In this blog post, i thought i would take time out to write about some of my own ideas, beliefs, principles and values with regard to topics in Lindy Hop. I would call this series "About B". A little bit about me Although BSL is a relatively new venture, I have been dancing July 2001, and have been teaching in Singapore professionally since 2006. During 2001 to 2005 I was part of NTU's Kinetics Lindy Hop club, in various roles including as a performer, choreorgrapher and committee member. Later, after leaving NTU I taught under Jitterbugs Swingapore as one of the "teacherbugs" until Jitterbugs no longer ran adult classes. I also taught at NTU in an official capacity for many years. The history behind this is privy to me because I was part of the original committee who awarded the contract for teaching to Sing & Jitterbugs in 2002. After I graduated from NTU, Sinclair held down the fort at NTU for a couple of years until he longer worked with Jitterbugs in any capacity, then I stepped in as the official teacher from Jitterbugs shortly after. After some years teaching at NTU, i think maybe 5 years or so, i was ready to move on - the commute was long and the pay not great. I had a discussion with Sing to tell her i was wanting to stop, and in good faith, we decided that it would be a good opportunity to pass on the teaching post to a young and enthusiastic dancer who wanted very much to teach. Sing also graciously awarded the contract to this dancer as well, so all the money from the school would go to this person. (Previously, Jitterbugs would take a cut, and as the official teacher from Jitterbugs I was paid the Jitterbugs teachers rate, which was $40/h at that time. I personally thought it was a great opportunity for this person, not in terms of money or convenience, but in terms of learning - learning about humility, responsibility, how to teach, learning about how to learn, learning about managing a group and choreography etc etc. I am the dancer today because i walked down this path of teaching, choreography and performing, all thanks to my time at NTU and the Lindy Hop club there.) Also i think it was a gift, given that this dancer had no track record as a teacher or anything of note at all other than being super eager to teach, share their own ideas and philosophies and become a teacher. Sing and I valued such enthusiasm hence we made our decision that way. I myself had become a better dancer and a better person by becoming a teacher but I guess not everyone succeeds in this way. I was also a member of Swing Express, the performance team of Jitterbugs Swingapore from 2005 to 2010, and also performed with many of the groups that Sinclair formed under Jazz Inc. After Sing left Jitterbugs, we teamed up to teach at Timbre at the Arts House, until that was no longer viable, and then BSL was formed shortly after. One of the reasons why i have remained so obscure is because of my aversion to social media. I prefer face to face communication and do not maintain personal Facebook and Instagram accounts. Mediated communication is not for me. I also prefer to be known for my dancing and teaching abilities rather than being known from pictures taken of me at so-&so event. The dance is very important to me and between being a well-known person who is not a good dancer vs a not well-known but really good dancer, if i had to choose, i would rather be the latter. But social media is happily taking care of the former circumstances so who knows, I may end up becoming both some day. The current accounts on FB & Instagram are purely for dance and BSL and I make it a point ONLY to post dance related media. Personal media is kept out so you wont find details of what projects I'm working, what social activities i went to, what food i am currently raving about, what clothes/fashion I have just bought - UNLESS these are somehow related to dancing. I prefer it this way. If you want to get to know me as a person, just come talk to me; interact with me face to face. I am generally frank and blunt sometimes so bear that in mind in case you are a sensitive person who gets offended easily. Come 2019, i will be 39 but I still continue to teach and perform today where-ever i have the opportunity to share my love for this special and unique family of dances. I believe that a dancers' longevity is important, because a lot of us start dancing at a later age, and we have to learn, alongside learning the dance, ways to take care of our bodies, so that we can enjoy this activity well into our 70s or 80s, just as Frankie and Norma did. Today's "About B" topic My belief is that - Improvised dancing is much harder than choreographed dancing and good improvised dancing (that is "real") is way more difficult to achieve than good choreographed dancing. (In this article, we can assume the terms improvised dancing to be interchangable with social dancing, and choreographed dancing to be interchangable with performance dancing. The latter terms are what we are familiar with in general, and it's easier to simplify the explanation this way for real life relevance and not a abstract discussion where there is no application to what we do with Lindy Hop in real life. The terms are not synonymous, of course, as there is improvised performance dancing and choreographed social dancing, so i would ask the reader to remember that as well. also - I am a person who gives credit or recognition based on what i think is difficult [as objectively as i can], because i recognize effort and skill undertaken in order to achieve the required mastery.) Let's explain the statement above properly and in what context. It is quite specific in its understanding so i will have to define some of the terms used in the statement above for clarity. When the word "factual" or "objective" is used, I use it to mean - "I see it as a matter of fact" and not a "matter of opinion". So for example (as explained below) - I see improvised dancing as "factually" taking more effort than choreographed dancing. Moving on - By social/improvised dancing, we mean - 1. non-choreographed dancing. This really has to be explained. To be honest, all social dancing is choreographed because we ALL learn steps that have already been invented. A good analogy - words and sentences. Dance steps are like words. We learn them individually and then string them together to make a sentence. Usually we don't break up the words we know into individual letters and then start making sentences from the individual letters. we use the words in the