Last Friday 16th Nov after socials was the first ever t3 - Teh Tarik Time! The response was incredible. I had not expected such a big crowd, and i am very happy about it.
I was super worried about seating, so i must find ways to make that process easier. This doesn't work if the group has to sit separately. At least 5 people have to sit together in order for this to work, groups of 8 or 10 are fantastic if we can arrange the seating for it. Some scene leaders or organizers talk about community engagement or community bonding through a social activity. It is believed that a scene grows because there is a social activity (outside of dance) attached to the community. It could be anything, ranging from sports to supper to baking to movies....the whole point being a way for people to spend time together and bond. Without this type of social activity, the community doesn't grow, or has a high turnover as people leave the scene. I confess i have always been a little too much "about the dance", so i could never understand all this talk. I thought, "Aren't people coming here for the dance itself? Or the unique music that we play?" I also thought, "Dance is so much fun, i get so much fulfillment out of dancing!" .........But.....i was wrong on both counts. Over the years, i have learnt people come to the dance for so many different reasons, and also, not everyone can easily find fulfillment in purely the dance itself. There are many reasons for that but this blog post won't delve into that. Instead, i 'll just say...."Oooohhhh. I see." (for those of you that understand Japanese or read/watch anime - insert "naru hodo" + *nods head vigorously* here) Enter - the Mama Supper, a cultural tradition for us A mama supper is a uniquely Singaporean and Malaysian thing. Supper itself is not, but a mama supper.....which Singaporean or Malaysian doesn't know that?!? Lionel Tan, globe trotting Lindy Hopper and one of the founders of LindyKL, told me that to have a mama supper brings back memories for him. Memories of the early years of LindyKL, where they would go to supper after dance and eat roti/prata and have a drink. It was the same for me, as an NTU student, I remember the years where we would go out for late night suppers, sometimes at a mama store, sometimes at Macdonald's, sometimes at whatever 24 hour kopitiam was accessible, and we would have the best conversations or the best memories of hanging out from those times. I never thought to put two and two together. In some way, organizing t3 seemed a little contrived. Anyone of you guys can understand - it's about the group that is already there, formed - that decides to go for the supper. In my uni days, the group was Kinetics, those of us who practiced and then were hungry after dance practice went out as a group to indulge in supper. Other times, it was the tutorial group after working late on a project, deciding to go out for supper together, or the hall group. But the group was always there first, not the supper. So it seemed a little odd to me to put the supper first to help in forming the group. I've been a dancer and teacher a long time, sometimes i forget how beginner dancers feel. Coming to socials alone, that's a real challenge. It's scary and sometimes you feel so alone or left out, and if you don't already know some people at the social, asking for a dance is embarrassing and super tough. And then you're worried about your lead and following and you're worried about how badly you're dancing or if you're boring your partner and then that all kinda makes dancing stressful and difficult to be happy or fulfilled about. (None of that is wrong, by any chance, it's just how it is in the early years of everyone's dancing, don't beat yourself up over that) And sometimes in between dances if you didn't get a partner to dance the next song with, you stand at the wall by yourself and that too feels stressful and alone. The reason why t3 works is because it just gives an opportunity for people to get to know each other better in a setting everyone can relate to - the supper setting. I think the idea of organizing specialized activities that are supposed to create a bonding effect is too much effort and makes the whole activity feel rather contrived - for example, if i were to organize a movie marathon or laser tag just for people to bond (for the sake of dance!!). I think the best bonding activities are the simplest and closest to our hearts, the ones with the least contrivance and the ones we already know how to do, like supper. At ILHC this year, i attended Mickey Davidson's talk on being a black dancer in the 1980s, and i remember she said (i paraphrase) that going to the toilet was something that could create bonding! The black women, would get to know each other better when they passed by each other in the toilet, making comments about the men; passing stories; shooting sarcastic remarks about someone's clothes; all the while freshening their makeup or washing their hands! (you have to listen to her tell this story!!) So...i'm not saying we should do that but...if you believed Mickey...these women bonded while going to the toilet! It's not really any different for dancers who have been dancing for a while. You probably haven't had a chance to get to know everyone who goes, and there are some people you usually don't ask for a dance or don't speak to, because you don't know them. None of this is about artificially creating one big happy dancing family, to me that's contrived. I think it's just about having a good time, and getting to know more people and getting to know more people better. And how does it help the community grow? I think that people get to know each other better, and they feel more and more comfortable and familiar with each other, and that makes for a better dancing experience. When you're familiar with someone, there is so much less stress during the dancing itself. U feel at ease, u feel comfortable, u feel like it dun matter if you tripped a bit or smacked your partner a bit (just a bit), u feel like laughing while u're dancing because its so damn funny and u're having such a good time with this other person, u feel like u're safe because u have spent more time with this person and have gotten to know him/her better ... all of that makes for an overall better dancing experience. And then the magic in dancing really begins to shine because then...with all this new ease and comfort and familiarity, the partnership and the communication and the understanding soars, and u can take risks in your lead or follow, u can do funny steps to make your partner laugh, u can attempt tricky footwork. So that really increases the possibilities for dance. And definitely, once you know someone else who is standing alone at the wall waiting for the next song, you could dance together or you could just talk. It works out for the best. Ours is ultimately, a partnered social dance. If we don't feel comfortable dancing with someone because we have just met or don't know each other well; or if dancers stand by the wall and feel alone or embarrassed to ask people for a dance or just talk, then the dancing experience itself suffers, and when the dancing experience itself is less than stellar, why would people come for/stay for socials?? I am all about the dance, but if late night suppers and teh tarik can help boost your dance experience i am all for that too. Here's to more t3 sessions and better social dancing wherever you dance! 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. Here is what happened, as best as i can tell.
