Swing Dynamite Blog

Thoughts and news about swing dancing in Ottawa

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CSC 2010 Results

[ No Comments ] Posted by byron on Jun 10, 2010 in Competitions, Ottawa, Swing Dancing

Swing Dynamite – and therefore Ottawa – had another great year at the Canadian Swing Championships in 2010.

This year everyone from Ottawa who placed was connected with Swing Dynamite in some way–as a teacher, coach, team member (current or past) or student, which makes us especially proud both for representing Ottawa so well once again, and for the success we’ve had in training dancers. Many of the dancers below were competing for their very first time, and ended up making finals or even placing at Canada’s biggest swing competition!

Just some of the awards Swing Dynamite won at CSC 2010

Here’s a comprehensive list of our accomplishments this year. Competitors are listed even if they are no longer team members, and even if they’ve since moved out of Ottawa – we’re still proud of you! I’ve listed placements below 3rd place as “finalist” unless the placement was particularly noteworthy for the number of competitors or level of competition:

Congratulations everyone! Kaboom!

Teaching Advanced Dancers

[ No Comments ] Posted by byron on Jun 04, 2010 in General, Swing Dancing, Teaching Dance

We’re at an exciting place with swing dancing in Ottawa: the rise of the advanced dancers.

When we first started Swing Dynamite in 2006, the advanced dancer was a rare breed. Most dancers were beginners. If you could do a decent swingout you were pretty good!

The challenge in teaching dancers at that beginner/intermediate level is like the old metaphor of holding a bird in your hand: to grasp firmly enough to keep it from flying away, but gently enough that you don’t crush it. Similarly, what most dancers need is a balance between giving them the technique they need in order to move and connect better, and the freedom to play, create and simply have fun.

Things change with advanced dancers. At some point dancers need a new kind of guidance. You have to let the bird fly away. And very few teachers understand this. Even the top teachers in the world often tend to focus on getting everyone to dance the way they do, when what the advanced dancers really need is to discover their own style.

That’s where we’ve gotten with many of Ottawa’s dancers now: they’re good enough that I have to be cautious about coaching them, because they’re in that zone where it’s not all about “good vs. bad” anymore: now it’s about their evolving personal style. So I have to focus a lot on differentiating between “poor technique/expression/creative choices” and “not going far enough in their own direction.”

For example, let’s say I hated big kicks, but Joe loves them. I could be inclined to say that Joe’s kicks are too big, which is what I’d tell him as a beginner. But when he’s an advanced dancer, I have to realize that maybe “big kicks” are going to be his thing, and I need to just back the hell off and let him evolve a big kicking style that totally works for him.

Because there’s something even worse than getting Joe to do smaller kicks. The worst thing is if he goes half way. Because if he’s going to start the new “crazy big kicking style” craze in the swing scene, he can’t do it with medium-sized kicks.

His style can’t be a half-way point between my style and where he wants to go. He needs to just embrace his inner kickiness and run with it.

Maybe it will turn out that his big kicky style is uglier than a mashup of 70′s leisure suits with 80′s hair styles. But so be it. That voyage of self-discovery is the whole point of becoming a better dancer. And just as it’s a necessary ritual to have embarrassing photos in your high school year book, going through weird phases in your dancing is part of the journey.

As teachers, that’s why it’s a tough call: giving good advice, and not letting poor technique or bad habits masquerade as “personal style,” but also knowing when to shut up and let people find their own way.

Great Technique Allows You to Improvise

[ No Comments ] Posted by byron on Mar 18, 2010 in Swing Dancing

From the very beginning when I took my first dance classes, improvisation was always the thing that interested me the most. It probably began years ago when I saw a Salsa demo that blew my mind. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a choreography–how could they be so in sync? How could she follow such complex moves without rehearsing the order beforehand? And how could he react so well to her, in the moment?

As it turns out, what’s most important is making the fundamental technique as solid and instinctive as possible. Years ago after doing a performance with the Swinging Air Force at la Place des Arts (Montreal’s largest music theatre), our client said to us, “it’s amazing how you look like you’re having so much fun!” I replied that in order to actually have fun on stage, you had to first put in enough hours of dance training and rehearsal that you no longer had to think about the movements or the routine. The bottom line: for it to be truly fun, there had to be a lot of work first.

Adrian Cho has a great post on his site, the Jazz Process, about this: how great innovation comes from great execution, in both jazz and business.

This is a principle that we use a lot in our swing classes at Swing Dynamite. A huge part of the strategy behind our course design, in particular for beginner swing classes, is keeping the order right for those steps. Learning technique first helps the execution. But we also have to keep it fun!

Improv isn’t just a central part of swing dancing–it’s also what makes the dance so exciting! And as it happens, any classically trained musician will tend to agree that if you spend too long working on technique without improvisation, it’s very hard to improvise. So how do we teach enough fundamental technique yet also introduce improvisation?

The key is in using a cyclical rather than linear approach. We start off in our first beginner swing classes (eg. Swing I) by introducing very simple rhythms and patterns. The simplicity means that we can drill the rhythms and basic lead/follow principles until they become instinctive, and the basic patterns fade into the background. That’s when the improvisation can occur. The idea is that if the basic pattern is simple enough for a dancer at that level to master, then we can start introducing variations on the pattern.

This cyclical approach repeats throughout the classes. You start with a basic pattern, you learn how to mix it up, and then you revisit how you can improve your technique so that improvising around the pattern is easier. And then you’re on to learning a new pattern.

