"How Do I Become A Good Dancer?"
Is what i hear many students asking teachers. The answer usually is "Practice!" but i think many students and aspiring dancers don't fully understand what practice means. Let's start at the beginning and hope that this blog post will demystify many things about becoming a good dancer. There are somethings we have to get out of the way STRAIGHT AWAY - like, right at the beginning of the article and those are - 1. Definition of "GOOD" Because Good means different things to different people, always check what "good" means to YOU (yourself) when embarking upon a journey to becoming a good dancer. What other people offer will be their measures, values, benchmarks and standards, which will both differ and overlap with your personal values of "good". Because different people want different things in their dance, what each defines as good will be unique to themselves and it should be something that you yourself, come to define for yourself. What other people share with you should always be treated as reference information and not the "only truth/standard". I believe very much that this is one of the most important parts of any dancer's journey because i) this is the only way to come into your own as a dancer and person, and not just as a mishmash of whatever teachers and classes you followed/took. Everyone has to grow up and be themselves someday and this applies not only to children becoming adults, but also to young dancers becoming mature dancers. ii) it really helps one clarify what is important to you as a dancer and then streamlines/informs/shapes what you do at socials or events and helps you find the sweet spot that lets you feel secure, comfortable and satisfied with what level of dancing you are at and where to go with your dancing. A second definition of "good" in terms of technical ability is that one has to be able to demonstrate clearly the action involved, i.e. "be good at it", before one can define that action as being "good". So if you want to know if you are good at a particular step or footwork, or good at connection, or good at musicality, you have to be able to demonstrate it clearly and it should be easy for the people watching you to understand what you are doing. So similarly, when we apply the word "good" to a dancer, this dancer must be able to demonstrate clearly and consistently/repeatably that he/she can move well, express and interpret the music well, lead and follow well, execute the steps well. 2. Practice in the form of repetition and drills is UNAVOIDABLE. No one likes to hear this, but it is true. I do not know of any skill which doesn't hone itself through repetition. When a guy goes to the gym for the sake of building muscles for a nice appearance, they do reps. Women put on makeup to look nice everyday - it's practically a ritual. Repetition is the key to so many things in our lives, daily or not, so why would it be different here in dance? Being unrealistic about that is a recipe for disaster straight away. If you can't accept this fact, it's time to stop reading and forget about becoming a good dancer - because i don't know how else to help you achieve that goal, seriously. The real issue is not really practice, it's the i) lack of time (i hear this reason all the time) ii) don't know how to practice (i hear this one fairly often) iii) practice is boring (usually not applied to dance but applied to things like ...school work or something in our childhood that then gave practice a bad reputation in our heads) iv) i'm scared to practice wrongly so i want to be super sure about what i'm practicing before i start practicing (so that i can get it right and don't need to practice so much) 3. Natural Talent Some people are more gifted than others and pick up things faster. Others are slower at learning things and that is fine - don't beat yourself up because someone who has been dancing a shorter time than you appears to be better (or even actually better) than you. At the same time, i have seen people with good natural talent...learn slowly because their mindset or learning mentality/system is poor and inhibits their ability to do better. Let's address the issues under "PRACTICE". i) Lack Of Time I want to be blunt here so sorry if its hard to hear but sometimes the real issue is not a lack of time but a lack of good planning with regard to how people want to spend their time. I spoke a little about priorities in my last blog post and i just want to say again here that becoming good at anything requires a commitment to getting down and doing it. Think of it as goal setting that you must follow through with and not like New Year Resolutions that you make and then forget about. If being a good dancer is important to you, prioritize it, make it something that you will do, something that you will commit to. That's the first step. Plan out a schedule, set aside time, get a friend to practice with you etc etc. When that is not the issue, or no longer the issue...then we come to the next part here, which is really, not having enough time because one is so busy with work or with family. My advice here is just to make the most of whatever dancing time you get. It has been my observation that most dancers just come to socials and have