Thoughts and news about swing dancing in Ottawa
Posted by byron on 04.26.11 8:27AM under Getting Good at Swing Dancing, Learning Swing Dance
I’ve heard this question asked so many times that it’s become a formula:
Will learning X make me better at Y?
Here are some variations I’ve seen:
The answer is only partly intuitive. Obviously, practicing X doesn’t make you as good at Y as just practicing Y. Ask any athlete: cross training has both advantages and disadvantages. Learning blues by doing Tango, or vintage jazz by doing hip hop, is like trying to get good at soccer by practicing ballet, sprinting and karate. Sure, you’ll get great balance, learn to kick stuff, and run fast. But it’s NOT SOCCER.
Back when I was playing rugby, when it came to kicking I was at a disadvantage compared to the guys who were also on the soccer team. If I’d started playing soccer, it would have made me better at kicking–obviously kicking is just a much bigger part of soccer than rugby, so at the very least it would mean a lot more kicking practice. But on the other hand, there are major differences–such as soccer balls being shaped very differently from rugby balls. At the end of the day, it would be a better choice to simply practice kicking a rugby ball.
Every dance style has its own aesthetic, and range of motion. Each one has areas of focus that become strengths, and peculiarities that stand out from other dances. So when you learn another dance style, you benefit from expanding the range of movements you’re comfortable doing, but you also train certain habits that won’t work for other dance styles. Here are some examples:
Ballet: Ballet creates a very strong posture and core, amazing turning skills, and a wide range of leg motions. The upright posture is better for West Coast Swing, not great for Lindy Hop or Blues, and swing dances use body articulations in very different ways.
Hip Hop: The different styles of Hip Hop are great for improving body articulation and some parts of the movement that you’ll see in Lindy Hop and Blues dancing since they’re in the same historical lineage, however the musical interpretation is somewhat different, and there are some movements that are completely different. Hip Hop will help inspire your WCS stylings, but the posture and lines need to be adapted.
Tango: The slow control of Argentine Tango is great for improving slow dancing in general, and the body lead/follow has some things in common with Blues and Balboa–but it’s a case of “similar, but clearly different.” For example Tango eliminates the vertical pulse that Blues and Balboa use, and the posture feels quite different.
Belly Dancing: Similarly to Hip Hop, the body isolations give you more control of your body. But the bottom line: it’s not the same as swing dance movements.
Contemporary: Contemporary dancing has enormous strengths in the exercises for learning to understand and control your body better as well as express yourself and improvise. It also teaches dancers to be very grounded. But the partnering work is quite different from swing dancing, and once again the aesthetics and movements of each swing dance are quite different from what you’ll see in contemporary dance.
Tap: Rhythm Tap is by origin a jazz dance form, which makes it closely related to dances such as Lindy Hop. Many Lindy Hoppers have learned to tap as a result. Tap helps explore rhythms and improves your footwork control, but you’ll still have to learn how to integrate it all into your actual partnered swing dancing.
But why stop at other dance styles? What about martial arts, sports and other activities?
Sometimes if you’re hitting a big block in your development as a dancer, cross-training can help you get over it.
But for the most part, trying other styles isn’t a shortcut, it’s a detour. If you really want to get good at swing dancing, doing other things won’t get you there. You need to just take some swing lessons, and get out there and dance.
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Posted by Bryan Larsen on 04.26.11 3:14 pm
You’re missing a few reasons to learn other dances:
- move stealing. Other dances have cool moves you can steal and adapt.
- lead-follow practice. Other dances have more or less rigid lead-follow that differ widely in style and connection points. Learn to lead and follow with other body parts. Learn to recognize other lead/follow styles and take advantage of them on the swing dance floor. If you can feel tango in a follower, you can ask them do all sorts of cool stuff.
- add variety to your swing night. If it’s got a Latin beat, you can do a cha-cha instead of Lindy Hop. (But please learn a nice street style rather than the abomination they teach at ballroom dance studios). I’ve done rhumba, night-club two, polka, fox trot, two-step and tango at swing dances. The strangest though, is doing a viennese-style waltz to music in a 12/8 tempo. Lots of fun, though!
- mood. Other styles of dances express different moods. Practice emoting these moods when it’s obvious/easy because of the style of dance. This makes it easier to bring out in your swing. Paso Doble, American-style Tango, Argentianian-style Tango, Waltz and Bachata are dances that I find have particularly strong emotions. Learn the difference between bachata-sexy and blues-sexy. Use them both in the same dance.
- bring back the basics. To a swinger, the slow waltz probably feels pretty boring. Until you get good at it, when it becomes one of the most interesting ballroom dances. Not because of the fancy moves, but just because of the way it feels on the dance floor. Now go and try and recreate that connection in your Lindy Hop.
Posted by byron on 04.27.11 1:17 pm
Awesome comment Bryan! As a matter of fact I was planning a follow-up post to this one to cover some of those topics.
The thrust of this post is that often I hear people talking as though learning Tango or other dances is a shortcut to improving their swing dancing, and that’s simply not true. It’s not a shortcut but it can be an enhancement. For example, it can be a fun exercise to take a Salsa move and do it in Lindy Hop. But it’s even easier to just steal more Lindy Hop moves.
As for the mood thing, I really agree–but part of it is that swing dance classes rarely explore that enough. A good trick for exploring different moods can simply be to learn very different swing-related styles, like blues vs. Bal vs. Lindy vs. WCS.
And working on basics: also a good point. It’s a trick that Steven and Virginie have been using for years, to teach people a different dance and then put it in a swing context. It’s also a way to put a microscope over something that is easier to neglect in Lindy Hop but becomes crucial in a different dance style.
Above all I feel that learning other dance styles is better as a source of inspiration for advanced dancers, not so much a tool for progressing as a beginner or intermediate swing dancer. Of course that’s only from a cross-training perspective. I really like Salsa as a dance, for example, regardless of how it helps or hinders my swing dancing. Learning other dances is fun for its own sake.
Posted by byron on 05.12.11 11:01 am
Here’s the follow-up to this post, a bit in line with what Bryan was saying:
When Expanding Your Horizons Helps Your Swing Dancing