whole form, and string together longer and longer groups of words, making sentences or paragraphs. A swingout, is 8 counts. This is a fairly long word that we use often. There are shorter words, like 6 count steps, and even shorter words, like 4 count steps. There are also groups of words that we use as a group, like Frankie Sixes (or Frankie Four), which is 4 6ct steps, strung together to make like a little sentence. There is also the "sentence" - 3 swingouts and a circle, which i use very often in my classes. Improvisation...then, really is the stringing together of these words and sentences (and sometimes paragraphs) in a NON-FIXED order. If we strung them together in a FIXED ORDER, then we get what is called a CHOREOGRAPHY - which remains the same because of its fixed order. But because we don't string them together in a fixed order, we call it improvisation. This then, is the main difference between choreography and improvisation, in the context of social lindy hop. You have to understand this b4 we proceed on. From here, you can already see that, it requires more effort to improvise during social dancing, than to dance to a choreography - based on this idea that a choreography is fixed and unchanging, while an improvisation is constantly changing. Once you are past the initial stage of memorizing the choreography, then the work is done, but with improvisation, you have to redo it each time you dance so that it doesn't remain in a fixed order. This is of course a spectrum - the more fixed your personal arrangement of dance steps and sequences are - the closer it is to a choreography than an improvisation. The second thing that determines this is whether you use larger or smaller chunks of dance sequences. The larger your chunks, the more it veers towards choreography, the smaller your chunks, the more it veers towards improvisation. You might not agree with me, but i think that it is far more difficult to improvise with smaller chunks than larger chunks, and it is far more effort to constantly keep changing the sequences than to remain in a fixed order. Let's not factor in things like - how well you memorize, how familiar you are with steps, or how small/large your repertoire of dance steps/footwork/following steps is - lets make all those equal, and then just look at the effort needed to execute a social dance vs executing a choreography (which you have already memorized and each time you perform it it will be the same). So my conclusion here is - Improvisation using smaller chunks is more difficult than improvisation using bigger chunks, which is then more difficult than a fixed order routine, otherwise known as a choreography. If you have issues with memory work or issues with remembering things in a fixed order, you may well find choreography more difficult for yourself personally than improvisation, but that is a lack of practice in your ability to remember things and not a factual thing that each time you perform a choreography it is the same, but each time you improvise, it is different. That in itself is extra effort aside from your personal issues with learning and memorizing a choreography. I would say that you are just better practiced, at improvising than memorizing. It doesn't make improvisation - factually less effort than choreography if both abilities were equal. So, coming back to topic, non-choreographed dancing really means - how non-fixed the order is, and how small the chunks of sequences are For myself, I have no basic fixed order and i improvise at the 2 count level. If we go back to the analogy, it means i am making up "words by using individual alphabets", so for dance steps, i am making up dance steps, using 2 count basics. If you don't understand what that means in terms of dancing, that's fine, come take a class with me...but at least understand the analogy here - A large part of my dancing is built from the 2 count level, even big "words"/"steps" like swingout, circle, charleston etc etc.If you have danced with me as a follow, that would explain why I seem to have endless lead variations that are unexpected. But really they are just smaller individual pieces of dance steps than the average leader does, put together in a non-fixed order. 2. Lead and Follow Communication In a social dance, lead and follow communication always has to be LIVE and present for a good social dance to occur. In performance dancing, especially with routines that are very familiar, the lead and follow dynamic (the physical dynamic that needs to occur to get the step executed) exists, but the communication between the lead & follow for the execution is un-necessary as it is a choreography, planned beforehand and familiar to both parties. There is no need to tell one another, ok this next step is....then after that is .....then after that again is this......All of which is needed for social dancing. In social dancing, the leader has to keep telling the follow through his leading, what's coming up, what's coming up, what's coming up. In a performance, they already know the whole routine start to finish. No need to engage in that. This again, objectively, is extra effort during a social dance, vs a performance dance. When i'm dancing a performance, i just remember my role, and i leave it to the follow to remember her role. I don't need to lead her with 100% focus and accuracy to execute any given step, i can put that extra energy into performance styling or project it to the audience. But if i'm taking care of my follow the way that i do for social dance, 100% of my energy goes there, making sure throughout the social dance she's aware of what's happening, where to go to, what's coming up, preps to make the journey smooth etc etc. So here the scale is - Again, to me, that's just factual - improvisation just needs one to always be alert and listening, choreography you can switch off this aspect sometimes and use the energy elsewhere if you wanted to. It's just not needed all of the time, another reason why social dancing takes more effort than performance dancing. Once again, let's make all other factors equal. Performers of course put in a lot of energy into a performance and for social dancing we can skimp on that, but if we were to equalize that, it still wouldn't change the fact that this is effort that has to be undertaken when social dancing over performance dancing. I personally try to put in energy into my social dancing so that the level of execution can reach performance levels. What can i say? I like it when it looks nice too.
