a total hypocrite and poser. Nevertheless, there will actually be more than enough papers DJs, and you will eventually realise that all the agonising and your own self was were unnecessary.
  • Don’t cancel the wildlife tour/shopping tour/olden days architecture tour. It is what the internationals are looking forward to. You may think possums/shopping/old buildings are boring, but they do not.

Despite the extreme anxiety of previous MLXs, this year wasn’t actually all that bad. The above are really just par for the course, and what I think of as ‘inevitable screw ups’. The issue becomes not whether or not they happen, but how you deal with them when they do happen. The difference between a conference and an exchange, though, is that a couple of hundred dancers are there to have fun, and it takes quite a bit to dissuade them of their intent. Conference attendees, however, have a few more issues going on, and can be far less forgiving.
I only had one freak out during MLX, and that was on the Thursday of the weekend. My good friends and hostees took me for cake and I got over myself and it.
I find that the very most important thing about coordinating a dozen or so events over one weekend for a few hundred visitors is to remain calm. Freaking doesn’t help. I also have a rule: “no shouting”. Unless you’re shouting with delight. Shouting at people is never productive, and definitely not when the shouter is feeling angry/upset/etc. Remain cool. If you do feel a good shout/cussing out is in order, take it out the back so as to avoid broken furniture, exorbitant bar tabs and embarrassing guest DJs.
I have another solid rule: say thank you to anyone who has in any way been helpful, kind, accommodating, interested or otherwise a force for good rather than a force for inertia*. It doesn’t hurt to say thank you three or four times, but it does hurt if you don’t say it at all. Saying thank you makes you feel good, too, and so it’s a win-win deal for everyone involved.
And another rule (which is related to the previous): volunteers are the most valuable creatures at your event. DJs are generally a bit precious and high maintenance (with exceptions!), rock star dancers are a pain in the freaking arse (organise exchanges for beginners – they’re far less annoying) and fellow organisers can drive you nuts. But volunteers are gold. Love them, respect them, buy them drinks, thank them, squeeze them and underwork them. They will come back next year and figure out how to work the vacuum cleaner all on their own again.
*yes, I know.

west brunswick toodle-oo

So November is over. It was ok.

  • I had a birthday (that was ok)
  • I liked all the moustaches (I don’t think there’s enough facial hair in the world, and it made dance partners extra interesting)
  • we did mlx and it went well (biggest ever, zillions of interstaters and internationals, the usual reluctance on the part of Melbournites to play nice with guests)
  • we had galaxy plus a round of dancers stay with us (and that was very nice)
  • I did all my marking and got it in with plenty of time to spare
  • I got a job interview for a postdoc (argh! next week!)
  • I got a small grant to get me to the CSAA conference this week (double argh! paper not written! flights not booked! accommodation not sorted!)
  • I’ve had a few punters ringing me offering DJing gigs (I am resolute about only taking paying gigs – I’ve done enough freebies to know I never want to do one again, unless it’s for a real charity)
  • Galaxy and I met up with Mz Tartan pre-GG and the Austenauts (dang, I’m sorry I missed that! blogged with excellence here) and she was surprisingly cool, calm and collected