Of course, part of this learning process is that in order to learn a social dance like Lindy Hop or other swing styles, you need to social dance–to simply get out there and dance with random people. The secret is that after doing enough social dancing, the basic patterns you’ve learned become imprinted in your brain and it feels like your body can do them on its own. That’s when you’re ready for more.

Swinging to Change the World

[ No Comments ] Posted by byron on Mar 10, 2010 in General, Ottawa, Ottawa Dance Events, Swing Dancing

Swing dancing doesn’t have to be all about the dancing. It’s about the people, the music, the connections we make. And I’ve always hoped it could be about even more.

Running a dance school is enough of a challenge, but running a dance school dedicated to the little-known dances of Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing, Balboa, Blues, Shag and so on, is the kind motivation for entrepreneurship that they warn you about in business school. You’re supposed to start businesses that will make money, not just make people happy.

But for us at Swing Dynamite, it’s always been about spreading the happiness and excitement that we find in Swing dancing. Natalia, our artistic director, was speaking not long ago with her father, who said he was proud of her because her work makes people happy. It’s exactly right: we all began swing dancing because it was fun, because going out dancing and interacting with people made us happier. And we started teaching and performing in order to spread that joy of swing dancing to more people.

What’s really amazing, though, is when we can go beyond just spreading happiness through the dance, to changing people’s lives in other important ways. Since not long after we founded Swing Dynamite, we’ve been involved in doing charity work, organizing benefits, teaching classes at reduced rates for underprivileged children, and doing performances for fundraisers. Recently we managed to raise money for Haiti and medical aid to Cuba, as well as performed and offered services for a few different charity organizations such as the Canadian Paraplegic Association. For all of us, this is an important contribution.

There’s a hidden benefit to companies working with charities to offer services: recent research shows that non-profits are often seen as less competent, offering less valuable or professional services than businesses. Think of it this way: you might want to support a charity, but would you rather buy a TV set made by Sony, or by the Cancer society? It’s an extreme example, but when businesses get behind charities they can increase the perceived value and professionalism of the organization. If you can buy a Sony TV and have some proceeds go to the Cancer society, it’s a win-win, right? Similarly, we hope that as one of Canada’s top swing dance groups, our participation makes people even more excited about attending charity events, helping to increase the attendance and funds raised. It’s one thing to attend a 40′s themed charity ball, but (we think) something much more exciting to attend when Swing Dynamite is teaching dance lessons and doing performances to set the mood and create excitement.

It’s great when swing dancing can be about something greater than the dancing, or even our little dance community–when swing can help to change the world just a little bit.

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start

[ 8 Comments ] Posted by brynzapoppin on Oct 13, 2008 in Swing Dancing

How better to begin a blog about dancing than to write about beginning to dance?

When I first started dancing, I felt completely unconnected to my peers. The only real thing that has ever unified the swing scene as a whole is the fact that we all dance (and incidentally, there’s a certain awesomeness to that; it’s amazing how diverse and yet friendly and hospitable the lindy hop world is). But nevertheless–not knowing much about dancing, nor having much of a history with it–I had very little in common with these practical strangers, and the only questions I could think to ask were, “how long have you been dancing?” and, “how did you start?”

I stopped asking those questions right around the same time I became really serious about dancing. Suddenly I was more interested in discussing the finer points of the rock step than I was in finding out about the people I was dancing with or what had brought them there. It’s funny (and sad), in retrospect, given that I’ve always been powerfully curious about the human mind. But there I was, furiously working toward becoming the best dancer and best teacher I could be, and losing sight of the forest for the trees.

The forest, of course, being composed primarily of people. The number one reason why people start swing dancing has nothing to do with wanting to master the art of triple steps and everything to do with other people. Swing dancing is a great a way to mix and mingle, build friendships, discover relationships, make real physical contact (so sorely lacking from our society today), and–for many–to develop social graces. Certainly the social aspect has been one of the most important parts of it for me, and I am grateful for the friendships and the networks I’ve developed through my dance travels, through our local dance community, and especially through our own dance company. Nearly all of the most important people in my life are fellow dancers. And yet, in many cases, I don’t even know what brought them to that fateful spot where our lives met.

Lately, I’ve gone back to asking the question of how people started dancing, and already I’ve learned a lot from it. The answer offers insight into the person they were (and are) outside of dancing; outside of the most obvious string tying us all together. It’s a starting point for digging beneath the surface and building up a friendship that is deeper than a mutual hobby. It even reminds me of the person I was (and am) outside of dancing; the person who cares intensely about other people and about what makes them tick.

As a teacher and a scene-builder, I think this return to the roots is important for bringing new people on board. Sometimes, I think too much emphasis is placed on turning beginners into expert dancers with refined musical taste. Now, I may spend my days (and nights) dissecting my posture and movement in comparison with those of my favourite pros, and I may drool at the sounds of Count Basie, Sidney Bechet, and Robert Johnson, but ultimately… I do this because I love the people, because I love the feeling of dancing with sheer abandon and sharing that with the people around me, and because nothing brings me greater joy than seeing the smiles on my students’ faces when they don’t know I’m looking.

Back around the time of its inception, swing dancing was an essential ingredient in the lives of millions during periods of war and economic depression (something to think about with the state of the world the way it is right now). A big part of that (perhaps the biggest part) is because swing dancing is a community celebration. It brings people together in a way few other things can.

But it can’t do all the work on its own. We need to talk, too. Back in the day, people mixed dancing with lounging, drinking, and socializing. It was a natural way of life for them. But today, because most of us aren’t fortunate enough to have grown up with social dancing as a regular part of our lives, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in one part of the term (dancing) and forget about the other (social).

So… let’s start talking. I want to know: Why did you start dancing?

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