HAVING TO LEAVE TIMBRE AND OLD PARLIAMENT HOUSE Timbre Music Academy was being closed for renovations so Lindy Live! at Timbre had to be shut down. Danny had commuicated to Sing and Sing had told me shortly. ** I had a meeting with Sing on how we were going to move forward. Sing wanted to continue working with Timbre and Danny, whereas i was not so keen. At this point in time, i was not teaching the Beginners (Lindy Hop 1 & 2 class levels) at Lindy Live! already (a story for another time), and at the new venture with Timbre, which would be at Timbre@Substation, there would only be beginner levels. Also, as expressed before, i had never really liked the bar/pub social dance setting. I have attended many socials at different bars and pubs before, Harry's at Boat Quay, BluJazz at Haji Lane, Jazz Inc's Socials at the Flyer Bistro, and then subsequently at Ink Bar at Swissotel and China One at Clarke Quay...but i have never found myself comfortable in those settings. I had always preferred a studio setting for social dancing. And to me, that was a big factor in me becoming the dancer i am today, a social in a studio setting. THE ENDING OF AN ERA Why do i say "the end of an era?" I am not the earliest batch of Lindy Hoppers in Singapore. Sinclair is from an earlier batch than me, i think somewhere about a year before me. Jitterbugs Swingapore, had started operations in 1996 or so, and they had always had a social. The first studio was at Tras Street, in Tanjong Pagar. I had not yet started dancing, so i have never been into the Tras St studio. Some current community members who have been dancing a long time may remember (like Gen, or Marz). My first encounter with Jitterbugs was at the Orchard Point Studio, what is now OG Shopping Center in Orchard. This was 2002. Back then, Jitterbugs Swingapore was having socials on Thursdays and this social was called "Swing Fling". I grew up with Swing Fling. Later on, Jitterbugs would move to MIllenia Walk, where briefly they would have Swing Fling on Sundays 4 to 6pm, which didn't work out so well, and later on, it was returned to its usual Thursday slot. When Jitterbugs moved to Cathay, Swing Fling was still on Thursdays 9 to 11pm. When Sing left Jitterbugs and created Lindy Live! at Timbre we maintained this social on Thursdays at the same time slot. You cannot imagine how many memories i have of Swing Fling. The many dancers and teachers i have met and danced with at Swing Fling. Swing Fling has been running on Thursdays 9 to 11pm. since before 2002. If you just count the years i have been attending swing fling, that would be 16 years. Swing Fling doesn't exist anymore for 2 reasons - 1. It was ALWAYS on THURSDAYS 9 to 11pm (except for the brief slot change to Sundays) 2. It was ALWAYS a STUDIO SETTING Sing has gone on to create Swingstation@Substation, but it's on a Monday and also its not a Studio setting. The end of the era, for me, means that Swing Fling is gone. 16 years of social dancing @ Swing Fling, is over. For sure, i had attended many other socials over the 16 years, but the only social i would ever call "home" was Swing Fling. I didn't want to take the name "Swing Fling" when i made the decision to start my socials on Fridays, it was something special that never really belonged to me, just something i was proud and happy and now sad, to have been a part of for 16 years. WHAT IS B SWING LINDY? WHAT IS "B"??!! My main aim in starting B Swing Lindy was to keep working (this was my job after all), and also to have a place to keep dancing in a studio setting. I had been tapping and teaching Leading Ladies at The Studio at Bugis for almost 2 years now, and i felt that i would be happy to organize socials there. The aircon is strong and the floor is sprung ok. (Tap dancers can tell if a floor is sprung from the sound, and how well "sprung" it is) At a meeting with the Timbre teachers, Hong Wee had also expressed his concern that 2 months with no socials was NOT a good thing. I felt the same way - i didn't want to stop dancing for 2 months (for personal reasons i do not attend Monday night socials, and i do only prefer to dance regularly in a studio setting), and so Friday night socials were born. "B" is the initial i usually use for my name, my parents and my close friends know me as B, and i always sign off emails as B, but B could also stand for many other things. Like bananas (i love bananas), or the word "Be", or the word "Best", or the word "Bonkers", all of which are important B words. So B Swing Lindy is NOT Brian Swing Lindy - that sounds terrible. The "B" is what you want it to "BE". I don't have any issues with that, only that you come dancing and have a good time at the socials. I do not like social media so much and have never had a proper Facebook or Instagram account. For B Swing Lindy, i was advised to create a facebook account and a page and also put myself on Instagram. I am very much a face to face person, and very much a "real life" and not "simulated life" person. I find social media and other online things take us away from the immediacy of staying in the present A LOT and i prefer to try and keep that discipline instead of being 23/7 on the mobile (even though i fail at that quite a bit). I don't think one can really be "friends" on FB, that's just a word FB uses. Friends are the people i see regularly in real life and we interact regularly in real life. But for events and social media presence i will be posting on FB and Instagram a fair amount moving forward. This concludes my short origin story and i hope to see you somewhere on the dance floor. -b. **this post has been modified from the original at the request of Danny, owner of Timbre. |
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