…and now I’m desperately trying to get my sleep pattern back to normal for the conference this week. I managed to have a relatively stress-free MLX (in fact, incredibly so), and slept at least 8 hours every night. From 8am til 4pm most days, but still, 8 fat hours of solid, dreamless sleep. Unheard of.
I’ve also met another dancer doing a phd on dance stuff, but she lives in Perth, so we’re squeezing in a natter-fest tomorrow before she flies out. She’s into sociology and anthropology and I’m not sure she’s up there with the hardcore sister action. But we’ll see. It’ll be neat just to sit and have a nice, nerdy chat.
I’m planning to meet up with the Adelaidean dancers during the conference visit this week (Wednesday). So I’ll be able to say I’ve danced in every scene in Australia. Except Launceston. That should be nice.
My paper is pretty much done – just some tidying up to do. It’s a combination of bits from these three posts, but obviously with far less detail, seeing as how I only get 20 minutes. 20 minutes kills me, especially when I want to play some music and clips of dancers to actually make clear what I’m talking about. It’s ridiculous to talk about dancing without showing any, particularly when you’re talking about gender performance in dance. In fact, it’s so ridiculous I should just show 6 clips and provide an exercise sheet to stimulate group discussion, a la tutorials past.
I’ve also noted I’m in kind of a dud session, parallel with papers I’d really like to see, and which everyone else would really like to see as well. Not a big deal, really, and just desserts for someone who fucked the programming around at the last minute (I’d missed out on another grant and cancelled on the organisers, then been offered one by someone else, so squeezed back into the program – people who pull that shit deserve to get dud sessions). But it’s parallel with an old buddy’s paper and in a session of licorice allsorts, so we’ll have trouble asking each other questions. It is in the last session of a day, but this time it’s not the last session of the last day, so I guess it’s ok.
I don’t mean this to sound like a big old bitch – I really am very lucky to be going at all, and I don’t want you to think otherwise. But the part of me that’s trying to get a job keeps saying ‘how will you pimp your fine self out if there’s no one in the audience?’ But really, it only takes one. And there’ll be plenty of afternoon teas for me to pimp myself about. I’m cringing, writing that stuff. I hate the thought of such aggressive self aggrandising, but at the end of the day, in such a competitive job market, I have to be a bit pushy.
So I’m going to experiment with performing pushiness, and pretend like I’m one of those blokes who, obliviously, introduces himself to all the Names at conferences. It’s the sort of thing chicks tend to be reluctant to do. And as a consequence, those pushy blokes get remembered, simply because the chicks have been to shy to step up.
But I’m going to focus on Names that mean something to me – you know, the Old Girls network. The ladies who do. The sorts of women academics who I admire and want to work with and be like. They’re the ladies who’ll call me on bullshit pushiness and demand some sort of fer real talk. No bullshit (unless it’s a story about my career as a stunt woman and there are Tasmanians in the room), all kick arse Sister. No pathetic arse-kissing. No sycophancy…. like I’d have the patience for that. And for sure I’d forget that it’s not cool to swear in polite company. Must remember that for the job interview, actually. Swearing = not cool.
But we’ll see. No doubt I’ll forget all these plans and end up talking shit and eating all the chocolate biscuits with the homies from UQ. Awesome.
Galaxy asked me the other day if I’d written a ‘why dance is important to cultural studies’ paper, and I haven’t. I’m not sure I really, hugely care – if you don’t dance you don’t understand why it’s important. Words won’t help convince you – you have to feel it to understand why it’s good stuff. But I do have a short list of reasons which include things like ‘class’ and ‘not needing literacy’ and ‘ethnicity’ and ‘faster than words’ and ‘freakin’ great fun!’ I’ll have a think, though. Perhaps it’ll be a paper I write when I actually have a job or a book or more than half a dozen papers. Right now I think I’d get more from a paper called ‘Why cultural studies needs dogpossum’ which is so effective it gets me lots of jobs. But I’ll work on it.

mad

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I don’t really have time to write much (marking, marking, proximity to mlx, etc), but I am going to briefly tell you about the set I did at the Spiegeltent on Friday.
1. Best sound set up ever.
2. Best sound guy ever.
3. Best venue ever.
4. Best pay ever.
5. Best only rider ever.
6. Seeing students at gig = mutual discomfort.
7. Fun, fun fun.
8. Hours? 11.30-3am. Challenging when doing band breaks, but still a win gig.