fun. You might go "duh!!" And yes, i get that. I get that dancing is recreational for you and that the whole point of dancing is about enjoying yourself, of course - so when you come social dancing, the main priority is to maximize fun or enjoyment. That's fine in and of itself. No argument there. I m just saying, if you are one of those that is strapped for time and social dancing once or twice a week is all you can cobble out for dancing BUT you STILL WANT to become a good dancer, then the answer is to practice during the social dances that you attend. Say u attend one of the many social nights a week here in SG. Each social is about 2 hours +/-. Make a commitment to practice at least 30 mins out of the 2 hours that you are dancing. How do you practice while you are social dancing? Pick something specific that you want to work on, like styling, or a footwork, or a particular step that you have been trying to get right. And practice it. This is especially useful for follows working on styling and footwork. Both of these things are usually generic enough that you can practice it with the steps you've been given by the leader. If you want to practice bigger twists, every time the leader leads a swingout - right there - An Opportunity to do the bigger twists. How many swingouts do you do a night? maybe 100? well, that's 100 times you get to practice your big twist or twist styling a night. Don't waste it. Same goes to the leaders for styling or footwork. I need to work on my arm swing during my swingout. Well, how many times do I do a swingout a night? 200? Great. 200 repetitions for the arm swing. For leaders practicing a step, the important thing is to try it repeatedly, say 4 or 5 times, during each social dance and be aware of how you are leading it, that's the only way to correct anything. Different follows will give u different responses and try to see what went well or didn't go well each time u led it. After 4 dances, u would have tried out the step 15 times. That's usually enough of a feedback loop to give u some info on how u are doing with the step. Repetition. Keep doing it until u get it right. This applies to anything. Sometimes i hear - "I need a (specific) partner to get it right." For this statement we to look at the context of the step you are trying to get right - The contexts where this applies - 1. Very specific teacher material that involves specific technique or frame where you would really need someone who attended class with you to practice with because of how specific the technique or step is (this is more common than you would think, many teachers teach material based on their own dancing and sometimes it only works between the two of them, and other people, even other teachers would not be able to follow or execute the step. Be careful about material like this) 2. Connection based steps that really require a high level of understanding about lead and follow where the partner has to be fairly skilled for you to get the correct dynamic and connection. In cases like these, u would have to practice with partners who are more skilled and not with beginners or less skilled dancers. The contexts where this doesn't apply - 1. Steps or techniques that involves you moving in a certain way (even if it affects your partner). Anything that involves you and your own movement/way of movement is completely under your control and ability to practice. Say you need to practice holding your core while you dance. That's all you, u don't need a partner for that, any partner will do. Or you need to step underneath your hips. That's all you too - you don't need a partner for that. That's why footwork and styling fall under this context, it's all you. 2. Solidifying/consolidating your own way of dancing, your personal values and systems. This applies to higher level dancers who are looking to express themselves more fully. This is a challenge to be able to stay true to your values and systems while dancing with anyone. If u have to change the way you dance/express with certain people because you cant maintain your personal desired expression, you NEED more practice doing so, and you cannot do this practicing with one specific person. You need to go and practice with MANY different people. This is of course non-exhaustive and there are more contexts where you will need to make decisions, but the important thing is that you do. Take the time to weigh/assess the situation and make decisions about it. If in doubt or in confusion, that's the time to go talk to someone else. But always do your own work first before bringing the problem to someone else. Make the effort to try and solve it on your own. That's really helps you grow as a dancer. ii) Don't Know How To Practice This really is a misnomer, what people mean when they say this is - the practice is not reaping results so they don't know what's wrong, so they abbreviate that to "dunno how to practice". The key to repetition is to perform the step/sequence/movement over and over and over again while correcting flaws in the execution. If you are not getting it, there are several thing you can do to make a complicated step or sequence easier. 