Swing Dynamite Blog
Thoughts and news about swing dancing in Ottawa
Damon on Blues: Ballroomin’ vs Jookin’
[ No Comments ] Posted by byron on May 31, 2010 in General
Damon Stone, noted blues dancing expert, posted to Facebook an interesting answer to a common question about blues dancing: “What’s the difference between Jookin’ and Ballroomin?’” Both are styles or categories of blues dancing. The name Jookin’ comes from the “Juke joints,” the small shacks in the rural south where cheap liquor, musicians and dancers met, and where these styles of blues dancing were born. Ballroomin’ refers to blues styles that tended to be done in ballrooms, where other dances such as Lindy Hop were popular.
The post was good enough that I felt it should be shared beyond just Facebook. I’ve been asked this question many times in Ottawa and Damon’s answer has detailed insights about the differences in movement and interpretation.
Damon writes:
Keith Shapiro asked me what difference I saw and what I instructed the bluesSHOUT! judges to look for in these two styles of blues dance. I thought others may find the information interesting enough to spark conversation.
Sometimes Talent is Just Luck
[ 2 Comments ] Posted by byron on May 26, 2010 in General
Why is that other dancer getting things faster than you? Winning contests while you can’t even make finals? It might not be talent. It must be just luck.
Swing Dynamite just came back from the Canadian Swing Championships, where over 30 of our team members, teachers, and students came to dance, compete, cheer and party. And every year that I see dancers compete for their first time at a major competition, I see the same secret hope: everyone wants to be that guy or girl. You know, the won who comes in and wins the very first competition they enter. From unknown to rock star in a heartbeat.
Of course, the chances of that are staggeringly low, even for a dancer with lots of true natural talent, because even if your dancing is that good, there’s still luck involved–whether you ended up with the right partner in the Jack ‘n Jill contest, loved or hated the songs they played, or lost your shoe in the fast round.
But beyond that, there’s a lot more LUCK behind “natural talent” than you might think.
We often talk about “talent” as though it were just a question of how much natural coordination and musical creativity you were born with. And that’s definitely an important part of it. But talent isn’t just that.
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