gender and solo blues dance

Christina has been doing the most interesting project I’ve seen in blues dancing. Ever. She’s addressing gender in a very fascinating way. Through dance.

She’s written up her project Solo dance performance: once as a girl and once as a boy.

I don’t have time to write about it now, but something I’m struck by: she can pull off drag like nobody’s business. And as Brandi points out, both of these performances of gender are in drag. Watching these videos I’m struck by the limitations of bodily experience: I couldn’t ever pull this off, because I have a bunch of boob, wide hips, and carry a fairly clearly gendered amount of flesh. Christina’s athleticism and physical type give her the perfect tools for experimentation.
Am I envious? Yes! This is some fascinating, powerful stuff. But it also makes me think: what if I dressed ‘boy’, but worked with my body and made it ‘fatty boy’? How much more transgressive would it be for a ‘fat guy’ to do this sort of sexualised/provocateur dancing? If past examples are anything to go by, it’d be even more transgressive. The fact that I’m immediately drawn to a conversation where I talk about bodies and the physicality of bodies in solo dance makes me think that this is important. I’ve been thinking about ‘fat’ and ‘skinny’ and the cultural meanings of both in the lindy hop world lately (well, I’m hardly ever not thinking about these things), and I think Christina’s work does the sort of thing good art should: it gets us thinking. It’s a provocation.

At any rate, I have lots to say (of course), but I have some post-event admin to do. But I’m going to keep mulling over these clips and rewatching.

notes

Note to self:

  • write post about integrating paper, FB, email, twitter, and face to face promotion in dance event management;
  • write post about that guy who wanted to style his solo dancing ‘like a guy’, and whose solution was to make it smaller – how that relates to hegemonic masculinity (in Australia) and not expressing emotions other than anger;

Busy Hamface, busies herself

You’d think nothing had been happening round here.
But everything has been happening.

Firstly, we had to finish off classes for the year. We were so tired out, it was a relief, and yet it’s a poo to interrupt the learnz. But knowing when to rest is important.

Secondly, we had MLX. The biggest event in Australia. I was coordinating the DJs. I got into bed at 6am on Saturday and Sunday because I was having so much fun DANCING. Pilates has made masses of difference to my stamina – dancing is just so much less work because I use my body more efficiently. The music – live and DJed – was beyond compare. It was a massive weekend, and all the organisers and DJs should be very, very proud of themselves.

Thirdly, I arrived home on Monday, utterly shagged, my knees destroyed, and had to get shit together for the Little Big Weekend with Ramona, which started that Thursday. I was running this one on my own, and it was pretty much 100% sorted. Except for those little things I discovered on about, oh SUNDAY. But that’s how running events works – you discover little errors or mistakes or problems, you solve them, you rock.
I have to say, this was a seriously successful weekend.
Ramona did the Ramona thing: she was ridiculously professional and excellent company. Being in a range of classes with her, it was made very clear that there’s a real difference between being a regular teacher and being a world class teacher with ten years of teaching under your belt. The classes were fantastically structured and executed, and Ramona’s physical abilities were so far beyond what I’ve seen in workshops with other international teachers this year, I was blown away. And then, the class content!
I asked Ramona to teach things that I was really interested in, and then she DID. A class in soft shoe, a class in blackbottom, a class focussing on three different character dancers (Snake Hips, Josephine Baker and… mental blank). It was a solo weekend (!!), and the material was really quite eccentric. The classes sold out in 48 hours, we opened new spaces, the classes sold out again. And then to see a large group of people just lapping up this strange, bizarro wonderment, working hard, laughing and just relishing the Ramonaness…. it was a real delight.
After the workshop day, we had a christmas party (I didn’t run that one), then a late night party (I didn’t run that one either), and the late night party was A M A Z I N G. My standards were high after MLX. But I would even say that this was better than the late nights there. That could just be local pride. But, seriously, it was just fabulous.
There were a few other sessions on the weekend – a training session for a performance troupe, a ‘masters’ private class (masters = hardcore solo jazz nerds) and a small teacher training session – and Ramona was a real trooper. The work load must have been so tiring, but she kept rocking. And I’ve heard report after report from attendees gushing about the classes. I myself feel so inspired and invigorated. We taught on the Monday immediately after the weekend and got to test some things from the teacher training. It was exciting and inspiring and satisfying!

