Metamorphosis of a Dancer

I’ve never really talked about my dancing inspirations, have I?  Here’s a pseudo-chronological timeline of major events in my dancing career.

Swing Club
Every story has a beginning.  Mine starts at Central with the Swing Club, started by Corinn, Dana, Chris, and Miriam.  The first meeting was January 7, 2003, I believe, the first Tuesday after winter break.  I remember Kate turning to me when we passed one of the posters and saying, “By the way, you’re going to this whether you like it or not.”  (I had already decided before winter break that I was going to go whether Kate and Annette joined me or not.)  Corinn, Dana, and Chris switched around the primary teaching duties, but if I had to call one of them my first teacher, it would be Corinn.  It felt like she always knew exactly what she was doing and was one of the main forces behind the group.  One of my biggest regrets about high school was that I was not able to continue the Swing Club the next year, when Kate, Annette, and I were the big three dancers at the school since everyone else graduated.

JNO, Beginning Lindy Hop, and Cowtown Jamborama 1
January 24, 2003, was the first time I went to Jitterbugs’ Night Out.  At the time, I didn’t think swing dancing was going to be such a large part of my life later, since I didn’t write much about it at the time.  Thankfully, the memory was still strong four years later.  In July, Billy and Lindsay let me take a beginning Lindy Hop class for free since they were short follows.  I had already had an introduction to it from Swing Club as well as a couple of the leads, but it was good for making sure I knew the basics of swingouts and Charleston kicks.  Later, I tried to pay for the classes, but Billy said no, put that into payment for the first Cowtown Jamborama.

That Cowtown taught me a lot of things:

• Everyone has their own idea of what a swingout is
• A lot of swing dancers are really nice (woo, birthday jam with all of the instructors!)
• A few swing dance instructors come off as jerks though
• I was at the low end of the totem pole at dancing
• But I wasn’t at the bottom of the totem pole :D

Dancing with Dan
In the next year, I managed to get the Lindy Hop down pat, and also picked up a little Collegiate Shag, Charleston, and Balboa.  I started dancing with Dan in the summer of 2004, I think, after being intimidated for the previous year.  (Annette was finally the one to say, “Here, dance.”)  Dan is in the hardcore Savoy group of dancers, of which there aren’t many in town.  I watched him dance with Monique and a few other follows, some who have stayed and some who have gone, doing tricks that no one else does, thinking, “Holy crap, I’ll never be able to do that, even in ten years.”  It’s funny looking back on it since after a couple of years, I started picking up the subtle physical and visual leads that tell me what move he’s going to do next.  Now I think I’m considered one of the hardcore Savoy follows, and can follow almost anything he throws at me.  I think my tendency to goof around and hit breaks in the songs annoys some of the other leads though.  ^___^;;

Making My Own Style
I skipped Cowtown 2004 for lack of funds, but I went in 2005.  A couple of the instructors we had were Skye and Frida, an internationally renowned pair of swing dancers.  One of the classes, held at Central on a sticky former-gym floor was Performance Lindy Hop.  I think it was an intermediate/advanced class, where they went over some of the aspects of dancing for a performance, like opening up to the audience and making it visually interesting.  Like follows adding swivels at the end of swingouts.  I credit this workshop with my swivels.  Also around this time, the group of people I danced with expanded.  I used to stay with Greg, his brother Ben, Kevin, and Cliff, but I started adding new leads like Dan and Eric.  Up until this point, my following was mostly based off of Greg’s leading.  I also started paying attention to the other follows, seeing what they did that I liked, and I came up with the big three at JNO that I wanted to emulate:

1. Corinn, because she makes it seem so effortless and seems to never make a mistake dancing (and later, in a poll of four leads about what makes a good follow, they all used her as an example)
2. Dana, because she has so much fun out on the dance floor, even if she doesn’t have a partner to dance with, and is so comfortable with her body and how it moves
3. Merinda, who dances with so much power and moves her hips so much when she dances

For the last few years, these three are the ones I’ve been copying.  Only in the last year do I feel like I’m starting to get how Corinn and Merinda move.  I still don’t have Dana’s sense of movement though.

