Reflections on Feminism & Follower-focused events

(Cross-posted to the Southern Belle Swing Blog.)

I’m so excited that we’ll be putting on our fourth annual Southern Belle Swing Bash this year. It’s hard to believe we’ve been going so long already! I remember how much of an impact the first year had on my own dancing, and every year I try to help craft a weekend that will help more followers to experience those kinds of breakthroughs.

This April I was lucky to get up to visit one of the other (many!) woman-centered jazz events that are now popping up all over, the Northeast Girl Jam. Jojo Jackson put together a stellar event, much like our own Southern Belle Swing Bash that first year (one big class for everybody, Nina Gilkenson & Naomi Uyama were two of their instructors), and it just reinforced for me that these events are really making a positive impact in so many ways.

One of my roles that weekend was to give a lunchtime film clip presentation of “Lady Jazz Dancers of the 20^th Century.” As I got ready to give the presentation, I was reading over a printed statement that Jojo and Giselle Anguizola (organizer of the first California Girl Jam) had set out on the registration table, explaining their reasons for putting on girl jams. And reading their words, I felt inspired to do a little “preaching” during my presentation. I’ve always felt that there was a synergy between organizing Southern Belles and my personal commitment to feminism, and at that moment I thought: “Yes! This is it!” My opening remarks for the film clip presentation went something like this:

My first all-nighter.

Well, tonight was my first time DJ’ing the whole dance. (Thanks, Jesse!) I thought it went pretty well. Not my most amazing set EV-AR, but since it’s a hometown gig, I don’t go in expecting that anyway. I was feeling better about it after the compliments I got at Northeast Girl Jam on my DJ’ing sets there. So I tried to take advantage of the opportunity and play a wide range of stuff. Actually, I ended up playing a couple of songs where I even surprised myself at playing them. (See if you can guess which ones.)

Also someone requested a “fast” song for an East Coast dancer, and my best attempt at that one was “Choo Choo Ch Boogie.” I don’t have a huge collection of Neo-swing to bust out whenever someone asks. I’m an anti-request DJ anyway, but I did my best for this particular situation. I have no idea if it was satisfactory or not.

I started off the night hovering around 140 bpm, for the beginners (since they had seemed to be comfortable at about 130 bpm, and I didn’t want to set them up to feel like the whole night was too fast for them). Then I slowly bumped it up to 150 bpm range, then moved to 160-175 bpms around 10pm, and then dropped it down to 120-130 for a handful of songs to “convince” the newbies not to leave early.

The weird part was, having DJ’d half the night so many times, I felt like I should have been done at 10:30pm. But I still had half an hour! Then I got back into the groove, and by the time I played “Ain’t What You Do,” I realized to my surprise the dance was basically over. So it will take a bit of getting used to the new timeframe before I can set things up right. (Personal criticism of the night: I peaked too early.)

Wednesday, May 30, 2007: Our Bodies, Our Instruments

(Migrated from Myspace.)

I came away from Camp Jitterbug last weekend with a truckload of tree-hugging hippy crap. And it’s awesome. Allow me to share:

From more than one person, but particularly from Ramona and Andy & Nina, I got the message loud and clear that when you get to the top of the heap, the next place you go is back to the beginning. Forget every fancy footwork variation you ever learned. Forget what you’re supposed to do with your left arm. Forget looking pretty all the time and concentrating so hard on how you’re moving your body. Instead: Relax, relax, relax. Only use what you really need. The dance is supposed to be about joy, and you can’t let the joy in if you’re too busy thinking about exactly how your swivel looks or if you’ve got your arm in a nice line or how you’re going to get back on the proper foot after this crazy footwork pattern you’re about to whip out.

