On the first Friday of Feb 2019, we had the Lindy Train graduates of 2018 perform their final choreography pieces as part of their graduation from the year-long Lindy Train program. Our aim at Lindy Train was to cultivate better dancers overall, but our emphasis was on helping dancers become more self-aware and more intentional when they dance. We used a combination of tools and devices to help them progress, one of which was performing. In this blog post I want to write about the performative aspect of Lindy Hop and help our dancers understand more about this aspect, especially in relation to social Lindy Hop. So you will see social Lindy hop being mentioned a lot in this post as well.
Before we start, I want to make it very clear that the roots of our dance, DO NOT LIE IN PERFORMANCE. This is not necessarily the case for other vernacular dances of the 1930s. For example, the roots of TAP, do lie in performance dancing. Lindy Hop and its predecessors, were first and foremost, SOCIAL DANCES. This just means that people danced them to have fun, as recreation, as part of gatherings, as part of culture and not to perform, entertain or make a living. Therefore, even till today, the heart of Lindy Hop is social dancing, not performance lindy hop, which is an aspect that came about later on, when it was possible for African-Americans dancers who were dancing a lot of Lindy Hop, to break into the entertainment industry in the 1930s in American and begin to make a living as entertainers. In other words, the main motivation for the African-Americans at that time to perform was to get work by dancing the Lindy Hop, which they were ALREADY DOING SO SOCIALLY, at the various ballrooms they were dancing in. You can read between the lines in Norma and Frankie's autobiographies about this period of their lives, when they were dancing at the various ballrooms before they were scouted and recruited by Whitey to be part of his performance team. The video clips that we have, from After Seben to Hellzapoppin' are all performances, in other words, these were staged for the camera. To what extent the dancing was changed as a result of that, we do not know and probably will never know. In the documentary the Spirit Moves, you can find clips of social dancing at the Savoy in the 1950s. I also do not want to give the impression that how they danced socially, was different from how they danced for performances. At this stage, i don't have enough information to make any strong conclusions. I can only say that with regard to Frankie, for example, he had plenty of what i like to call pocket routines, which were chunks of steps that he had put together and even when he did social dance, you would see these little chunks of choreography pop out - rearranged in terms of sequences and perhaps minor changes here and there, but the general form of the pocket routine would be recognizable. So from the 1930s, there would always be this link between performance lindy and social lindy, because a lot of what the Whiteys Lindy Hoppers used for their performances, they also used in their social dancing and at this stage, without living oldtimer dancers to speak to, the information is scant and we will have to hear from other oldtimers about this topic to have a clearer view of it. Moving on, let's come to our modern day context of Lindy Hop. All of us, start Lindy Hopping socially. I think very few of us, start Lindy Hop wanting to perform or become a teacher. And this follows the history of the dance. Lindy Hop was one of the ways the African-American people expressed themselves and social dancing was a night out for them, of enjoyment and festivity. In a modern day context, there are dancers who see lindy hop as a way to make a living, and hence very early on in their dancing journey, start competing and start performing in an effort to break into this industry where you can make a living by being a lindy hop teacher/dancer. To be honest, i don't think highly at all of teacher/dancers who are great performers and competitors, but are average or mediocre social dancers. I think that social dancing should be as exciting as performance dancing. If u get more excited watching a performance than getting a good social dance, then you are really different from me. I way way way prefer getting a good social dance than watching a great performance. One of the things that was important to Frankie was how good a person was as a dancer. It's hard to say this without sounding offensive in modern day context, but for some of the dancers from Whiteys', if you weren't a good dancer, they would probably not take notice of you and not ask you for a dance. Mickey Davidson tells this interesting story of how this silent tradition was maintained all the way until the 80s, when she started learning the lindy hop. It took Frankie a whole year to ask Mickey to dance, because all of that time was probation of sorts. Today, we don't make such distinctions, we dance with anybody who asks, teachers and newbies alike. I'm not saying this is right, I'm just making a factual comment that this tradition existed. It's important that a teacher/professional Lindy Hopper be an excellent social dancer. I think if a teacher is not good at social dancing, he or she doesn't understand the heart of Lindy Hop and probably also doesn't know the history - that its roots lie in social dancing and therefore social dancing is important to Lindy Hop. In today's context, social dancing and performance dancing has become more differentiated than before. In Frankie's time, there was more of an overlap as i mentioned previously. Today though, from my experiences, i find that distinctions are being made between social and performance dancing by many teachers/professionals. In 2016, I attended a workshop with Skye and Frida, who are both great performers and great social dancers. I recall a student asking Frida a question about the routine/class material, and the question was - "How do i do this in my social dancing?" And Frida replied (my paraphrasing of course), "What we teach is not necessarily to be used in social dancing, it is more to teach about rhythm and movement, not so much about social dancing or how to social dance". You can read into the implication there - the class material doesn't work 100% in social dancing, simply because it was not designed with social dancing in mind. Here we come to something very important to say very clearly -Dancers today need to understand that the material they learn in class, is not necessarily useful or applicable to their social dancing. I find that dancers take class thinking that they are going to become better dancers by learning new steps and new material, but the fact is that some material is simply not meant for social