Ben the Boyfriend
November 3, 2006, finally saw me entering the world of dating.  Ben had only been coming to JNO for a few months at that point.  We started talking at the Halloween dance at JNO, and the next week, he asked me out.  Not too long after that, he started taking a lot of classes with the Jitterbugs, every once in a while bringing out something new to me that he learned in a class.  He was my main dancing partner for a few months, as he started getting to know both the dance and the other follows.  It’s strange; I know we had to have influenced each other’s dancing, but I can’t really name anything specific.  I know during this time, I started trying to take smaller steps, but I think it’s only because I noticed how big they were when dancing with Ben and Eric and a couple of other leads when I lost my balance with them.  Ben would graciously pay for me to take a workshop or class every once in a while since my meager gift shop paycheck barely covered car insurance and gas sometimes, so I learned a few things from some of those, like an Advanced Lindy Hop class-turned-workshop (due to lack of attendance) that added kick-ball-changes into my steps and a small concentration-type class where I learned more control over my body and, again, that not everyone’s version of a swingout is the same.  Unfortunately, dancing caused the two of us to butt heads more than once as my experience didn’t fit with what he was taught every once in a while.  While this affected my dancing, I think the whole relationship affected my personality more.  It was during this time that Sarah the Wallflower disappeared, and my group of friends suddenly became much larger than Kate and Annette.

Performances
Unfortunately, I actually don’t remember my first dancing gig.  I know Dan arranged it, asking me at JNO one time if I was free this night and would I be willing to dance?  When he explained his requirements (fun to watch, fun to dance with, knows what the hell she’s doing), I felt flattered.  After all this time of thinking of myself as a bad-to-mediocre dancer, I was considered a “good” dancer.  People would come up during these events and tell us how much they enjoyed watching us dance, or grab me while I was passing by and mention how much fun it was to see dancing like that.  Especially when I was at a gig and dancing with Ben, people would say, “Oh, how nice that young people like you are dancing so well!”  Sometimes I’m not sure if we’re honestly good, if they just think that it’s good that some young people dance something other than bump & grind, or if it’s the nostalgia of them remembering what it was like to dance like that coloring their opinions.  But it’s still humbling to think that wow, some people are willing to pay to watch me swing dance!  Woo, confidence!

David

I met David not long after breaking up with Ben last year.  I remember the first time I saw him dance.  I think the thoughts that first went through my head (in roughly the same order) were, “Wow, another Savoy dancer.  Must be an out-of-towner.  He’s good, too good to want to dance with me, probably.  And he’s really cute too.”  The first night we danced was the first night back at JNO since breaking up with Ben.  I spent much of the night in a corner being miserable, but David came over saying, “Hey, you need to get out of your corner.”  While we were dancing, he got a slightly confused look on his face and asked me where I learned to dance.  When I said I learned here, he remarked at how I didn’t dance like most of the follows here, I had a lot more momentum.  I apologized, since one of the things Ben always nagged about was that I had too much momentum.  David laughed and told me not to apologize; the momentum meant I could do more things with my feet.  It was one of the best dances I had, similar to how I always thought I should be dancing, and a huge ego boost after the months of being told that I was doing it wrong.  And it helped that it was a horribly good-looking guy telling me this.  ^__^;;  I started picking up blues and West Coast little by little dancing with him, but it wasn’t until after Cowtown, when we both decided that yes, we kinda liked each other and started dancing together more often that I really picked it up.  I helped him with demonstrations a couple of times when he didn’t have a steady dance partner back in his town, and met a few of his student-friends.  Unfortunately, the romantic part of the relationship didn’t work, but I still enjoy dancing with him when he’s in town; I can only describe that dancing with David, like dancing with Dan, feels natural to me, despite the fact that both of them don’t really follow standard Lindy Hop patterns.  Possibly it’s because the two of them dance with the music, following breaks and phrases more than others.  All I really know is that after dancing regularly with David, I think I’ve been tagged as a blues dancer as much as I’ve been tagged a Savoy dancer.