So, the Little Big Weekend with Ramona: wonderful.

Thirdly, Alice and I had two classes to teach on the Monday after the weekend, as part one of a three night block at a larger venue. We did a 1920s partner session (boy we wanted to do blackbottom!), then the first in a series we’re calling ‘beautiful basics’. This first basics class was looking at rhythm in lindy hop. It was a really nice coincidence to see Ramona emphasising rhythm so fiercely in her classes. We’d planned this class ages ago because we’re really into rhythm in our solo and lindy hop dancing, so Ramona’s approach helped confirm our feelings.

We worked very carefully on a class that began with a strong solo component (looking at the ‘step step triple step, step step triple step’ lindy hop rhythm, gradually adding in new fundamental rhythms – stomp off, kick ball change, hold), getting the students to dance out those rhythms in combinations. The goals were to work on bounce, on timing (syncopation, swing, etc) and on combining and changing rhythms.
We spent about three quarters of the class on that, and the students worked very hard – we were so impressed. Then we had them partner up, and we worked on putting those rhythms into swing outs. Swing out after swing out. The goal was to show how rhythms can be the core part of a swing out, and that shapes or ‘moves’ aren’t necessarily the most important part (though of course that’s fun stuff too).
It was really thrilling to see them suddenly go “Ah-ha!” when they understood how working on the rhythms on their own were an essential part of rocking their partner stuff. And their swing outs! It was really inspiring. So that class was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.
Next week we’re expanding that concept of ‘beautiful basics’ with a class looking at ‘making space for rhythm in lindy hop’. In that class we’ll take some basic steps or shapes (swing outs, under arm turns, etc) in a very basic ‘routine’, and then look at how we can make those basic steps a framework for rhythm or jazz steps. So the goal is to create swing outs or shapes that are flexible and relaxed, and to help students figure out how their connection with their partner can be open to improvisation.
I was quite struck by how this week’s class, which was quite simple in concept (make your swing out a jazz step and dance on your own, then rhythm-it-up, then make it into partner work again) could be so useful. The key was the practice and experimentation. And it was really nice to see the students then taking each of those rhythms and varying their shapes or emphases. Hopefully this next class will be just as useful. The goal with this one is to help students see how the most basic lindy hop ‘moves’ can be frameworks or outlines for more complex, textured dancing. The key is to be relaxed and self-reflexive, understanding how your own movements affect your partner’s, and how to be open to invention and improvisation.

Fourthly, I had pilates last night, after a day of busy appointments. I love pilates. It feels like a nice, gentle, low-impact, relaxing workout. My knees don’t hurt, I don’t sweat that much, I can be calm and properly mindful and in my body. And by GEEZ the work has improved my lindy hop.

And now it’s Wednesday, and I have no obligations! Well, I have stacks of post-event admin to do, but I’m giving myself a break, as I’m totally buggered. So of course I’m taking this time to write and write, rather than going out and doing something calming and non-dance related.

Tomorrow, of course, it’s on again. There’s a GREAT gig featuring three bands on tomorrow night at 505. The New Sheiks are from Melbourne (I squeed about their latest album here), and I’m really looking forward to hearing them. Then there are the Finer Cuts, who are from Sydney, and who played the christmas party. Most of their band members also played the late night Speakeasy party and were fabulous. And the final name on that bill is Pugsley Buzzard, who used to live in Sydney, but is now Melbourne based.
I’m really looking forward to the gig. I’m totally and completely over DJs (sorry, DJs) – live music is rocking my boat.

