I thought i would take some time out to write about who my teachers were, during this long 17 year lindy hop journey, and what has influenced me over the years. Click on the links to be directed to youtube videos.
BEGINNINGS (2001 to 2003) My very very very first teachers were the teachers from Lindy Hop Ensemble Singapore, a group founded by Jacqueline Tan. I remember taking class with Jacq, Deborah, Xinyi, Kok Chiow and Amber. When i started dancing, i did not know anything about Lindy Hop, so like most Singaporeans, i just assumed that whatever the LHE dancers did was all there was to learn abount Lindy Hop. I was so wrong. After leaving LHE, due to some complicated circumstances (a story for another time), me and then-partner Sik Banhuei, found that there was another studio that offered Lindy Hop in Singapore, called Jitterbugs Swingapore. We approached this school, this was Jan 2002, and this was the first time that i met Sing. Sing was our teacher for the next few years. I had joined a club called Kinetics in NTU, where i was studying, and Sing would go to NTU once every week, to teach us youngsters the Lindy Hop. LHE was primarily a performance group. At their classes and events, they did social dance, but it was never emphasized, and they danced to faster tempo music, which was not beginner friendly. This may have been because their teachers were the Jiving Lindy Hoppers from the UK, one of the lindy hop revival groups (I wish i had time to explain these terms i'm throwing around!!). This group had learnt from the Mama Lou Parks dancers, a later generation of Harlem Lindy hop dancers, whose speciality was the fast challenge dance, usually done as a performance jam. Social dancing was completely new to us and it was very frightening to us at the time (as it still is for many beginners - don't worry). As a school club, one of our obligations to the school was to perform at school events and put up dance activities for the university, so from the very beginning, Sing had to teach us both sides of the Lindy Hop dance coin - the social aspect, as well as the performance aspect. Sing emphasized social dancing, in the tradition of Frankie, and she was especially concerned with good leading and following. She taught most of this generation of Kinetics dancers all their basics - frame, footwork, lead & follow, connection, steps etc etc and also choreographed for us and trained us how to do performances for the events we had obligations to do. Kinetics was a fantastic experience. Some of the best local Lindy Hoppers came from the group during this era (circa 2002 to 2009). Some of the Kinetics alum who are still dancing today include Ethan (i just recently posted a video of him and Alex dancing), Jingyang, Taufan and Xinqiang.(wow those are all leads!!) THE MIDDLE YEARS (2003 to 2008) Sing had taught us all our basics, but she would always invite teachers from overseas for Seajam, the annual camp/workshop that she ran. This was where many of the older generation of Singaporean Lindy Hoppers would have met Frankie. Without fail, if Frankie could come, he would come, and it was fantastic. Even as a newbie, i could see something special and different about Frankie and at that time as youngsters we knew nothing about the Savoy or his work as part of Whiteys, to us, he was just some old guy that used to dance that Sing would always bring in for Seajam. The significance of Frankie hadn't sunk in yet. Meeting Frankie gave me something special and important - i learnt that the African Americans, had that something special, that many others didn't, when it came to this dance. It was a vibe, or a groove, or an energy, somewhat undefinable, yet clear, if you knew what you were looking at. These black people, they had it. These other peoples (could be white, could be Asian, could be Singaporean) did not have it. And that in itself, set me off on a journey, to find out what this "thing" was, and that eventually led me to tap. (another story) I have since learnt that this special quality can be learnt, can be passed on and is not exclusive to the African American peoples, but they have easier access to it from within their cultural and historical context but for the rest of us, we have to look for it, if we can even see it to begin with. Many teachers came through Seajam. Some are still dancing while others have disappeared from the Lindy Hop scene for various reasons. The most influential on me that came through Seajam were the Swedes- the first generation of Harlem Hotshots, in particular Mattias Lundmark. (i'll continue with Mattias later on) At this time as well, i and a couple of other Kinetics dancers were taking regular classes at Jitterbugs. Back then, circa 2004 /2005 there were 4 levels of Lindy Hop, called Lindy 1 to 4, and you had to audition to get into Lindy 4. We took Lindy 3 for a year, and then we auditioned for Lindy 4 and we got in, so we started taking both Lindy 3 and 4. the class system was lindy 1 & 3 at 7pm and Lindy 2 & 4 at 8pm, so we would do classes 7 to 9pm then go straight into Swing Fling after, and probably end up eating supper after 11pm. The teacher couples at that time were Sing & Chan Meng, and Sinclair and Fen. Sometimes Eric and Li-Hsien would come in and teach as well. We took class with all of them. Sinclair's classes were very different from Sing's classes, even back then. Not so much the steps but the focus/emphasis, which he would continue to bring to Jazz Inc a few years later and develop further. Back to Mattias. The 1st year he came to Singapore was 2004. For every year he came, i took a private class with him, as well as attend all the classes he taught at Seajam. He taught me several important things, which were - 1. To relax while dancing. 