dancing. This would be useful for dancers wanting to become performers or teachers, but less useful for dancers who are wanting to better themselves as social dancers, since it is true that not all dancers are wanting to become teachers/performer. Most are wanting to just become good social dancers, because they go social dancing 3 times a week, and social dancing is what they do for most of their dance journey. Another incident that brought this distinction to the fore really clearly was a dance i had with Skye at that event. After class, i had asked him about the class material, so he danced with me to show me. His lead was very light, so i asked him - "Is this how you dance with Frida?" and he said, "Yes". Later on, at night, i asked him for a social dance. His lead was very different from what he had led me in class, even for the same step, say the tuck turn. There could be many reasons for this (first and foremost being - I am not Frida!!), but it is my conclusion that he uses different technique for different situations. Nothing wrong with that, just that it seems that there is indeed this distinction between social dancing and performance dancing. So i think it's important for dancers to know where they are heading (for themselves) and what sort of material they are learning, so they can make the best of it. It just would not work out, to blindly test out class material unsuitable for social dancing, on the social dance floor and be dismayed by the results. There is also an issue of teachers material being isolated to how the 2 specific partners would dance with each other, like in the case of Skye and Frida, but not how they would dance with other people socially. This too is not an issue as long as people are AWARE of it. It's just that when in class, dancers are not aware of this and tend to think that the material/steps/technique they are learning can be universally applied and it will work on the social dance floor...because there is this assumption that all good dancers lead like Skye and all good follows follow like Frida, so if we take any step from their class, any dancer who is "good" should be able to lead and follow. That is an oversimplification and is not true. Haven't we all had the experience where only 1 person went to an overseas workshop, came back with steps/material and then upon trying to lead/teach it, find that it fails completely or doesn't work out as it was supposed to? Clearly there are many reasons for that, skill level being the first, but i would also like dancers to consider that -- 1. teachers sometimes teach very specific things that only works for that particular couple and they way they dance/perform 2. the steps are not always tailored with social dancing in mind 3. teachers may dance differently from what they teach in class in a social setting, whereas the technique they teach in class is what they use for their performance and competition dances. -- before getting disappointed with how the step is turning out, why is it not working, how come i can't lead/teach it... etc etc The only suggestion i have for dancers who are in this stage of their journey is to understand that different teachers/teaching couples use different techniques, and to really try and read between the lines when you are in class. How is this material to be used? How can one get an understanding of the teachers' philosophy of dancing from what is being presented and taught in class? What is the basis of this material? What is the preference of the teachers - are they tending more towards a performance paradigm or more towards a social dancing paradigm? A lot of what we watch on Youtube today is performance dancing. A lot of times we see something that amazes us and we think - i gotta learn that or i wanna dance like that - not realizing that what we do is social dancing, and what we are seeing is performance dancing, and the two are very different and not interchangeable at times. Even for luck of the draw competitions, i don't find that the dancing done there is the same kind of social dancing done when it's not a competition and no one is watching. So we have to be very clear that luck of the draw dances are also...different from the type of social dancing when no one is watching and its just you and your partner on the dancefloor - no cameras, no judges, no other competitors. The kind of social dancing that all of us are doing if we are not teachers/performers or professionals. The same kind done at the Savoy, and the kind that is at the heart and root of Lindy Hop. Performance is important to the dance (the dance as an artform, not the dancer as a person) for 2 main reasons. 1. It gives visibility/publicity to the dance and helps draw attention and funding to the dance to allow its continued existence - All artforms perish without human support and involvement. By increasing visibility and publicity, performances draw new people to the dance which then keeps the dance alive. It's that first impression or first look, that hooks people in, and keeps their attention long enough for these people to find out more about the dance, the music, the community and the wonderful experiences and benefits that come with being a Lindy Hopper. The commercial nature of this world and it's financial system necessitates that this artform be self-sustaining in terms of its ability to be financially viable, and performance is an integral part of that. 2. It creates evolution & progress in the dance as performers try and find new things to say about the Lindy Hop artistically. - Even where re-creations of old routines are concerned, this does further the dance - if not these old routines might be lost to time, and in the process of recreating an old routine, sometimes new steps and movements are brought to the fore, thus spearheading evolution of the dance. Good performances also inspire dancers to improve themselves by showing what humans can achieve when they put their minds to it and is a testament to the creativity and possibility humans possess as creative beings. This keeps the dance alive and renewing itself, so that it does not fall into stagnancy and become obsolete. Some people might interpret that as - we must always be inventing new steps and styles in order to keep lindy hop relevant and fresh. I don't think so and i want to make it clear that the evolution of Lindy Hop is not solely based on inserting new steps and styles into the existing dance. This article is not the place to go into that rather difficult discussion, but i thought i should make it clear here before someone thinks that is what i meant by the above statement. At the individual level, performing is a fantastic tool and super useful in improving all aspects of one's dancing when used correctly. I find that a lot