1. Do it slowly. Keep slowing it down until it is manageable for you. Perform the repetitions at a slower speed until your body begins to get used to it and starts to remember the movement. Feel for it, feel what the body feels like when you are performing/executing the step. As the body remembers you will be able to perform the action quicker and quicker. Build up to the required speed. I personally do this A LOT for tap. Tap steps are ridiculously complex sometimes and you really have to do it like 100 times slowly before u speed up by 10%. Then another 100 times before you speed up by 20%. It's a slow process but it works. 2. Break down the sequence or step into its components and practice each component individually. This speaks for itself. You decide how small you need to break it down to and then perform the required repetitions until the body remembers, then you put the sequence back together again. Once again, I find this to be very useful in general, for everything, rhythms, footwork, steps, airsteps...everything. If you attend my classes, this is what i am doing most of the time in class, helping my students break it down and put it back together again. 3. Build awareness of the muscles and body mechanics as you are performing the step. I am not the most qualified person to speak on this, but this is super helpful if you can learn even just a bit of it. I find sometimes that we are too much in our heads - too cerebral, too intellectual when it comes to dance, which is really a body thing. We need to step out of our head by 50% and give over more awareness and responsibility to our bodies. U know the cliche "Men need to get in touch with their feelings?" - well, that's what i would to like to say to the dancers, we all need to "get in touch with our bodies" more and stop being so much in the intellect when dancing or learning dance. How to?? It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss this VERY BROAD AREA. I highly recommend taking bodywork/yoga/pilates/Alexander Technique (many different things) to help you become aware of your body and to connect to it more strongly. As a general piece of advice, i would say begin to take notice of how the step feels, in the weight shift, the dynamic, the muscle activation, the connection rather than thinking about how to do it, or what needs to be done. That hopefully should get you started. iii) Practice is Boring This is all in your head. If you have had traumatic school-years experiences where doing repetitive tasks like homework or CCA practice has scarred you for life - I also dunno how to help you .... Many of our impressions and beliefs are formed when we were younger and i think practice and our mental concept of practice is one of those things. The best way out of this is to look at it from a different perceptive and see how it could be positive, rather than negative. I personally find the repetition to be soothing, as it takes me out of my mind and into my body and somewhat restful (for the mind) - I don't know how many of you watch Nigella Lawson on TV but she always talks about how chopping and dicing is soothing and relaxing for her even though some consider it the most tedious part of cooking. So drilling is seen usually as the boring part of practice, but is it really? I also find the repetition in the pursuit of excellence rather exciting. It's almost as if you can see the progress being made as you practice consistently. I guess a good analogy is the gym analogy. When guys go gym and build muscles, they like what they see - the progress, the big muscles, the well-defined abs, the body taking shape and that motivates them even more to keep at it. Same here. When the dancing gets better and better you feel more confident, more excited, more safe, more expressive....and it makes you want to keep at it. iv) Scared of Wrong Practice Again, I have to make a very blunt statement here and sorry if it''s hard to hear - THERE IS NO WAY TO GUARANTEE THAT ANYTHING IS RIGHT. The best you can do, is just simply to try your best and forgive yourself for your mistakes, pick up the pieces and relearn things. I say this from personal experience but also it seems that this is the only way. No one ever gets everything 100% correct and never goes back and corrects or changes things. No one. I repeat again - NO ONE. NO ONE. Let's take a moment to talk about the very first thing you learn at any lindy class. The footwork. Rock-step. Triple steps. The most basic of the basic. After one year or 2 someone (could be a teacher) comes along and tells you you've been doing the triple step wrongly all this time. U cry out in anguish and have a mental breakdown. Then 5 years later, another someone comes along and tells you the way you've been doing rock-step has been wrong all this time. Your hair instantly turns white and you stop going to social for a while. Ok, so i exaggerate, but this is more common than you think. The reason is simply - when we learn anything for the first time, we usually can't get all of it right. What we define as right is usually just being able to execute the step competently enough to survive social dancing, and we're happy and at the beginning that is really all that is needed. To me, social dancing is the HEART of lindy hop, if we don't/won't/cant social dance, lindy hop really loses a lot of its