I know that some of you reading this would say - performance is so difficult, i could never perform and look good or remember choreo but i can social dance so easily week after week. And then it seems like there's no way social dancing can be objectively more difficult than performance. But i put this scenario to you - suppose, you started off as a Lindy hop performer, day after day, you learnt steps and routine and all you did was perform them. After 5 years, someone asks you for a social dance, which you have never done before. Will it be difficult? Yes. Will you be unable to improvise smoothly on the spot? Yes. Will you be stressed and say things like - "my mind blanks out, i can't think fast enough, i dunno what's going on..."? Yes. Will you actually have fear of social dancing? Yes! I see this a lot with syllabus tap dancers and musicians. They know how to play a piece or tap a routine, but they CANNOT IMPROVISE. It's so tough for them. Why? It's as tough for them to improvise as it is for you to perform. It's just what you have put time & effort into. I want you when reading this article, to put aside any bias you have that social dancing is easier than performance or vice versa and just read it from the place where you are hypothetically good at both, because that is the context this discussion is placed in, not the context where you assume one is easier or more difficult than the other from your lack of experience and practice with it. 3. Social dancing skills and techniques are not given as much recognition as performance skills and techniques are I have mentioned this before in short. The main reason for putting this here is because, social dancing is meant to be fun and not meant to be stressful. So we don't put a lot of emphasis on good social dancing skills and we also don't make want to make dancers feel like they are not dancing well - when the point is to go out there and have a really good time. I'm completely aware of that and i want all of you social dancers to have a good time as well - whether or not your technique is good, whether or not you've been dancing for 1 year or 10 years, whether or not you can really lead or follow or not. On the social dance floor, all of that is NOT IMPORTANT. But having said so, that doesn't change the fact that there are social dancers who - are better than others - who can lead & follow better than others - who are clean and precise and beautiful to watch in terms of their social dancing - most importantly, who feel good to dance with in both a PHYSICAL level (this is about the physical dynamic of the lead & follow connection, that it is smooth, clear, gentle yet firm, caring etc and not jerky, yanky, confusing, staccato, hard, stiff, painful etc) and feel good on a mental/emotional communicative level (in that as they dance with you they are making the effort to communicate with you, not blanking out, not on autopilot, not "somewhere else" and only dancing with you because the job demands it - this is really tough for teachers, especially since they have to dance with so many students at any given workshop) All i hope for, is that the time and effort put in by these dancers into their social dancing be recognized. I have met international teachers, who because they perform and teach for a living, are average social dancers - simply because the amount of time and effort that they have spent has been put mainly into performance skills and not social dancing skills. On the social dance floor, they are beautiful to look at, but not necessarily a fun and enjoyable dance in terms of communication, engagement, creativity or the physical feeling of connection. Sometimes the leading is very simple and basic, sometimes the connection is a bit strange, sometimes the partner is a bit stilted, sometimes there is no interest to social dance other than for the job....and i understand why. I give them the recognition for their achievements in performance dance, but not when it comes to social dancing. A lot of times, people give RECOGNITION AND RESPECT to these dancers/instructors, automatically giving credit for their social dancing skills because of what they have performed and how they have performed (or even their international reputation as teachers and performers), instead of making this assessment based on having several social dances with them. One of our local dancers told me that she didn't have a good dance with a world famous dance instructor at SLR 2 years ago, and she told me she felt so lousy about that. I happen to know that 2 other people had danced with this instructor and also was not impressed, so given this information, i was more inclined to believe that this instructor was not fun to social dance for whatever reason (no judgement there). But this local dancer automatically assumed that she was at fault because of her poor technique and her poor skills (which may have been the case as well, we can't factor that out) but the reason she gave me was - she's just a local dancer and the leader is a world famous teacher, so based on this reasoning, SHE HAD TO BE THE WRONG ONE. This i completely disagree with. Don't jump to conclusions based on the reputation and name of the instructor alone - that's such a biased perspective, and the wrong kind of mentality to have. Such thinking compounds the problem. These are 2 different skill sets that do overlap, but they are distinct enough. Very few teachers are very good at both.It could also be possible that the teacher is at fault, keep it as impartial and open as possible and don't jump to either side of the equation - that it must be you who was wrong, or that it must be the teacher who was wrong. Look at it objectively and ask other people for their experiences and observations. Don't just assume. There's more to come, but i will post the continuation another day as the next section could end up being a bit long on it's own and i think, deserves more attention as it covers a big area. See you on the dance floor in the meantime! - end of part 1 - B. Comments are closed.
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