Contests

I'm in the black shirt and green skirt, dancing with Eric

I had tried a couple of the local contests before, but after getting the boot in the prelims too many times, I had kinda given up.  Around my birthday last year, there were a pair of contests for free admission into the corresponding Cowtown contests.  I decided to try it just for the hell of it, entering into the Jack & Jill contest the Friday after my birthday.  And somehow, after years of not even making it to semi-finals/finals, I got third place with Chris.  I was mildly stunned by this turn of events.  The next week was the partner contest, and I managed to convince Dan to enter that one with me, since he’s one of the best leads that I can follow.  In the contest that followed, he and I got second place, beaten only by Chris and Corinn (and that was understandable; those two were steady partners for the first four years that I had known them, taking lessons together, and still dance on a regular basis.  Hell, I was rooting for them).  Unfortunately, I haven’t placed in a contest since then, not even advancing to the semi-finals in any of them (not counting the automatic advancing to the finals for me and Eric at the Cowtown couples contest).  But that was still an amazing ego boost.  Hell, September 2008 was an ego boost.

Teaching
Last year, a couple of weeks after Cowtown, I was asked by a few friends if I could teach them how to do the Shim Sham.  We ended up getting together at one of their houses, had dinner, and I gave them a crash course in the Shim Sham.  We talked about following, our leads, and styling, and they commented about some of the things that I do that no one else does.  Which I thought was strange, since I thought that pretty much everything I did was copied from someone else.  But I started paying attention and realized that yes, I do certain parts of the Shim Sham differently than other dancers.  More and more in the next few weeks, some of the other follows would ask me how I did certain things, and I’d try to answer as best as I could.  Dan, Eric, and David all would grab me when they wanted to show a move to someone or try out a new trick.  I helped David with a couple of his classes, though it was mostly just being a follow and maybe answering a couple of follow-specific questions.  Eric and I even had an actual teaching gig back in April.  Somehow, in the last half-year, I started half-assedly teaching.  It’s making me think more about my following and how I would explain it.  Unfortunately, the furthest I’ve gotten is, “Don’t think about the dance.  Think about the music and the connection with the lead.”  David used to get after me when I said “don’t think.”  But for me, it’s the truth.  It’s like that state of mind you get after a couple of drinks, where your mind is kind of fuzzy and you can’t really concentrate.  Primal instincts take over cognitive functions and all you can concentrate on are your major senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.  Except when sober, you still have mind enough to concentrate on just the two senses most important to dancing: sound and touch (and not looking like a drunken idiot).  Being mostly asleep can give you the same mental state.  I swear that I follow my best when I’m half-asleep and dancing with a good lead to good music.  But it’s dangerous too; I’m more prone to being grumpy and going through mood swings when tired.

Real Dancing Shoes
I’ve been dancing six and a half years, but only a month ago, right before going to NYC for Frankie 95, did I actually get a pair of proper dancing shoes (in this case, get proper dancing soles put on my pair of Converse sneakers).  I had always set aside a few pairs for dancing because their soles weren’t too bad and the Eagle’s ballroom floor is slick.  But, for an international dancing event, I figured I should have a real pair of dancing shoes.  And boy, do they make a difference.  I need to get a couple of other pairs converted now, I think.  I can spin a lot easier, I can do slides, and Charleston almost seems fun.  ~.^  I’m still learning how to control them on the slick floor at JNO though, especially on nights like last night where there seemed to be a ton of dance wax on the floor.  But these have made an amazing impact on my dancing, I think.

Frankie 95
I’ve already recapped a lot of the stuff I learned at this event.  The first time I danced at home after the event, a couple of the leads remarked upon how my dancing had changed.  Again, most of that is the dancing shoes, I think, but I know my dancing has changed subtly.  I’m looser in my upper body, I’m still doing some of the styling that I learned, and I’m more confident about a lot of my dancing.

And that’s where I’m at now.  I hadn’t really thought about how much my dancing had changed until last night, when David mentioned how much my dancing had improved since he last danced with me at the beginning of May.  And several times in the last week, even a couple of other times last night alone, how much I’ve changed personally has come up.  (But that one boils down pretty easily to three events: meeting Kate and Annette, starting dancing, and dating Ben.)  I’ve been wanting to talk about my dancing inspirations for a while, especially how much I admire Corinn, Dana, and Merinda, but there’s so much more beyond me trying to emulate them, especially concerning Savoy style and blues.

Credit for the photos (except the ones of me and Corinn and of my shoes) go to Cliff.  Video credit goes to Steve.