Our bodies are instruments, and there is a deep difference between playing a chord progression you learned from a teacher or copied from someone else and finding your own voice, your own melody. The hardest thing is to take down the barriers we’ve learned and built up over the years and instead to have truly engaged, honest dancing. Ask yourself: how often do I really look into my partner’s eyes? Chances are most of us are busy looking down at our own feet or (if you’re me) staring at the clavicle of your partner’s chest to pay attention to their face, their expression, their emotion. There can be so many emotions to dancing, and this is something I never truly appreicated before. Dancing can be like acting. You can be the jilted lover in a Bessie Smith song, or you can be the wild woman who don’t get the blues. Apparently you can even dance angry, although that tends to draw me in rather than open me out.

The biggest struggle, at least for me, is to turn away from the drama of the caste-system that so much of our scene has become, and instead to look inward to what I really feel, how I really want to move. To access the glowing bundle of Lindy energy and joy inside me and to send it on its happy way through my every limb and muscle. To look up, into my partner’s face, to look up at the world and not to be afraid to find somone looking back. To allow people to be drawn in, rather than asking them so desperately to please look, look at me. Find my own joy, and allow that joy to draw others in. Find the extra levels, the extra personalities, the infinite possibilities that I had unconsciously and unknowingly foreclosed. This is a new path, a new me. It’s all very Zen.

I don’t know what it means to dance like Gina right now, but the more that I can strip away the layers and patterns and imitations I’ve built up over the past 5 years, the more I’ll find out how. Because I have a feeling that dancing like myself feels amazing.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007: More thoughts on DJ’ing

(Migrated from Myspace.)

Well, the manifesto had its day and its theoretical uses. I get so analytical sometimes, but I can’t help it. I’m an academic.

Today I’m reflecting on my DJ set last night at Hot Jam and my experience DJ’ing Saturday night for Enter the Blues. Here’s my Hot Jam set list, if you’re curious:

On The Sunny Side Of The Street - Roy Milton
Trouble Blues - Joe Turner
Come On Over To My House - Julia Lee And Her Boyfriends
Baby Don’t You Tear My Clothes - Harlem Hamfats
Ain’t Misbehavin’ - Kay Starr featuring Novelty Orchestra
The Stolen Alphabet - String Swing
Minor Swing - Django Reinhardt & Stephan Grappelli
For Dancers Only - Junior Mance (out of towners jam)
Old Man River - Ernie Andrews
If You’re A Viper - Harlem Hamfats
Mardi Gras Boogie - Joe Turner
Julia’s Blues - Julia Lee And Her Boyfriends
St. Louis Blues - Louis Armstrong
Rock Me Baby - Etta James
Poison Ivy - Willie Mabon
Gal from Joe’s - Erskine Hawkins
Ridin’ And Jivin’ - Earl Hines
Hesitation Blues - Wingy Manone
Teardrops From My Eyes - Ruth Brown
Barrelhouse Bessie From Basin Street - Bob Crosby
Honeysuckle Rose - Kay Starr featuring Novelty Orchestra
‘Taint Me - Roy Milton
Coleslaw - Jesse Stone & His Orchestra
Shoe Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy - Ella Fitzgerald
(and after yells of “one more song,” I whipped this out on the fly)
Hound Dog - Big Mama Thornton

Thursday, February 15, 2007: Solo Blues Firsts

(Migrated from Myspace.)

Last weekend at the Valentine’s Uproar in Nashville (which was a wicked good time), it was sort of impromptu-announced that there would be a solo blues competition, with the prize being a pass to the Buenos Aires Blues event Dan Parshall is putting on.

It was free to enter, so I decided to give it the old “what the heck” shot and enter. Thing is: I had never danced “solo blues” before in my entire life ever. I’d seen some video of solo blues competitions. I’d seen the clip from “The Spirit Moves”. But I’d never actually really tried dancing it myself. Lucky me, however, I’d been taking a belly dance class series during the previous weeks. I figured I could borrow some serious hip-motion stuff and hand movements from my belly dance class.

What ended up happening for me was, I think, inspired by the message I got from Ramona during her masters class earlier that day. It was partly about making ourselves vulnerable when we dance, by opening ourselves up to our partner (or in this case the audience) and partly about feeling the music and letting it tell me how to move.