dogpossum – Page 8

What about solo jazz classes in Sydney?

It’s still very high risk, because:

we’re still very close to each other (we need a lot more space than other activities)
the puffing and huffing spreads more respiratory droplets than normal breathing
we spend more time indoors together (two risk factors)
you have to clean up the space before and after the class, which is a lot of work
you need to have staff to manage crowding and lines

…and so on. This is why the actual _class_ is high risk. All this, and then the business has to handle contact tracing and other covidsafe regulations. The teaching model that was happening before covid barely (if ever) managed to handle insurance and other safety stuff. This added layer of work is too much for most dance businesses.

But in addition, the businesses that ran classes before have all been devastated by the shutdowns. No support from the government means businesses have failed or had to close down. Teachers have had to look for other work. So the _businesses_ have had to pause.

There’s no money to fund class expenses: advertising, insurance, rent/room hire, etc etc. All dance classes take a financial risk on this stuff, and then if numbers aren’t solid, they make a loss. Solo jazz has always been a higher financial risk because it doesn’t attract as many students as lindy hop.
I’ve run a dance business, and taught for my own business and others. Including the first weekly solo jazz class in Australia (brag! brag!). At this stage the safety issues of covid are a big deterrent, but it’s all the other administrative issues that are the real killer. We don’t make much money from single classes; to make money you have to run a bunch of classes and/or big classes. That’s not going to happen during this moment.

But hold on. We need a vaccine, and we need 100% take up, before we start teaching classes safely.

Things you can do to get lindy hop happening again:

Hassle your local MP to get arts bailout packages for small businesses like dance schools;
Make sure you and your family and all your friends are ready to get vaccinated, and then get vaccinated. If you’ve got anti-vaxer friends, or an anti-vaxer yourself, you’re a big health risk for all of us;
Don’t spread misinformation about covid (because that leads to outbreaks which slows things down again);
Support teachers, DJs, and other dance professionals who are working online: always pay for classes (even if they don’t ask for money), share and recommend good classes and organisations, drop supportive notes to people who are doing this work;
Encourage support for local venues where people run classes: independent venues (like our beloved Ruby’s), bars where live jazz lived (because it’s another important part of the lindy hop ecosystem).

Time lines of Black dance as white patriarchy

Someone on fb recently asked:

“Question: has someone made a visual timeline/lineage of Lindy Hop? Is this a good idea?”

I dislike the linear timeline model because:

It puts Africa in the past, when helloooo it’s not;
It uses a very western hierarchy of value with a particular dance or people as the apex or cumulation of different dance. Soz but lindy hop has never stood still or existed in a singular ‘true’ form. It is meaning in motion.
Who gets to decide when the line begins and ends? If it ‘begins’ in Africa and ‘ends’ with the white observer, then that is some fucked up racist social Darwinist crap. Stop, white person. That ways lies revivalist colonialism.
linear notions of time are white patriarchy.

There are other, far more interesting notions of ‘time’. The Aboriginal idea of the Dreaming is a good one: it is now, then, to come, and always. So, eg, when we tell a creating Dreaming story/dance/song, we are at once telling history and engaging in that act of creating as well.

If we take this way of understanding (the assumption that time needn’t be linear) to jazz dance, we have multiple dances existing at the same time in different and the same spaces. Specific shapes move through time and between generations, but are also moving laterally between siblings of different ages. So different aged people dance the same movements at the same time, but it has different meanings, depending on who is dancing where.

If we use a linear model, elders are in the past, superseded by successive generations of ‘improvers’, all focussed on a single point/form in time: lindy hop.
But we know it doesn’t work like that. Frankie teaching a bunch of white people the electric slide to Easy Does It, at the same time (day, even!) Black families might be dancing it to disco at a party. White people may separate generations and social spaces and learning, but other cultures do not.

So i say no to time _lines_, because they force western ideas and hierarchies of meaning onto Black culture.

