Recently, we went out dancing with a gang of our students to a long-standing swing joint, the Wabasha Street Caves. It's an old mob hangout in a cave along the Mississippi River, which now legitimately hosts weekly swing dances with live big bands.
While obviously the setting is amazing and atmospheric and nearly everyone had one of their first partner-dance experiences there, I was left with a really unsettled question:
What is dancing?
Let's narrow it down to "what is partner dancing?" because I can't tell you what all dancing is or is supposed to be (modern, for example, continues to be a very cool mystery to me).
I do however, feel like I have a pretty good grasp on partner dancing.
Classically, I love the definition being "two people dancing as one". Spending time in studios and competition floors makes that an easily accepted idea. Move. Lead. Follow. Technique. Patterns. Fancier patterns. Fancier technique. Etc.
But as we walked in the historic Caves and were greeted by a majority of under-18 dancers (you guys, like, SO MANY high schoolers), my question began forming.
Now, I know what it's like to forget the basic. I remember clearly my first lesson where I was introduced to three dances, the last of which being East Coast Swing (or Triple Swing) which I danced gleefully and ignorantly. The next lesson, my teacher started with ye olde ECS "since it went so well" and I. Had. Nothing. No idea about how many chasses were involved and good God, why it is only 6 counts and what's a rock step and all that.
Watching the sub-drinking-age-people "warm up" and "practice", it was clear that they might not know the basic in the first place. Or care about one.
insert conversation with one of my sweet high school students from the start of the school year:
me: who's done Swing before?
girl [raises hand enthusiastically]: I have!
me: oh cool! What was it? Lindy? Jitterbug? East Coast? Just plain ol' Swing?
girl [blank stare]: ... I did aerials.
me and the crickets: ...
The kids at the Caves did know aerials, of differing difficulty and danger to others, and were intent on practicing them (thankfully off the main dance floor near the ill-attended, but delightfully inexpensive bar). Once in awhile, they'd wander toward the dance floor, possibly with the intent of demonstrating their tricks, but were often stopped by the throng of people who were moving on the excellent wood floor.
Now many of these other people who were moving on the floor were doing something akin to the rock steps and side steps that would comprise most Swing basic steps, but without any identifiable rhythm or timing with the very obvious beat that was being used by 20 live musicians. Let's call it "dancing". It was often way too fast and not at all in sync with their partner, whose shoulders and elbows and wrists and side-eyes were getting a workout.
So, the majority of the fun-loving crowd at the venue could do a couple tricks, presumably with no movement to connect one trick to another, and/or had a vague knowledge of the movement involved with the favorited dance, but no idea how to execute and communicate it to another person.
And there was my question: what is partner dancing?
If it's just jumping on the floor with another person, every drunk person at a wedding is a pretty good dancer.
Just to plagiarize myself, I propose this:
Agreement
Whether explicitly or implicitly, when you grab hands with another person and head to the floor, you are agreeing to dance with that person for the dance that has recently started through the duration of said song (unless you're talking about Argentine Tango, but we're not). SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO BE EXPLICIT.
I'm sure you want to find out in which ways you should be explicit, but that's what a cliffhanger is for...
