Blues Dancing, love or hate.

Blues dancing is a bit like Marmite, you either love it or hate it, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.  For most lindy hoppers ‘Blues’ dancing happens at the after party of a swing night.  Apart from carrying on dancing, (we never ever know when to stop), there’s an opportunity to relax with a drink, catch up with people and an excuse to flirt to the boys or girls that might have caught your eye and not stepped on your feet.  

I particularly like this definition from the St Louis Blues Exchange:

“Blues dance enables intense individuality in expressing the music. It really is all about communication, emphasizing that the music, not the dancer, leads the dance; we are simply the interpreters.”

http://www.bluesdance.org.uk/32161/index.html

The music is usually Afro-American ‘Blues’ but I’ve had all sorts come up, personally I’m not a traditionalist and I don’t mind.  The constant flow, our development and expression of these dances keeps them alive and relevant.  The best Blues dances are sensual, even erotic but mostly a great lead-follow communication, possible with trust.  I close my eyes and melt.  No thinking, just feeling the movement, weight changing from foot to foot, from note to beat.  

Some favourites... what's yours??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9F1r4iBdyQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukP5FTR-GdY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHIiWQLhfp4

The first time I dance ‘proper’ Blues, I’m in masked costume (see left) attending an evening put on by The Herrang Dance Camp, the lindy hoppers’ Mecca in Sweden.   About an hour’s drive from Stockholm in the small village of Herrang, dancers gather every year.  Herrang is an amazing trip into another world, one I will share on another post.  http://www.herrang.com/en/

My initiation to slow dancing in this other world is very different to my first school disco’s last, cheesiest, slowest dance.  I remember dancing very slowly with William, shuffle, shuffle, my first kiss followed.  This is different, having never danced serious Blues before I’m not sure I want to.  The idea of getting intimately close to guys I don’t know and I’m not sleeping with, doesn’t really appeal.  I wonder how I will dance the long, slow, song out with just one person and very few moves. 

However, there’s a beautiful, quite a bit younger, Blues enthusiast in my dance class that I have a big crush on.  His passion for Blues and the electric chemistry I feel between us while we dance, makes me realise that if I could ‘Blues Dance’ with anyone, he would be a good choice.

With my mask in place, there is something very Eyes Wide Shut about dancing intimately with men I don’t know and some whose faces I can’t see.  I have notions of being in a smoky 1930’s nightclub, where the odd sorts end up; peculiar, lonely misfits hang out and slow dance their troubled nights away to the crooning great Blues Daddy’s.  It is like Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet and I’m caught in a scene.  I hide into the music and the moment, disappearing, unconscious of the sordid plot in which my active imagination gives me a part.  I stop off at the Bar before going to the dance floor, I have no idea how this evening will turn out, “he’s way too young” I repeat to myself. 

Some boys cleverly take liberties during a second dance, most behave.  There are  a few times when I've felt undressed by my partners and once I had to physically hold myself away from a suffocatingly close hold, but these have been rare occasions and usually make me laugh.  I have male friends that complain of over friendly followers, it seems we give as much as we get, I can't blame it on the boys...

The boy is gone, but the pre Blues-dancing drinking ritual is a permanent fixture, it get’s me into character, sipping from a tall, precarious glass, wearing the correct style of dress...  I now choose to be pretty tipsy before I get on the Blues dance floor… I know it’s not funny, not clever, but it IS the Blues honey, and for me, it works.

My drink of choice is a dirty martini.  No one knows where the ‘Martini’ came from for sure, Lord knows how it got dirty… but it’s my favourite, the dirtier the better.  In fact, I’m wondering if one day, I’ll just ask for the jar of olives, a double shot of vodka and a little dry vermouth.   Espresso Martinis, Manhattans and Cosmopolitans come next, but for blues dancing Dirty Martinis seem more appropriate.