It’s more useful to get up and dance, and feel those changes. Or to think of those dancers from all over Africa leaping up to share a step like the ones Al and Leon were demonstrating, all of them ignoring Marshall Stearns’ voice, and sharing ideas and feelings in a single moment of inter-continental, cross-generational immanence.
Africa isn’t in the roots of lindy hop. The nations of Africa are dancing now, in conversation with lindy hop.

aerosol v droplet transmission

tldr;
1) Keep your goobs at home with you.
2) Don’t visit other people, or invite them (and their goobs) to your indoor gathering.
3) Stay 1.5m away from other humans.
4) NO TOUCHY (don’t touch your face, don’t touch your mask, don’t touch other people).

Masks
If you do wear a mask, you’re going to need to be five times as careful with these things:
– Don’t touch your freaking face (NO TOUCHY)
– Wash your hands like a raccoon (ie properly, and before you want to touch anything else)
– Learn how to put your mask on and off properly, and when you’re wearing it. NO TOUCHY. Don’t touch your mask.

treat the rona like glitter.
aerosol vs droplets.
Why wear a mask?
If it’s in your local community (your workplace, your household), masks can help you stop spreading it around.
If it’s not there yet, washing your hands, distancing, staying away from people is the BEST thing you can do.

Covid is spread by respiratory droplets. It lives in the gooby wetness inside your lovely warm, wet body.
When you breathe, cough, sneeze, sing, shout, snort, laugh, goobs of liquid come out of your big face holes (nose, mouth), and the teeny tiny virus comes out in it. Goobs can travel about 1.5m. More if you put some effort into it.

The virus travels around with you inside your body, visiting your friends and going shopping, patting puppers and laughing at jokes. Once you spit it out, the virus dies after a few hours (like, 24 hours or more). But in those hours it makes friends with other people and gets into their warm, wet bodies.

The point of a mask is to mop up the nose and mouth goobs that come out of your face. They get stuck in the mask. Then you throw the mask in the bin (CAREFULLY) or you wash it (CAREFULLY).
Your mask has to fit well so it can’t ‘leak’ goobs (coughs, sneezes, whuffing big sighs) out the side or bottom.

If you touch your mask that’s got goobs on it (even goobs you can’t feel), the goobs are on your skin. Then you touch a friend and get goobs on them. Or you touch a door knob and put goobs on it.
(Rule no.1: NO TOUCHY)

Masks don’t stop you _getting_ viruses, they stop you _giving_ viruses.

The biggest challenge with masks, is that most people don’t wear them properly, have them properly fitted, or put them on/off properly. In fact, there’s some speculation that mask wearing results in people touching their faces _more_ than usual.

Workplaces are where COVID19 is spreading

Workplaces are where COVID is spreading in Australia. Not at the park or in the shops.
But in meat packing plants, aged care homes. Places where the pay is bad, and the work is hard. And the industry is not properly regulated.

If you really do want to get angry about covid, get really angry about:
– Jobs shifting from permanent full time to casual (removing workers’ access to sick days and the ability to take time off when they’re sick);
– The price of childcare (that forces women to work excessive hours just to pay the bills);
– Wage theft (where bosses don’t pay workers their full pay);
– The privatisation of public services like aged care facilities.

All these things put vulnerable workers (people on low incomes in jobs they could lose with no notice) at risk. They have to go to work because they’re desperate for money. Even if they’re sick. Even if their boss won’t let them distance properly, wash properly, or wear masks.

These workers often have more than one job. So they double their risks as they enter two workplaces. And they have dependent families (parents, grandparents, children).

And a note: you can bet your bottom dollar that that shirt you bought at Gorman or those socks you bought at Kmart weren’t manufactured in safe factories.

mask rage?

Australians*: please don’t get your rage on about people not wearing masks. I know you’re afraid. But the people who will suffer most from aggressive mask policing are not random white people at Bunnings. It will be the poor and homeless, Blak kids and migrant workers.