2. To Stretch for Swingouts and 6 counts 3. How to do half body rotations 4. How to open the chest and straighten out a hunched back/shoulders 5. How a swingout and a circle were actually the same step i worked with Mattias's style and material for 4 years, 2004 to 2008, and Banhuei and i took our last private with Mattias and Hanna Lundmark in Stockholm in 2008 when we went there for a holiday. We learnt how to do cross kicks and jig walks properly in this private, i still have the notes! I was very inspired by this first generation of Harlem Hot Shots, the most famous is Frida Sergerdahl. We would look at their videos and see what we could learn from them. They were very smooth yet every energetic, and they did not have the roughness that you can see in some of the old Lindy Hop soundies. They had all the steps and the stylings but not the jerkiness. They came to Singapore for Seajam in 2006 and later 2012. The first time i saw them, ever, was in these videos here, and here. LATER YEARS (2009 to 2016) In a recent Lindy Train session, i asked the dancers about their satisfaction with their level of dancing. The answers were mostly - unsatisfied. I told them, i was satisfied with my dancing, and i had been satisfied since 2009/2010. I would continue to learn and grow, but that particular feeling of "not being good enough" or "lacking" was gone at this point of time in me. I had spent about 5 years working on the material and philosophy that i had learnt from the Swedes and at beginning of 2009, i felt really good about my social dancing. I was creative, had my own repertoire of steps and rhythms, had this nice relaxed feeling of stretch, and also this easy way of social dancing that felt really good and i was happy with that. Skye Humphries' first visit to Singapore was in 2009 with Naomi Uyama. It was also for Seajam. I had known of Skye from the previous video - look at time 1:28 - i was not impressed at all; but they did a performance at Blujazz that still wows me today. Although i was very satisfied with my dancing, i wanted to learn how to do what Skye and Naomi were doing, and so thus began the next phase of my journey. This was the era of the YOUTUBE video, the major competitions were ULHS and ILHC and i watched so many videos of Skye, Frida and Naomi and the rest of the Silver Shadows to try and learn more. In 2011, i was awarded the Herrang Scholarship, which enabled me to fly to Herrang, Sweden to take class at the world famous dance camp. I took one private each with Skye and Naomi and watched ALL of their classes for the whole week that i was there. These are the things i learnt from Skye and Naomi - 1. how to bounce/pulse 2. how to keep the flow going 3. how i didn't need to lead everything 4. how to take leading information from the leaders' body Here is a video of a performance i did that sorta shows where i was at after this Herrang trip 2011. This phase of learning continued until Oct 2016, when i went to Stockholm and took a weekend of Skye and Frida workshops and was finally satisfied that i had understood what i had set off to learn all the way back from 2009. i hadn't perfected it, of course, but i knew what i had understood and what i hadn't, just like in 2008 after the Swedes phase. It was also at this point in time I realized i had to move on from looking at other teachers and start to develop myself as a dancer. MOST RECENT (2017 - 2018) It may have taken 16 years, but now, i was ready to consolidate all the stuff i had been learning all those years of dancing from so many different teachers and so many different videos. To truly express myself as a dancer, i had to first come to this place that i could stop looking at other dancers for material and answers and start developing my own theories and philosophies and synthesize the techniques i had learnt into something that was mine and not a patchwork of all the other teachers. I'm still doing that today, learning new things from teaching and breaking down stuff for students and giving some of those techniques and exercises that i learnt in the past, reworked "B"-style, to help the students become better dancers. I want to be clear that I'm not closing myself down to inspiration from outside sources or other teachers, but to stop thinking that these teachers have something that i don't have that makes them better dancers than me or that they have the answers but i don't. And i encourage every serious dancer to do that, to keep taking class and searching and be open to inspiration, but also to keep searching within yourself and on your own for the answers. And it is more rewarding and more effective when u find it on your own than when someone told you the answer. To me, the true reward for dancing is to be able to authentically express oneself through a given form, in this case, dance, and more specifically, lindy hop (it could just as well be art like painting, writing like poetry, or film-making or photography or singing). But then a joy that money cannot buy and laziness/lack of discipline cannot ever hope to attain (well, you gotta find it on your own effort right??) starts to appear when you dance. I think......it's the joy of expressing yourself well at that moment and feeling satisfied and good about that. And i hope many of you reading this will one day reach that place with your dancing as well. |
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