Dancing must have some impact on the rest of my life: This week, the week after Blues Rising, there has been an unquestionable change in the way I order sandwiches.

The old way

Sandwich technician: What kind of bread, sir?

Myself: Um... wheat.

Sandwich technician: Do you want onions?

Myself: Ah... yes, and some green peppers.

Post–Blues-Rising

Sandwich technician: What kind of bread, sir?

Myself: Wheat, please.

Sandwich technician: Do you want onions?

Myself: Yes. And green peppers also.

—Not much of a difference; but if there isn't more confidence, there is at least more candor, less hesitation and more presence. Way to go!

So much of the modern experimentation in jazz springs—as far as Negro jazz modernists are concerned—from a misplaced shame over the so-called low-class origins of jazz. These are usually men of Negro middle-class background who have some formal training in music and who would like for jazz to be a “respectable” form of expression tied up with other forms of revolt. They'd like to dry up the deep, rowdy stream of jazz until it becomes a very thin trickle of respectable sound indeed. (27–28)

—Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act

I feel, this weekend after Rhythm Method, that I have wanted to be a “good” dancer, but haven't quite been able to articulate what my real goal was. I can now say definitively that my goal is not to be a good dancer; my goal is to be a meaningful dancer. I want my dancing to be not simply a pursuit of my intellect, nor even just a manifestation of my artistic spirit. I want dance to touch the essence of my humanity. Ellison, in his interview That Same Pain, That Same Pleasure, goes on to talk about a humanity of Negro Americans that he portrays in his writing—a humanity that he felt was missing from the depiction of Negroes in the great American literature of his time—and, I believe, a humanity that can be exposed in the raw energy of street dancing:

… during graduation week countless high-powered word artists, black and white, descended upon us and gathered in the gym and the chapel to tell us in high-flown words what the Negro thought, what our lives were and what our goals should be. … Well, the Negro farm people from the surrounding countryside would also come to the campus at the same time. Graduation week was a festival time for the surrounding Negro community, and very often these people would have children and relatives taking part in the ceremonies in progress in the chapel and the gym. But do you know that while the big-shot word artists were making their most impressive speeches, the farm people would be out on the old athletic field dancing square dances, having picnics, playing baseball and visiting among themselves as though the ceremonies across the wide lawns did not exist; or at best had no connection with the lives they led. Well, I found their celebrations much more attractive than the official ceremonies and I would leave my seat in the orchestra and sneak out to watch them; and while my city background had cut me off from the lives they led and I had no desire to live the life of a sharecropper, I found their unrhetorical activities on the old football field the more meaningful. (37–38)

You know how sometimes in life things don't go quite how you want them to? It's funny how getting ninety percent of want you want can be more depressing than getting nothing. I suppose it's the complacency of being so far from utter discontent that makes the final ten percent to perfection that much more bitter. But don't let the ease of the remaining work turn you indolent! With perfection in sight, it should be an easy matter to rally for the final assualt. Let imperfection serve only to inspire us, and let our efforts be to supplement the good fortune at hand rather than to detract from it through criticism.

(P.S. I'm talking about live music here.)

New Move! Start with a lindy circle. On 5, the lead steps around in front, as might typically be done on 9. But instead of blocking the follow to start a tuck turn, you prep her for a jump, which she executes on 6/7, continuing her turn CW. Lead can also jump and turn CW. End in open.

Thanks to Liz and Jason.

What did I learn at Rhythmic Arts 2007? Two things:

Occasionally I'll be dancing with a very decent follow, and things will be going well... And sometimes, (often enough to start making me suspicious), I'll lead something a bit unusual, and the follow will say, I'm sorry, I don't know what you're leading. Now normally a lead might take that as a signal that they're not leading very clearly.... I've always discounted these statements because in every case I've experienced, the follows have been correctly following whatever unusual move I was leading even up to the moment when they stop to express their confusion. You were just following it flawlessly-- how can you be confused?! I almost want to scream. But I tried leading more strongly this weekend (the difference being that this time I tried it with light follows that I trusted), and it seemed to work well. Now I'm excited to experiment with strong vs weak leads. Or rather, to find the trade-off between liquidity and clarity. Maybe it's just a signal that I haven't been leading very clearly :D

It is possible to take dancing for granted. This weekend, I did a much better job at balancing my dance time with my rest time than I've done in the past. I felt like I was almost continuously dancing the entire weekend-- I wasn't worn out two hours in to the night, and I wasn't sitting in the corner. By Sunday night, my body reached a state of proficiency that I haven't felt since ALX05. I've been to quite a few events since then, but I've basically wasted them. This weekend I've realized that I really need to put a lot of energy into dancing when I go to events, otherwise I may just as well go to San Diego venues, or dance in my bathtub. And I mean A LOT of energy! Remember how exciting it is to dance in a new place?! with new people?! with hundreds of new people from places of the country that you've never danced in?! to some of the best live music in the country?! for hours and hours on end?! having an entire weekend to find your groove, find the music, and just live lindy hop?! That's what an exchange is, and don't forget it!

That's it-- those are the two things.

Also, I took some good video clips, but better than that, I got two priceless mental images: the arch of Debbie Gitt's back (more on that later), and Andy Stockdale LHAO at Peter Loggins in the blues finals--

See you all next year!

Learn to read! This Christmas, give yourself the gift of literacy. Labanotation.

I want to make every song feel different from every other song. Every song is different from every other song, so I believe this is an achievable goal.

Well okay: how can this be done? I simply don't have the raw creativity to produce a new, insightful musical interpretation from thin air every three minutes. What I need for now is a starting point. Recently I've been playing with two simple ideas that I think are a good start to finding the unique character of a song: both have to do with aligning your movement with the underlying rhythm (or groove) of the song.

The first idea: Use the "ple" of the tri-ple-step; this is (perhaps) swing music, the "ple" is not a square eighth note. Listen to what the musicians are doing with their "ples"-- in some song's they'll emphasize it; in some, they'll hang back; in some, they'll rush it; in some, they'll make it skip. My "ple" should do all these things and more; my "ple" should be able to go anywhere between the "tri" and the "step" that best matches or complements what I hear.

The second idea: Move the "1", meaning start your swingout on a beat other than the downbeat of the measure. Each beat of the swingout has a different feel: imagine doing an endless sequence of swingouts, it would feel in some way like you're riding the surface of a wave that repeats every eight beats. I imagine that the music has a surface too, and ideally the wave of the dance should follow or accentuate or complement the surface of the music. The idea here is that the dance might fit certain music better if you shift it to one side or the other by some amount (by shifting the "1" to a different beat).

Those are just ideas I've been playing with to try to get started. Currently I feel that my dancing is pretty monotonous or discordant ninety percent of the time: either I get stuck repeating things I've already done hundreds of times, or I make up some random sequences that have little relation to the things I should be connected with. My goal and desire is to get the feeling of uniqueness and musical harmony to be the norm. Each song has its own personality, its own character, its own loves and lives; and I don't want to be blind to that.