If you feel the urge to rantpost about masks, have a look at this great image, and allow yourself a moment to let the rage leak out like a long, squeaky fart.

And remember to wash your hands, not touch your face, and keep 2m between you and other people.

*same for you too, probably USA people. And also Black Lives Matter.

Soccer update

Soccer update: pitch filled with intimidating tween Matildas, so kicked in the park. Got pooped on by a bird. Dog still scared of ball.

If we talk about Bunnings woman not wearing a mask, we’re not talking about working conditions for Bunnings staff.

Sexual assault in the Australian jazz industry

Gender Inequality in the Australian Music Industry (Part Two) is a bit of a clunky piece, but it’s so unusual to read a male Australian jazz musician commenting on this issue, it’s worth a look. Note that that they contacted 50 musicians, and only 3 replied.

I’ve worked with a lot of jazz musicians over the last twenty years. Very few of them have been women or enby. And the misogyny and sexism has been stunning. Far worse than any other industry I’ve dealt with. I’ve been harassed by musicians while I’m DJing while I’m MCing and while I’m actually running the event. Yes, they think it’s ok to harass their freaking BOSS. This is because it is a male-dominated industry, and an industry dominated by older white men. I remember one particular evening having a conversation with a band leader who insisted there was no sexual harassment in the the Sydney jazz scene, then five minutes later I was dodging the groping hands of a musician in that guy’s band.

Individual sexual offenders (rapists and men who commit acts of sexual violence) are not the biggest problem with Australian jazz. It’s the other men who turn away from these men and refuse to believe women when they tell them about their physical experiences. It’s the older men who are the bigger problem. And by ‘older’ I mean over 30.

Get it to-fucking-gether Australian jazz musicians.

I actually think that the young men in the music scene would rehabilitate the older people in the music scene a lot better. Nowadays, I think there’s a lot more ‘wokeness’ happening in the music scene, but young men still need to work with young women, play music together, and get the fuck over it.

The jazz music industry is a subset of the wider society in which it is positioned (like the jazz dance community). But the Australian jazz music industry is _even more_ patriarchal than Australian society generally: it’s overwhelmingly white, male, and able-bodied.
Luckily (sadly) we’ve been openly discussing sexual assault and harassment in the wider community since at least the 1980s. So we have a range of practical and discursive strategies, resources, and support services available to us. I’d argue that the Australian jazz industry actively suppresses anti-discrimination actions and thinking.

But.

It can certainly be addressed _now_. The international jazz dance scene started working on this issue about 8-10 years ago, and we’ve had very good results. The practical strategies of the BLM movement has helped even more.
But most of this work is being done by women, and woc.
With the jazz music world, it’s going to need to be men who step up. And a lot of (older white) men aren’t going to like it, because it will mean stepping aside.
At one point in the linked article, it notes that there’s idea (myth) in the jazz world that ‘if you can play, you’ll get the gig,’ as though success is merit-based. That’s untrue. The JM case is a perfect example: a young straight white guy was literally mid-court case, and the patronage of an older white guy got him an exemption and gig.
The adage should be ‘if you’re a white guy with white patrons, you’ll get the gig. Even if you’re a violent criminal.’
The Australian jazz world is very much invested in the myth of creative genius winning out. ButAustralian jazz is not a meritocracy. It is white patriarchy.

The next step of course, is for you, musicians, and your friends to make a list of practical things you can and will do to improve things:
– don’t laugh at sexist jokes. Practice stamping them out in a non-vibe-killing way
– learn to see sexist acts; don’t look away
– step in when you see a bro do sexist stuff
– be inclusive; involve women and enby folk in jokes, drinks, hangs so they can get into professional networks
– swap drinking/drugs sessions for stuff that is less risky for vulnerable people: eating, talking, dancing, basketball, etc

My feel is: explore how you can do _positive_ things. Practice them at home or with your mates. Then do them. Musicians are creative people. You can do this.

Soccer Update

Soccer update:
Rain interrupts play.