meaningfulness. So in the beginning, learning the step is about being able to use it for social dancing, which is a simple objective. You are not asked to perfect the step or learn it in depth, but just required to learn enough to get you dancing on the social dance floor. But the step is far from complete. There is usually so much technique behind each step that it takes a while to learn everything about it. Once we're competent and confident with it on the social dance floor, that's when we start asking, what else is there - Is there anything more? It's after a while that we're ready to look at the step in more detail at a workshop or a class. In a lot of advanced classes, the dancers work at the basics, because then they can really rebuild their fundamentals, and they might do this for a few cycles before they are finally happy with what they have achieved. To put this in perspective, if you are happy with what you are doing and it works for you, you don't have to change. No one is forcing you to rework basics that you don't want to rework. But on the flipside, people are allowed to dislike the way you dance because you haven't worked on something and made it better, and you have to be ok with that. It's only fair - that's how it works in the real world as well - You can be lazy or complacent or stagnant, that's fine, but don't expect people to have to like that about you. The people who put in effort into their dancing and constantly improve should receive the recognition and reward for doing so, from other dancers as well as personal validation from their own progress. Dancers who aren't prepared to put in the effort should also not have unrealistic expectations of being highly desirable to dance with, or to be seen as being a good dancer on the dance floor when you haven't put in the work. Life should be fair in that sense, that's the most objective way to deal with dancing. But back to wrong practice - There is no way to fix it. Instead of being negative about it and not working on anything for fear of getting it wrong, just understand that that this is the only way, and move on with the process. Understand that this will take time, and you will be repeating it. Listen and think about what the teacher is offering you. Is the technique you currently have suitable? Or can it do with improvement? Remember you don't have to take the advice and rework anything if you are happy where you are and don't want to improve or change anything. Or if the teacher is offering a useful alternative technique, would you like to learn that to become more versatile? Also a possibility. After a few cycles of reworking the basics, you really would have covered most of the possibilities. The best way to handle this is to change your personal perspective and mentality on what learning means - learning is a process, it doesn't stop because you achieved a certain level. There are further levels to go, until you can't see any more levels, or you start to see the levels converge at some point. As an anecdote i offer my personal story. I have reworked my basics - 4 times. My first teacher was Sing. My first reworking was Bill Borgida. He came along in Seajam 2003 and told us our rock step was wrong and so was our frame. oh gosh! I had been dancing for 1 year. My 2nd reworking was Mattias Lundmark. I had to learn how to relax and stretch and change my frame to do that. I had been dancing for 3 years. My third reworking was Skye and Naomi. My rock-step was wrong again, and so was my connection. Worse still, i didn't know how to bounce, according to them! Oh my goodness! Ok, back to square 1. I had been dancing for 9 years. My 4th reworking was learning Kevin & Jo basics. Understanding weight shifts and preps for triple steps. I had been dancing for 12 years and my weight shift was far from good. Oh well. And that's just my Lindy. I have had to rework my tap basics 3 times as well. The important thing is not to give up. In my personal experience, I looked carefully at what was being offered by each of the teachers that came along. In all of that, I saw new things i could learn that would improve my dancing and help me move forward. So i reworked my basics both from the bottom, but also not losing what was before. You don't have to destroy everything and substitute a new structure over the old one, you just have to do like a major renovation. It's like designing something. You get ideas which you like, but you have to assimilate and integrate them into your own design, and not just cut and paste it into your design, like a mishmash or collage. It has to become part of you and in the process of reworking, you integrate the new things as an upgrade to your current way of doing things, so the rock-step (for example) becomes more well-rounded,multi-faceted and versatile. Each of the times I reworked things, the previous way of doing it was "wrong" - it doesn't make me a bad dancer per se. I would suggest not taking the word "wrong" as a criticism of you or your dancing personally and substitute the word "wrong" with the word "different", "less effective" or "could it be better". When you come to see it this way, then it really becomes an option, that is just being offered to you, with certain benefits. You don't have to