But, now, I have to add a caveat. The DJs at MLX made me realise that it’s really only ordinary DJs that I’m tired of. The quality of DJing at MLX was so vastly far beyond the ordinary DJs I hear, and have heard at other events during the year, it makes it clear that skillz are not universal. My own DJing, sadly, was not really up to snuff. I think I did an ok, job, but I definitely wasn’t up to my past standards. Assessing my own work, particularly on the Friday late night in the lindy hop room, I think I’d put me on the non-crucial sets next year.
In retrospect… heck, thinking about my DJing now, the problems are: I don’t DJ hardcore events enough these days, so I’m out of practice; I spend more time thinking about dancing than DJing, and am not on top of my own music; I’m not inspired, and I’m not nerding up my way through vast quantities of music each week. Basically, teaching and my own dance work have pushed DJing to the back of my mind. For now. I think this is a good thing. I’d much rather use band than DJs, and I’d much rather be dancing than sitting on my clack watching other people dancing. I’m also 38 now, so I reckon I should do the hardcore dancing now before my body totally asplodes. Time enough for DJing later.

So I’ve had a crazy couple of weeks. It’s been really, really great. I had a massage when I got back from MLX, which really helped, but I do feel as though I’ve pushed my dodgy knees a bit further than I should have. Curse you genetics! Now I’m thinking about next year, and about events in the future. I have some schemes, and some ideas for other events. I’d like to do something completely different and unusual. Something that we don’t see in Australian jazz dance. Now I just need some funding (to the arts grants!), some business skills (to the TAFE!) and a crack team of people to help me pull these things off. I love having the chance to combine my academic experience with my dance love. I figure all that time applying for and getting grants and scholarships during my postgrad years is going to be very useful in the near future.

Dancing, you are the finest. Organising and planning, you are the equal-finest.

self-directed learning

I’m stupid busy today, so I don’t have time to round up all my thoughts properly. That means that this post will be typically chaotic, full of spurious assertions and otherwise mo with the dodge.

But I want to keep a note of my responses to robcorr’s latest post about homework, which has an interesting bit at the end:

Homework setting and practice will have to change so that students are learning about self-management and self-regulation. The sort of homework tasks that promote learning these skills will not focus on drill and practice but require homework tasks where students make some decisions and choices and also exercise some autonomy.

This immediately makes me think about how we practice dance on our own. I’m interested in the idea that effective learning involves dance in a range of spaces – classes, practicing at home, social dancing, dancing like a fool in the lounge room, going to night clubs, dancing to live bands, etc etc etc. This idea of dance in everyday spaces is something I’ve borrowed from research into vernacular dance (particularly by Tommy DeFrantz, LeeEllen Friedland and Katrina Hazzard Gordon), where dance is just one part of a whole system of creative and everyday labour/practice, and that this everydayness (vernacularness) is what makes it robust and vibrant. It also makes it flexible, mutable and inconstant rather than fixed, constant and predictable. Which of course is what I love about it. Looking at how dance happens in our own different everyday spaces – different contexts – allow us to think more actively about what we are doing, to break ‘habits’, and to make our movements active choices. This hopefully helps us to become more creative, more responsive dancers. If you give a shit about that sort of thing. Me, I want to learn all the things, so I want all the skills.

LEARN ALL THE THINGS

Relatedly, I’ve been thinking about the classes we run for more experienced dancers not as ‘lessons’, but as spaces which we organise (because we have the time and inclination, not because we are the ‘best’) and which we all participate in for learning funz. And then we go to other people’s classes because we want to experience classes as a participant rather than organiser. We also all go (both class coordinators and participants) to work on material together in an informal space (ie a shared practice time), where the assumption is that we all have the same status, though with different needs and interests. This destabilises the hierarchy that otherwise dominates formal learning spaces. Hopefully.

I want to note, here, that a little hiearchy can be a very useful thing. When a group of people come together to do a complex task, they can organise themselves in lots of different ways. If it’s a time-sensitive task, then leadership (or hierarchy) can be very useful. So I’m not a complete anarchist – I think that structure and hierarchy can be useful.

But I don’t think that hiearchies of power and status should be fixed and constant across all social and cultural spaces. For example, just because you’re a high profile dance teacher, doesn’t mean your opinions about agriculture are more important, or that we should just smile when you say offensive things or sexually harass people.

I do think that, as sensible hoomans, we can agree to follow the leadership of someone in a particular moment in time. I quite like being directed or led by someone else, and I really like the idea of being part of a group that agrees to be directed by someone’s vision or idea. Just to see what happens, or how it turns out. It can be really super fun to be a cog in a greater machine, making something large and wonderful. But when that task is done, doesn’t mean we then continue to do as we’re told, or to cede our decision-making or opinions to those of that leader.