Charlie Christian’s Genius of the Guitar

This is a truly fab box set. The packaging is a bit dumb, but it’s a great set of music. 4 CDs worth of goodness. Christian died young of TB, but he did some truly fabulous work with people like Benny Goodman. A lot of this stuff covers the Goodman RCA collection, and if you pick up the shorter version of this set and the Goodman, you should be right. But for ob-con collectors like me, this set gives you lots of silly 30 second out-takes which are fascinating.
The set is a bit expensive, but I finally decided to take a risk with the second hand ones. One CD is a bit dodgy (it can’t talk to Gracenote, so the song info doesn’t import automatically into itunes), but that’s not a big deal. The liner notes are a good read, and for sheer tactile loveliness, this set is worth it. It’s almost all great dancing, though a lot of it tends towards ‘bal’ music – especially the Goodman Sextet stuff. Great, technical musicianship, but a little precise and fiddly for lindy hoppers. Perfect for jazz nerds and balboa dancers who like tiny, precise music for their tiny, precise dancing.

Count Basie’s Chairman of the Board

I wanted the album that featured the perennial favourite “Blues in Hoss’s Flat”. I’d had a version from a greatest hits, and seeing as how hi-fi, new testament Basie is always in fashion, I thought I’d pick up this recommended favourite. It doesn’t hurt that I’m on an anti-preswing kick at the moment.
So this album is pretty good. Highlights – “Moten Swing” and “Blues in Hoss’s Flat”. Again, not all the best dancing, but still an example of a really good later big band.
Another Basie gem I keep coming back to is The Count Basie Story. Two CDs of hi-fi new testament Basie big band action. They play some of the old school favourites, and while there’s no going past the older sound, this is a pretty freakin’ good album.

cyber teaching

I’ve been using a combinatin of online teaching tools this semester, and I’m not really happy with most of them.
We use WebCT as a standard, university-wide tool. It is very clunky and, quite frankly, pretty dang crap. It’s windows based in its logic, and it’s counterintuitive, which means that it’s often pretty difficult to figure out how to do basic tasks. Even when you’ve been trained to use it (as I was). It’s also super-slow in uploading and managing files. I don’t know enough about it to know why, I just know that I don’t have that trouble when I’m uploading files to other sites using other tools. It also looks horrible. Not the most important point ever, but when you’re working with stoods who aren’t exactly keen to start off with… And it’s not a very ‘friendly’ site. It doesn’t make me want to explore. It also favours a particular visual logic which is very culturally specific. This is a big deal for me working with students from multicultural backgrounds and who may not have ever used a computer before (this is true of a fair chunk of my students).
Using it has been pretty shitty, and I’m a keen computer nerd. The internet, she is my friend.
We’ve also been using the e-reserve bit of our library website. That seems the most popular option, especially for students who aren’t terribly computer savvy. It helps that it’s within the library universe, so they’re only using one visual interface, rather than having to learn a whole new environment – they know where all the buttons are. It’s also the simplest tool – we just upload basic files to the site and they log in and download them. No fancy teaching modules or whatever. It’s a bit like going to the library to borrow a book – simple and functional.
These expereinces remind me of how we developed an online networking tool for the committee running MLX. We started with druple, but we all found it incredibly difficult to use. Most of the team had only very basic experience with complex online environments, and druple was just difficult to use. So we ditched it. I’d been reading about plone and liked the colour scheme. But the more I fiddled with it, the more I liked its usefulness. That’s the software we use now. And it’s been very useful and successful. We certainly don’t use it to its fullest capability – we really just upload files and then comment on them, or email the links from within the site. But that’s all we’ve needed. And it’s been neat.
So now I’m thinking about our experieces with webCT this semester, and I’m not satisfied.
I keep thinking ‘Most of these guys use faceplant and myface and are really proficient internet kids. How can I steal the best bits of those sites and make a course site that really rocks?’ These guys love that stuff, so how can I get them to love a course-related site?
This is what I want:

  • somewhere to put each week’s lecture notes and various media files (films, images, sound files, etc)
  • somewhere to put all the assessment documents (assignment tasks, style guide, etc)
  • somewhere to put general notices where all the students can see them