buy into it, but if what's being offered is really good (like when you go shopping and someone is trying to sell you a product - and is touting the benefits or why it's good - if you listen and assess the claims being made, and you really think it has merit, then you would buy it - would you not?) - why not take the technique as is being offered by the teacher/salesperson? - Would u like the "more effective or the less effective rock step, sir?" - Would you like the "more efficient or less efficient triple step, ma'am?" - Would u prefer the "full weight shift or the half weight shift, sir?" And that is the most important part of this section - assess the benefit of the information that is being offered to you and make a personal decision whether or not to accept it, based on whether it moves your dancing forwards or not, and knowing that there is no such thing as 1 time get it all correct. Sometimes, students tell me that they have no awareness or idea when or where they are going wrong. This is a big problem because it suggests/implies that there is no understanding or concept of what feels right or wrong in terms of connection/body mechanics/lead & follow, so that a distinction can be made regards the execution of the step. The best solution for this is to increase awareness, both in the body (as mentioned earlier in the article) as well as about the step one is executing. Complex steps are really just simple steps put together. Very seldom is a complex step a step that is a totally new way of doing things. Usually it is just a conglomeration of simple steps put together and perhaps done in a different rhythm or speed than what one is used to normally. So if you bring to the complex step, the awareness to do each of its component steps in the best-feeling way possible, it makes sense that the whole complex step will feel good. That's another reason to keep working on basics. If you get the feeling right for each and every basic, then since complex steps are nothing more than various combinations of basics at varying tempos, then...all your complex steps will feel good. This really is too over-simplified, but in an article it's very hard to give a good idea of what it's really like. I hope this short paragraph has helped somehow with that. For some dancers who just started dancing (less than 2 years) you might find that all of this doesn't seem to apply to you. But if you keep dancing you might find that one day, you will reach this place and ask the same questions about becoming a good dancer or practice. Overall, this is a complex topic and I've just scratched the surface. I am very much a face to face person. If you have questions come and talk to me when you see me on the dance floor., That's the most effective and most direct way of communication. All the best to all the dancers who are wishing to improve! Here at BSL, one of our taglines is "All About The Dance".
Other than loving teh-tarik, one of the things you have to know about me is that I can only dance lindy hop and its related dances, i CANNOT dance anything else for nuts. Watch me try hip hop, k-pop or salsa and die laughing. It's less a matter of technical ability and more a matter of not having the interest nor passion to pursue those other dances. I look at those dances and I don't find myself attracted to those dances. They look so...technically difficult, what with the body waves and the body isolations and the disjointed step to step choreography...and also, I simply don't identify with values of those dances. I don't really understand hip hop, and I don't like the music as well. I don't really understand K-pop and I don't listen to the music as well. Salsa is too sexy and attention seeking for me. But when it comes to lindy hop and it's related dances, i can get it. It's about fun. Check. It's about self-expression. Check. It's about freedom. Check and double Check. It's about dancing with someone else in a free and self-expressive way. Triple Check. That's not to say lindy hop can't be serious, street/edgy, romantic, sensual or sexy. There are so many umbrella dances under the SWING dance banner/family that 1. you would not be able to MASTER (i mean master, not learn) them all 2. each one is different yet the same enough and possess some of the other attributes described above. For example, Blues/Slow drag/Grind carries the sexy/sensual attributes. Airsteps carries the "serious" attributes, simply because, if you're not serious in a focused way, they often go wrong and result in injury. Solo Jazz carries the street/edgy attribute. All these in addition to the general attributes we associate with Lindy Hop and some of the vernacular dances coming from the Jazz Age of the 20s to the 50s. Jazz music, in the beginning, was very tough for me to understand (you wont be able to tell by looking at me now but 15 years ago...was a different story). Now when we teach we really break it down for you to hear, and really count you in. One of the wonderful things about jazz and swing jazz in particular, is how simple it really is once you've gotten past the initial barrier to it. Even musicians, who have been trained classically, sometimes find they don't understand jazz and don't know how to play it. It's because we're sometimes