So status – power – can be mutable, changing and passed around. It can be a matter of consensus. The best sorts of communities or social groups are those where members feel confident enough in the group to allow other people to assume leadership roles, to take them on themselves, and to trust other participants not to exploit this power when it comes to them. This sort of community can be very scary for peeps who like nice, constant structures and relationships of power. And an awful lot of lindy hoppers today really like those clearly mapped out, constant systems.

Finally, Rebecca has a few posts about practicing dance including one with a blueprint for structuring practice sessions, which are quite interesting. I think I disagree with almost everything she says in the post Should you be practicing lindy hop more?, mostly because the tone structures the post (and discussion) in a very inflexible way. But also because I don’t think there are just three types of lindy hoppers (regarding opinions about practice), nor do I think these three types are static – we often move through phases depending on lifestyle, interests and, well, life. I’m certain Rebecca realises this (because she is clever), but the blog’s style doesn’t allow for this round-about sort of thinking.
Dance World Takeover often has very prescriptive ‘solutions’ for problems. This is a brilliant approach for a blog that wants lots of readers, and a wide readership. Shorter posts, clearer, more prescriptive language, clear goals and results. Which dovetails quite nicely with a conventional dance class ideology, and with broader cultures of learning and pedagogy in lindy hop. Me, I’m way more hippy like in that I prefer to think and talk through things in a way that yields multiple, self-guided ‘progressions’ rather than ‘fixes’. In other words, more talk, fewer concrete results.
But Rebecca makes an excellent point in emphasising the fact that the structure of a practice session yields particular results and encourages particular behaviours. A formally structured practice session encourages different types of learning than a flexible session with an emphasis on play and self-guided discovery. I think that both approaches are equally important. In fact, as I’ve said above, I think that participating in a range of dance spaces and activities is very good for us – it encourages flexible, reflexive learning. Also with the fun for our brains.

So what has all this to do with homework? Homework is self-guided learning, stuff that you do outside the formal class room. That excerpt above suggests that it works best with older students, but only when structured in effective ways. I’d suppose that this has something to do with developmental processes in children, but also to do with the way school institutionalise children, and trains them to behave in certain ways when self-regulating. But though I’m familiar with the basic arguments in the pro/anti- homework debates, I don’t actually properly know anything about them.

My hippy feminist socialist self suspects that a mutable ‘homework’ practice – for dancing as well as school work – which responds to the needs and interest of the student is most powerful. And here, of course, I think about the montessori and other free schooling models which encourage self-guided study, and which gave us some of the most talented, most creative American lindy hoppers in the world today.

Note: this is, once again, just one of a series of posts on a topic that’s boiling away in the back of my brain. It’s provoked by the everyday stuff in my life (ie teaching and learning and dancing), but in this instance it’s sadly under-researched.
I’m currently teaching weekly classes in solo dance and lindy hop, and have been for about nine months since I first returned to teaching after a ten year break. I spent about ten years (those same ten years :D ) teaching undergraduates in various universities. Teaching dance is almost entirely unlike teaching undergraduates about cultural studies.
I’ve also organised two workshop weekends here in Sydney this year. One covered lindy hop, blues and solo dance, the other covering just solo dance. Both incorporated a teacher-training session. The goal of these teacher training sessions was not to ‘teach teachers to be better teachers’, but to provide a structured session with visiting teachers where local teachers can talk about and experiment with ideas for teaching dance.

I’m just new to teaching dance and organising dance workshops. So I’m trying to make a lot of mistakes so I can learn from them, and I want to understand current practices before I go making radical changes. And because this is dance teaching, I’m not working alone: the best thing about lindy hop is that we’re goddamn collaborative learners. We really, really like doing projects with other peeps. Yay.