That’s the very basic list. It’s really just a course reader online, where everyone can see it and access it whenever they want.
I have students who work a lot and have very busy lives. They need something easy to use and navigate, something useful and something that will make their study easier, not harder. So it has to be easy to learn to use. And fun. And actually valuable (not technology for the sake of technology).
I want the site to encourage their interest in the subject. I’ve been doing some stunt lecturing this semester, trying to capture their interest in the subject. For me, this is the most wonderful, interesting stuff in the whole world. And I want them to find a way into the subject that works for them, and really captures their interest. So I’ve been looking for interesting little films (thank you, thank you, Chaser, I owe you big time), sound files, pictures and so on. It’s been surprisingly successful. I squeeze these into my lectures and then make the urls available. YouTube has been an essential part of this.
I’ve also figured ‘if I’m interested in all this stuff – this whole range of stuff – surely they will find at least one thing that captures their interest?’ And if I set an example of ‘media is super fun’, and a real acquisitive, hunter-gatherer approach to learning, where I ‘bring home’ the interesting things I’ve found, perhaps it’ll rub off.
Partnered with my ‘talk about media you’re into’ strategy (I talked about it a bit here), it’s been reasonably successful. Students have taken the opportunity to talk about the things they’ve seen in the media that have caught their interest. They’ve been a bit hesitant and scaredy about revealing an interest in nerdy stuff, but have generally worked up to more confidence. Even the quieter students.
Ok, so other things I want from an online package:

  • somewhere for students to add their ‘interesting finds’ – images, news stories, AV clips, sound files, TV shows, etc etc
  • something that will encourage discussion, but will work as a complement to the face to face (I do not want this to become a substitute for tutorial chatting – that is still the absolutely central part of any subject)
  • something that’s not too time consuming. This is important for my students with kids and lots of responsibilities. So it has to be easy to learn and use.

I’ve also been thinking about new ways of structuring course. Pretty ambitious stuff, but still. At the moment we have:

  • lectures (1 hour is preferable, but our uni tends to 2 hours with 1 hour tutes – it’s a funding thing)
  • tutorials (2 hours preferably)
  • written assignments (my preference is for cumulative, not discrete ‘blobs’ of essay)
  • readings (delivered in a big wad of reader (Glen has made some really interesting observations about readers here)
  • and perhaps in-class exercises or random quizzes

Here’s something I’d like to try:

  • lectures. Large groups of students together in a room listening to someone talk about interesting stuff. One hour is maximum attention span time. Lecturers preferably some big gun in the department (for all these reasons), including some illustration by way of snippets of film or images – whatever best illustrates the points being made
  • tutorials. Small groups (12-15) of students working for 2 hours. Emphasis on discussion and learning to talk about the readings/lectures/ideas. Emphasis on socialising the stoods (eg learning to listen and work collaboratively on developing ideas). Some practical exercises to test theories/methods. I like the ‘talking about media’ tool to encourage students to talk about their media experiences and workshop/develop their assessment ideas
  • assessment. Two pieces of cumulative assessment (essays to develop writing skills) and a not-too-hard in-class exam. Short answers. Drawing explicitly on weekly quizzes. This will help students who haven’t quite gotten the hang of extended written tasks and encourages students to study all the weeks’ work, not just the ones relevant to their projects

    • weekly quizzes. Not necessarily for marks, but covering the essential elements of each week’s topic. A good way to keep lecturers on-track and give students a clear idea of the main areas of discussion. An excellent revision tool. Also a useful de-stresser for students who feel like they’re drowning in a formless mass of details. These could be made available online quite easily.

