finally

this site is looking somewhat decent again. i can get back to responding to comments and things again.
perhaps.
we'll see. something interesting was posted on swing talk lately, which i would like to respond to. if you click that link and read marcusescano's latest post, you'll see the stuff i'm talking about.
it's interesting for a number of reasons, from a discussion of what constitutes a 'recently more experienced' dancer, through to marcus' comments in light of his professed unfamiliarity with vintage dance clips.

There are so many interesting ideas in the local classes and workshops of recent times. Josh and Noni talking about bounce and lead/follow movement within the context of 1-2 beats instead of 1-6/1-8 beats. Dan and Christi with moves based on the very odd connection of the lead's left hand to the follow's left hand. Scott and Claudia teaching very connection based simple movements, like both of you in closed leaning your centres back (is this "counterweight"?) then the lead moving the follow's centre around in that footworkless closed position.

Calling all of this just "moves" understates how useful it is to lead/follow.

I watch few vintage clips and am not at all familiar with vintage social dance, so I have to ask if the sort of things I just described got as much attention in the old days as the old school stuff dogpossum described did?

to quote marcus...
i want to remember to comment on the fact that while the terminology for discussing dance might have changed, the 'olden days' dancers like manning's troups, the whitey's lindy hoppers, dean collins, etc, were absolute work horses, who'd work on their dancing all day, and in the case of manning's troups, then go out and social dance all night. this was some hard core work. it wasn't just a matter of inspiration striking and 'poof!' the aerial was born. it took as much work then as it does now to refine moves and expand a dancer's repertoire. there's still this myth, though, that the 'olden days'moves were created spontaneously in a flash on the dance floor. while some no doubt were, we should remember that those doods - esp in the big league like manning, etc - were professional dancers, and worked themselves, their troops and their partners hard!

but i'll get into that in more detail later...

Posted by Dogpossum on March 25, 2005 04:14 PM