Thoughts and news about swing dancing in Ottawa
Posted by byron on 03.18.10 12:18PM under 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.
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