  • readings. Key readings in the field are absolutely essential. Students do need a guide to key readings in the literature. Discussion of readings should emphasise not only what’s in the reading, but also the structure and form of the reading. How is it written? What sources does it use and cite? How does it develop arguments? How does it illustrate key ideas? How influential has it then been on the field? How did it shape opinion? Is it representative of a particular approach? This body of readings should give them a broad overview of important ideas and writing in the field, and serve as a jumping off point for student’s further research. Encouraging students to follow up the articles and books which cite these key readings is a useful way of developing research tools and getting them to think about how ideas develop discursively in disciplines
  • possibly some sort of interactive film/slide show/AV. Combining interesting images and audio-visual clips to illustrate points and provide an always-available interactive, multi-media discussion of the issues. This could be available on CD, to be watched in the library, online via a website to be streamed or downloaded.
    This is one I’m not entirely sure of. But I have students with such a range of learning styles and skills, I really like the idea of forcing information into them in a range of forms. I am, though, still wrestling with my instinct to encourage diversity in terms of learning styles within a university context where the one thing we want to do is force them to learn to learn and ‘make discourse’ by reading and writing (it’s ridiculous: I was lecturing this week about the advantages of radio in developing countries – it doesn’t require literacy so it’s more inclusive!)

So when I talk about a useful online teaching tool, I want something that would complement all this stuff.
If I’m encouraging students to work on cumulative assessment, developing their own ‘projects’ over 2 essays during the semester and using tutes to discuss and workshop their ideas, then why not use the site to encourage and support that? It would be really nice to make it possible for students to upload their project notes and files to the site, and to then download them and work on them in multiple locations, uploading their additions when they finish a session. That would allow them to share their work with other students, get feedback from staff (egads – the extra work!), discuss ideas, etc. Importantly, it would provide backup for all their data.
I’d also like to have a glossary or lexicon of terms on the site which they can add to. I’ve had requests for something like this from my students, but haven’t had time to develop it.
I’d like the usual email/discussion board/chat options, but I’m not sure just how successful they’d be. They’d be nice for public questions, eg “how many ads should I use for this assignment?” but could be a big fat time sink. Moderating them could suck.
I’m also wondering about whether to put recordings of the lectures online. As with lots of other people, I’ve been fascinated by Berkeley’s YouTube channel and want to take advantage of this idea. On the one hand, we have resisted making full versions of our lectures available for students because it drops the number in lectures. But the number of students who come to lectures drops off as the semester progresses anyway. Partly because students drop out (especially in first year), but also because the pressure towards the end of the semester thins them out. Which makes me think about alternative ways of structuring the semester, too.
I find, though, that I still get a core group at each lecture (mostly students from my tutes, incidentally), and as the classes have shrunk, their willingness to ask questions during the sessions have grown. This isn’t like a tutorial – I am still declaiming the Good Oil from the pulpit – but it’s an interactive lecture. The students are quite aware of the distinction between the two, and its been interesting seeing how they’ve developed different modes of interaction for each. They realise that tutes are times for them to talk as much as they like while I listen and monitor, but that lectures are time for me to talk with room for requests for clarifications.
While I had trouble with people chatting in lectures earlier in the semester (and man was it satisfying to kick those arses!), I now get a few whispered to-and-fros. When I say “if you’ve got a question or comment, share it” (and it doesn’t sound as facetious as that reads – they know I really do mean it), they usually reply “oh, I was just asking what that last word was – I didn’t hear”. So it’s just a bit of peer-clarification. Which is all good and nice.
That’s actually interesting, because in tutes I encourage students to answer each other’s questions and to work collaboratively towards figuring out answers or ideas. But in a lecture we actively discourage that. It’s a really weird conflict between student-centred/participatory learning and declaratory, lecturer-centred learning.
I’m still not sure where I stand on in-class presentations by students. On the one hand I don’t think it’s a good idea because it freaks them out. I also feel that I can better judge their learning if they’re participating activley in class, than I could by listen to them stumble through a formal presentation. Shit-scarey and tedious for everyone. But on the other hand, sometimes it’s nice to have a chance to actually have the floor to yourself for a while to present a properly worked-through idea.
Maybe a presentation of their research projects? But again, a less formal, more participatory in-group model would be better.
So anyway, to sum it all up, I’ve been having a look at moodle, another online teaching tool. Will let you know what I think. Will you let me know what you think? I’m interested in feedback from people who teach in other fields especially.