stuck behind a wall of our own biased perception - we expect music to be a certain way because we're used to classical, rock, pop or other styles, but then jazz comes along and shakes those perceptions up, then we don't know how to deal with that. Understanding jazz is easier if you come from a period specific cultural perspective. What were the qualities that were culturally significant at that time? How did the people of those times express themselves? What was changing in the culture such that the dance arose with the music? When we look at what's key to our dance, we can also find the same key things in jazz music. Because the sensibility that exists in our dance, certainly exists in the music that grew together with the dance. I'll leave that for you to figure out, and not digress too much from the main content of this blog post. It was during my internship at Singhealth in 2004, that I made my decision that I wanted my life to revolve around this particular dance, Lindy hop and the associated vernacular dances under the big umbrella. Knowing that I can't possibly master all the different dances in this family, I've chosen to focus on - 1. Lindy Hop Under this banner, there are 2 subgroups which must be mentioned a) Airsteps, which is a very rigorous and demanding subgroup requiring a lot of time and effort to train for b) slow lindy, which is as yet, a still-developing subgroup of Lindy Hop so it's rather formative and needs more effort to consolidate 2. Solo Jazz (Vernacular Jazz) previously under the Lindy Hop banner, Vernacular jazz is now coming more and more to the fore. When i started dancing in 2002 there were people who could dance partnerwork but not dance jazz. Nowadays, there are people who can dance jazz but not partnerwork! Phew, how times have changed. I have been dancing solo jazz since 2003, just 1 year after i started dancing partnerwork lindy. 3. Tap - is a large area unto itself and while it grew up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 30s, it is so far beyond that now. 4. Charleston Charleston is a large group as well, in addition to solo dancing, there is partner dancing for charleston, and both these groups can be generally categorized into 20s style or 30s style. When we do pivots on the feet and touches instead of kicks that's 20 style. 30s style is when we do kicks with the bounce. When i look on the dance floor, i see the some basic partner charleston patterns but not complex patterns - well, certainly not as complex as what we can do with our 8/6 count. Many dancers now do not have a strong repertoire of charleston patterns such that they can get through a 200bpm song WITH ONLY charleston partnerwork patterns and not resort to 6/8 count patterns. I am one of those few dancers who can, simply because I've spent time learning and practicing these patterns. As for 20s partnerwork charleston, on the local dance floors, i haven't really seen anyone dance that. The Rest of the Family ... I don't find myself attracted to blues dancing nor shag/balboa/bal-swing as much and also - I already can't finish learning the above dances, can't take on any more on my plate. The word "learn" is tricky, because people would define it differently. When i use the word "learn", i mean - reach a certain level of proficiency that is of some standard. Now - back to All About The Dance. I am a serious teacher, partly because that's my personality but also because i love this dance. So here I am making this distinction - I don't love dancing, I don't love DANCE as an artform, I only LOVE this very specific family of dances. I think it's important to make this distinction because some people just love dancing, no matter what the dance is as long as they get music and get to dance... and some people love all forms of dance, meaning they love dance itself (as an artform) - both of those scenarios are different from each other, and different from me. I only love this family of dances, if somehow, i had to stop dancing I would not dance/learn other types of dance. Maybe knowing that will help you understand the way i behave in class or the way i teach class, or why i can be so serious about this dance. I know it's a bit cliched, but this one is the only one for me. It's my lifelong love affair. Other pretty things may pass my way...but i will never stray. SORRY.......... that was quite cheesy...quite a bad line. I hope the analogy works though - that you get what i mean. Although I am very serious and passionate about this family of dances, I am very aware that dance is not separate from LIFE, like as in, the big picture of Life, the existence that we are all living at any point of time. Dance to me, is not just part of LIFE (the big picture) but also, like a microcosm of life itself. So, for me, if you substitute the word LIFE for DANCE, it makes sense in my own personal perspective. Everything we do in dance, we also do in life. We may not see it as such but we do. So when i dance, i am living. When i dance and i am happy, i am living life happily. When i am working for dance, i am making a living from dance. When i am learning in dance, I am learning in life as well. Some people might ask - how is that possible? What does dance teach you about Life? My Answer - It's possible at so many levels. When I am taking a class and learning new things, I learn many different things at one time. Or more accurately, I am trying to learn many different aspects or levels at one time. A teacher teaches a step or a combination in class. At the most surface level, i.e. the most obvious level, I am learning the movement and rhythm for the step/combination so that i can learn the step and execute it. I am also learning about 1. My own body mechanics as i learn the movement of the step 2. What muscles i am using in order to perform this action safely and efficiently - which i then apply to my daily movement 3. The teacher's "teaching method" - so that if it's really effective and helps students learn better, i can learn it and apply it on my own students, helping them 4. My own process of learning and how i am trying to absorb and assimilate new information and new ways of moving so that in life i can learn quicker and easier with regard to other things 5. The teacher's philosophy behind the way they dance and what they are teaching (this is usually implied, you have to listen and read between the lines to get it) 6. What are the blocks and difficulties that other students are experiencing as they learn this step, which may also be present in their daily lives as a biomechanic dysfunction, or a bad learning process. Now, if that's isn't a big picture scenario, i would not know what else is! I know dancers are so focused only on the surface level, which is really just about the step and how to apply it in their dancing - nothing wrong there, but my personal perspective is quite a bit broader than that, so once again, a peek into how i view this aspect of dance/dancing, and why I don't see it as a separate thing from LIFE. So when I go dancing, i really just go for the dancing. Let's not play semantic/word games here. When i say "I really go for the dancing", it doesn't exclude chit chatting with people, interacting with others, drinking or eating or other stuff. It just means I am there more to dance, than to chit chat, or to eat or drink, the priority is dancing, not the other possible things we could do there. The percentage is probably like an 70/30%. The desire to dance is 70% and the rest is 30% (when i was younger it was like 85/15!). I understand that some people are there for other reasons, or the percentage weightage about dance is different. It could be the other way around, 70% others and 30% dance. I am not going to judge what weightage others give to dance, but I would like to point out some things about a scenario where the OTHERS outweigh the DANCE. 1. The standard of dancing won't be high because the priority is not there. Whether or not that is a good or bad thing really depends on how important the dancing is to you personally. For someone like me, having bad dances all night is.....ugh. I think that applies to all the dancers (teachers included) who have worked on their dancing and have reached higher and higher standards, only to come to a community/scene and then have to dance down because the standard is not high. Nobody is going to say it - that they didn't enjoy themselves, but inside, quietly, that is what they felt. It then creates a silent rift between dancers who like to be good and have worked at it and dancers who arent concerned whether or not they are good and just dance to enjoy themselves. The ones who aren't concerned don't feel it, because as per etiquette, most dancers rarely refuse a dance, so there's little way a good dancer can refuse to dance with a bad dancer without being rude. So the bad dancers get away with bad dancing, and the good dancers suffer quietly inside. 2. Why use dance, if dance is not going to be the focal point around which a community gathers? Singaporeans, we love to travel and we love to eat, and we love to have get-togethers and eat and celebrate. There is nothing wrong with that, but when those things become the focal point of any dance community, then it sort of defeats the purpose of having the dance in the first place. Might as well skip the dancing part and just get down to the part which everyone is really there for, the shopping, or the travelling or the eating, or the get-together. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves, why are we really here (at so & so dance event)? Is it to dance, or is it just so we can have a party? And if the answer is "to have a party" why did it have to involve dance in the first place? Some people might ask - What's wrong with that? That the reason for the community to come together is not dance but something else. I would say - Then the dance becomes irrelevant and will fade away, and disappear from the landscape like an extinct species. Things which become less and less relevant will fade away inevitably. Once again whether or not that is a good or bad thing comes down to how important dancing is to you personally. If the dance fades away and there's no loss in your life - fair enough. It would not be the same for other people though, just saying right? To explain it another way - any kind of club or association - music, gardening, literature, origami, whatever it is - all these clubs or associations by nature, must have at their core - the activity