of times, performances force dancers to revisit basics and practice precision, both of which are important for social dancers as well. Performer also have to train aesthetics and styling, and this then gives their social dancing a beautiful refinement visually. It makes social dancers become aware of their lines, postures and shapes and this is what we see when we watch international teachers social dance. We are awestruck by how visually appealing their dancing is, and this is due in no small part to having practiced a great deal, most likely in preparation for performances. At the individual level, the motivations for performing are as varied and personal as each person's unique character is. Some people do use performance as nothing more than a tool to refine their dancing, others like to be in the limelight and have that extra attention showered on them, fulfilling certain ego desires, whilst still others perform out of a necessity to increase publicity and visibility for the dance, just to keep it alive and going on. It is not necessary to discuss these varied motivations and desires - what each individual gets out of performing, because all are legitimate to the person themselves, and we don't judge these things unless there is harm done to others while going about the process. I can, however, discuss certain aspects of performing that are important to the dance as an artform and not pertaining to the individual performing. What i mean is the performance shows the dance as an artform by treating the routine as a work of art, as opposed to a social dance for recreation or leisure. Now, these 2 qualities are not mutually exclusive, some of the finest instances of Lindy Hop as an artistic form i have seen are social dances, not performances routines. A lot of time though, I see dancers using the form of Lindy Hop as a means to express themselves artistically without having thought about the essence of the dance that is Lindy Hop. It is a bit like a sculptor who works with clay but really not knowing the properties of clay, and trying to create art pieces from that, or a fashion designer who knows very little about cutting, patterns, tailoring and textiles while still trying to design clothes. There is nothing wrong with self-expression per se, that's part of the point. But dancers & performers have to remember that lindy hop is not a blank canvas for them to write on, it has a 100 year history and has its own unique character and flavour, which has to be understood and worked with in order to create new work. A really good example is the desire to dance lindy hop to modern music. Many dancers find the music of the 30s and 40s boring or difficult to understand and find it easier to express themselves to modern music.As a result they find it more enjoyable to dance to modern music than the music of the 30s and 40s. These dancers, usually (not always but usually) are the ones who don't understand the dance and want to use the dance for their own artistic expression without having understood the unique character of this dance. They then take the external form of the dance, it's steps, it's postures, its rhythms, it's styling, and then place them into music that they find they can understand best. Once again, as pertaining to the individual, this has no ramifications. You can do whatever you like if you like it, but as a performance pertaining to the artform, it doesn't showcase that rich 100 year history & culture. All performers are ambassadors of the dance. They carry the responsibility to present the dance in a way that has considered its unique character and flavor and also to showcase the dance in the best light they can, so that others may come away appreciating not only what they think is beautiful or wonderful about their dancing, but what is intrinsically beautiful and unique about this dance called Lindy Hop. At this point it is important for me to make clear that i am not against performing or dancing to modern music, or getting inspiration from modern things like K-pop or whatever and putting it in your dancing/performances, neither am i against dancers taking artistic licenses to create what they really feel inside using the form of Lindy Hop. I also have no issue with dancers wanting to present non-traditional or non-authentic forms of Lindy Hop as how they like. I would just like that all dancers and performers consider it's 100 year old history and culture before doing so, and then after taking that into consideration, make their decision on whether to be traditional/authentic or not, and then craft their artwork/their dance and name it appropriately. If you have been inspired by K-Pop to include k-pop steps, stylings and music in your Lindy Hop performance, make sure that it is called Lindy-K-Pop fusion, or a name that accurately reflects the (non-traditional) nature of your performance/choreography. To call it Lindy Hop is misleading and is actually a misrepresentation of the specific form of Lindy Hop that has a this 100 year history. To use modern steps, stylings and aesthetics to a period song from the 30s also does not qualify as authentic or traditional. If that's how you like to dance it, call it your style (of Lindy Hop), but don't call it (traditional/authentic) Lindy Hop. The beauty of Lindy Hop, to me, comes from the specific values and ideas of the 1930s and 40s. Lindy Hop was at its zenith at that time and it's unique and colourful character was clear for all to see. As dancers in a modern context we have to start by understanding the history and culture of the 1930s and 40s, in order to get a good understanding of the dance so that we can be respectful when we create our own performances & choreographies . We are not restricted or limited to stay with what has come before but we have to respect it so that future generations of dancers will always be able to find the roots when they want to. They can then "go back and seek out" through watching the different performances what is the essence of Lindy Hop, and then carry that forward in their own artistic ways. By choosing to be clear about what we are dancing and what we are performing, we provide a clear path, almost like a reference library, for this dance as it has evolved through the ages, and how it has evolved in many different ways as well. This clarity of performance intention & nomenclature will allow future generations to see clearly what is traditional and what is modern, what is authentic and close to the roots vs what is progressive and avant-garde and provide all future dancers the choice to select from the rich tapestry of this dance what they need artistically to move forward as dancers, seeking out the best means to express themselves. |
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