I don’t really know much about teaching (dance or university), and I’ve only read sparingly. I need to get more with the learning. I have to say, though, that teaching dance is just about the most interesting thing I’ve ever done in dance. Now, if only it actually paid well…

Here’re some recent posts tracking my thinking about teaching dance to make you angry with their limitations:

Valuing the process rather than the product

Note: this posts contradicts itself quite a bit.
That’s because this is just a series of thoughts. I should learn to edit posts, eh?

Here are three things that’ve been rolling about in my head this week.

1. A friend told me a story about Skye Humphries. Someone in a class at Herrang asked him how he got so good at solo dance. And he said “I practice every day.”

2. I read this npr story Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning.

3. There’s quite a bit of criticism of Ken Burns’ Jazz series’ presentation of jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as isolated, musical genius rather than as parts of living, working communities of creative development.

All of these things tie into my current obsession: teaching through practice and experimentation, rather than teaching through drilling with the aim of perfect reproduction. And more implicitly, my (eternal) obsession with the fact that tying ourselves to conventional, hierarchical, institutional pedagogic practice is less useful than encouraging more fluid, mutable cultures and communities of cultural and creative practice. Basically, I think that better dancing comes from better ways of thinking about teaching and learning dance.

I’ve noticed that gifted dancers – the ones who get it first time, and really quickly – tend to struggle with teaching. They find it difficult to conceptualise, let alone articulate, what they do when they move their body. They just find learning new dance steps so easy they aren’t aware of the composite elements of the step as a whole. This is related in a way to students over-achieving academically. They’re so used to getting things right, they don’t really know how to deal with getting things wrong. And they’re so used to just doing things properly the first time, they don’t know how to learn.

The most successful artists are more often those who have to work hard on their art – their craft – to learn, and who are more willing to spend time learning and experimenting and challenging their own ideas. Skye certainly has ‘natural talent’ but he ‘got that good’ by working really hard, every day. Louis Armstrong was a musical genius, but he was part of a living, breathing community of musicians and dancers and club owners and talent managers and bands. If his wife Lil Armstrong hadn’t pushed him to leave King Oliver’s band, if hadn’t left his safe, familiar community, he’d probably never have pushed himself to those heights of achievement. And as Lipsitz points out (and I discuss in Lists and Canons in Jazz) and the trouble with linear jazz narratives + more), what about those musicians who didn’t go on to be mega famous? What about the ones who stayed in their home towns, as part of a creative community? Aren’t they still important to the history of jazz?

I think, more and more, that teaching through experimentation, where the goal is to really figure out the limits of your own body, rather than to just recreate an step without self-reflexivity makes for better learning and teaching. Teachers who’re working with students who’re learning through experimentation learn how to manage a class full of people who aren’t just getting it ‘right’. They learn to be patient with students who struggle, and reassess the goals of the class. ‘Getting through material’, or ticking boxes, isn’t as important as spending time with a concept or movement and figuring out how it works from every angle. And you can’t really quantify this sort of learning. If the goal of a dance class is creative inspiration and creative play – making shit up – then being prepared to take risks is important for teachers and students.

For me, being a teacher and a student at the same time is really important. I have to regard my own teaching a work in progress. We don’t expect our students to ‘get it perfectly right’ in one class, so we don’t expect our own teaching to be ‘perfectly right’ in one class either. We rethink our goals, and aim for continuous-learning as teachers/students ourselves. And we aim for continuous-learning for our students as well.

I am extra sure that it’s absolutely essential to consider our dancing/teaching/work/learning as a never-ending process. We must assume that we are never going to be at the point of perfect recreation. We are always going to be learning and relearning. And self-reflexive learning (ie being aware of what we do and think) is central to this. Mindfulness again, I know. But I don’t mean self-reflexivity as a process of self-assessment and self-criticism. I mean self-reflexivity as a process of mindfulness and self-awareness. What am I doing at this moment, now? Sure, it mightn’t have been what I wanted, but that’s ok. It is one step in an ongoing process.

It’s a little bit like DJing. I can stop playing swing music from the swing era when we’ve danced to every song. I can stop learning when I’ve danced every step.

To sum up, then I think it’s important that we think of classes – the struggle – as more important than the performance – the product. Or, rather, the learning process is more important than an accumulated set of skills or achievements.

Lipsitz, George. “Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz,” Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004: 9-26.