for which they were formed. It would not make sense for the gardening club to do 15 mins of gardening, then everyone packs up and then goes for 2 hours of hanging out and chit chat at a cafe...and that more and more people join the gardening club, not because they want to get involved with gardening but to join these awesome 2 hour chit chat get-togethers at the cafe that the gardening club is famous for. Nothing wrong with 2 hour chit chats, but that defeats the purpose of the gardening in the first place, no? 2a) tagging on from previously, I would personally argue that the loss of this family of dances from the Singapore scene is indeed a tragedy. It brings much joy and much needed outlet for many people and we should continue to grow and support it because i feel that it can do so much for peoples' lives in Singapore, if these people were to give this dance a chance to grow in their lives and enrich it. 3. Sometimes local dancers come back from overseas dance communities and gush about how wonderful it was to have danced there etc etc (usually with an implied meaning of - how much better it was compared to dancing back here in SG), and i completely agree with those comments except that a) the reason why it was better there was because the people in those communities placed a higher priority on dance than on the "other" things b) if the dancers liked what they experienced overseas, but are not interested in playing their part to help build the local community so it can grow into the overseas community from where they just had that marvelous experience, then...... they actually have no business comparing it to the local community and gushing about how wonderful it was in comparison. That's like so typical complainers' syndrome loh - don't like something but then not willing to work at it to enable the change to come about but then still want to make the comparison. (pardon my usage of Singlish here, it's just so apt i think) Again - don't want to judge - just want to point out that if you had enjoyed your overseas experience, and you would like that experience to be present in SG community as well, then one of the ways to make that happen is for there to be a culture where more priority is given to dancing. In my opinion, SG is really one of the stronger communities in Asia when it comes to Lindy Hop, but i think we can go further if people were to place on priority on dance in this community. If you were to ask me - What would be the benefit or reward for people to do that, put in more time and effort into dancing?...I would not know how to answer you other than -it's so enjoyable and so rewarding on so many other levels than just what is immediately obvious, like getting to know people, having a group to hang out with, having something to do over having nothing to do....For me being able to connect with people physically while dancing and being able to self-express and communicate non verbally through social dancing is one of those things which i'm not sure i can find elsewhere so that keeps me coming back to it. If you've never experienced that before, how dancing can make you happy....give dance a bit more priority and time and see where that leads you. I can assure you that it has happened for many people around the world, that's why they all dance. Once again, it just boils down to how important the dancing is to any given person. (in a future blog post, I will write about how to be efficient with time and practice given the modern world's busy busy schedule) I think between the 3 teachers in SG, Sing, Sinclair and me, we all think the dancing is important, and not because we teach it, or we make a living from it, or what-nots. I think we all just believe in Swing Dance/Lindy hop as tool for life, that it really feels good and can make people happy, and central to that enriching experience of Lindy Hop, is good dancing, which comes about through a good amount of focus and priority on dancing. I don't want to give this idea that only good dancers have an enriching Lindy Hop experience, but maybe a food analogy is good here - the $3 econ rice can be as good a meal as a $30 restaurant main course, as long as they are both good. There's place for both to exist, in different contexts, when they are both good. But if they are both bad, not nice to eat...then you wouldn't even pay $3 to eat bad food, much less $30. Good food comes from a certain set of priorities - hygiene, fresh ingredients, prepared with some skill and love....etc etc. It can be applied to the dance and dancing as well. Good dancing will come from having certain priorities as well. How is it that Lindy Hop and the other associated dances can fascinate us endlessly on Youtube...when we're watching a performance, or make us feel something inside when you watch 2 good dancers social dance? When i watch videos of Frankie (usually social) dancing in the early 90s,I really feel something emotional inside me that makes me smile and then I think, i need to learn more so i can have a bit of that magic that Frankie had in his 80s. .To me that's how the logic stacks up. I hope i have brought some new perspectives with this blog post and see you on the dance floor soon. |
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