A Different Kind of Lead and Follow

I was looking at some of the footage of the preliminary rounds for Solo dance portion of “The Battle” when I spotted something unusual. Check out this clip, starting around 0:32 and the 16 seconds after that. Don’t read any further until you have. I’d like you to have your own reaction before you read mine.

In case you missed it I’m referring to Bobby Bonsey (white shirt, red tie) and his move on Jana Grulichova (red shirt and black vest). If you did miss it then go back and watch it again. I’ll still be here when you're done.

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but I’m going to say up that I think that Bobby’s move on Jana was inappropriate.

I’m not sure what they’re relationship to each other is (dance partners, friends, whatever) But even if they know each other, or if it’s pre-planned, I still don’t think it’s something that should happen in a dance competition.

Aside from being kinda creepy, there’s still the matter of the use of direct contact and partnered lead and follow in a solo contest.

It’s one thing to play off of one another through visual cues or mini-challenges (E.g. I do a move, then you do it better), but by consenting to following something physically led on you, you’re basically submitting to another dancer. That's exactly the opposite impression you want to make in a competition.

Check out the 2008 Camp Jitterbug Solo Charleston contest towards the end of the dance off (which starts at 3:50) between Sharon Davis and Carl Nelson.

At 6:01 Sharon links with Carl’s arm and basically takes over. It’s a close contest up until then, but for me, that’s a make or break point that helps Sharon win 1st place.

Interestingly enough Sharon is a good one to watch for a lesson on when not to get involved head to head. Check out the semi-final and final rounds of the 2006 Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown Solo Charleston contest.

The all skate starts at about 6:56. Watch the dynamic between Sharon and Max Pitruzella, the dancer with his injured arm tucked beneath his shirt.

Max spends a lot of time getting into Sharon’s space, trying to bait her into going one-on-one, but Sharon deftly avoids him. She engages him only when she has to during the beginning of the dance off when there are only two of them, but is able to slip away towards the end. You can call it fear, but in this case I think it’s smart because going directly head-to-head with Max would play to his strength as a more aggressive dancer.

In modern day b-boy and b-girl battles, there’s an informal rule that dancers should avoid making contact with each other. This probably stems from the fact that these things tend to get uber-competitive. Contact can easily be interpreted as aggressive and quickly escalate into something that could get out of hand.

We’re a much smaller community so that’s less likely, but I still think it’s a good thing to discourage because of everyone’s primary background with partner dance. It becomes too easy to fall back on that dynamic. A solo dance competition isn’t how well you work with a partner, it’s about how you stand on your own.

However you don’t want to completely ignore everyone else either. Watch Chance Bushman, (5^th dancer, wearing jeans & a short sleeve shirt) in the ULHS 2005 Solo Charleston semi-final (ignore the title on the video).

He doesn’t pay very much attention to the dancers before or after him. Between that and looking down through most of his shines, he's a black hole sucking all the energy out of the contest, threatening to collapse the universe around him.

In this same competition keep an eye out for Frida Segerdahl (the second dancer) throughout the comp as she follows the first dancer, Angela Andrews . In each of her spotlights, she takes a move that Angela before, and cranks it up to 11.

Some great things can happen just by paying attention to what's going on around you.

At least in my opinion. Anyone else have an opinion about how appropriate or inappropriate different kinds of contact are in a solo contest?

And just to show that I'm not picking on Bobby, here's a fun example of him making contact with dancers in a good way.

(Special thanks to Ann Mony whose video suggestions for this post were much better than my original picks even if I used them for completely different reasons)

The Battle 2009 Solo Contest

The thing I noticed the most is that these finalists rarely fall back on the Charleston basic. Instead they make use of a wide variety of jazz steps which they employ with varying degrees of emphasis.

I’ve always found it difficult to watch contests with multiple people dancing at once. I recently discovered that when a solo dancer starts into basic Charleston, my attention wanders elsewhere. This occurs even when I’m watching a contest on video multiple times, trying to concentrate on one dancer.

Survivance and Dance

I used to work at the National Museum of the American Indian. There, I met Gerald McMaster, a curator who coined the term “Survivance” for one of the exhibits. The word refers to the process by which Native communities endured though hundreds of years of challenges.

I went to the National Pow Wow hosted by my former employer in 2007. It was an odd experience coming from a different kind of dance community. The most significant one is that Pow Wow's are not just about dancing (social and competition), but they are also equal parts ceremony, marketplace, and family reunion. In that sense it's a much more robust experience than going to a typical Lindy Hop event weekend. I guess I could draw some parallels, but really, matching up a bunch of hobbyists with native communities that are thousands of years old can't really compare.

Hip Hop and International Relations Theory

Just wanted to take a moment to point out a few fun yet educational links for all you hip hop fans curious about international relations theory. It starts off with a blog by author, professor, and director of the Institute of Middle East Studies here in DC, Marc Lynch, killing time by with his blog on ForeignPolicy.com entitled "Jay-Z vs the Game: Lessons for the American Primacy Debate." It's a simple yet brilliant explanation of some basic concepts using feuds between various rappers as examples.

Review: "Frenesi" Routine by Naomi Uyama & Matt Smiley at ALHC 2001

My original intention when I started my Lindy Hop paper a couple of years ago was to talk about some of my favorite routines and why I liked them. Circumstances led me in a slightly different direction which ended up becoming the “Artisry In Rhythm” paper that I’m now posting bit by bit. The routine that I’m going to talk about was done by Naomi Uyama and Matt Smiley both originally from the Washington, DC area. They performed a routine to Artie Shaw’s “Frenesi” at the 2001 American Lindy Hop championships.

Charleston and/or Lindy Hop?

I saw a rough cut of the film at the Frankie Manning’s 95th Birthday Festival a few weeks ago. The amount video footage this guy has put together is astounding. It seems as though that he got his hands on almost every bit of American vernacular jazz dance inspired footage in the past 100 years, of which Lindy hop is a significant part. He’s used that to create a tangible link to pretty much any and every popular dance seen today.

I find this particularly apropos since there’s been some hand wringing about the amount of Charleston used in social Lindy Hop as if those dances emerged separately from each other and the mixing of the two is somehow detrimental to the dance or to dancers in general. Note that this is not about the playing of 2-beat music which is a related, but separate topic.

Video Addendum

I deleted two video’s that were part of my-favorite-routines-of-the-past year-list. So because I have some time before checking out The Boilermaker Jazz Band at The Jam Cellar tonight, I present those videos here to keep Paul busy until my massive update later this week.

Foreword for "Artistry In Rhythm": Why write a 70 page paper about the modern Lindy Hop community?

I was going to list and talk about some of my favorite Lindy Hop routines from over the years, but then I ended up focusing two routines that had a profound effect on the development of our community: Minnies’ Moochers “Love Me or Leave Me” routine and Mad Dog’s “Well Git It!”

Self Promotion & Creative Risk in Lindy Hop

Lindy Hoppers occasionally make some questionable choices to get their names out. Most of them fall under the heading of mildly amusing, but I’m not here to mock people . . . or at least not today.