Week 16: Blues Dancing

I wrote a post a few months back about Swing dancing and what I love about it. Swing dancing is definitely one of the great pleasures in my life, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Recently, we’ve also started exploring Blues dancing, and have really been enjoying it as an extension of our dance experience.

I first heard about Blues when we had just started with Swing. Our local social dance would have a regular “Swing and Blues” night, with beginner lessons in each. We did attempt a couple of Blues lessons at that time, but we were so new to everything that it was too overwhelming to pursue both styles.  As we became more and more immersed in the various types of Swing dancing, Blues completely fell off our radar.

Then, a little over a year ago, the local Blues dancing group, Bearcat Blues, was offering a workshop aimed at people who had dance experience, though not specifically Blues dance experience. That sounded like us, and we were interested in expanding our knowledge a bit, so we signed up.

At that time, we were just dipping a toe into Blues, and while we quite enjoyed the workshops, we didn’t really do anything with what we’d learned. We didn’t practice, so we quickly forgot everything. We meant to go to one of their social dances, but they occur at the same time as our regular Friday night dance, so we never made it.

One year later (this past summer) there were some informal classes being offered in a small group format, similarly aimed at dancers who weren’t experienced with Blues, so we signed up.

For 6 weeks, we met downtown and spent an hour and a half at a time learning different basic techniques, as well as some of the history of the origins of Slow Jazz and Traditional Blues dancing.

Like all the jazz-related dances, Blues dancing is rooted in African movement. I don’t feel informed enough to try to explain the historical context in my own words, but I found a little summary on a New York Blues dancing site, which is brief, but informative: https://bluesdancenewyork.com/what-is-blues/  It is definitely something that I’m interested in learning more about, just not in time for this post.

Blues dancing includes all the things I love about Swing dancing (as listed in my other post), but it is also quite different in a lot of ways. Contrasted with my Swing dancing experience, this is what Blues is to me, so far:

Tempo – Blues is danced to jazz music, and this is definitely one of the things that is so appealing about it. Over the past few years, I have heard a lot more jazz than ever in my life before that, and it is fantastic. Obviously, this has come up in numerous posts already, but what I haven’t really gotten into is the speed of the music.

As swing dancers, we mainly dance to the medium- to fast-paced songs. When a slow song comes on, we either take a breather, or we can awkwardly do some slow Lindy Hop. There are definitely swing dancers out there that can make Slow Lindy look fantastic, but I’m not really there yet. Instead of trying to make that work, I’m just switching gears completely and attempting a whole new thing.

When there is live jazz at a social dance, the band tends to stick within a certain range of tempos, aimed at the crowd they are playing for, however; if you go to see a jazz performance, in general, you can expect to hear them play both very fast and very slow songs. If I can also Blues dance, I can dance to ALL the songs.

Connection – I am sure there are all kinds of intricate Blues “moves” to learn, but as a new dancer in this style, there seems to be a lot more emphasis on connecting with your partner and the music, rather than learning specific footwork patterns.

The partner connection is much different than in Swing, and I have found that there is a lot more opportunity for swing dancers to get away with having a lot of moves, and never really bothering to improve their partner connection. This makes them much less fun to dance with, though not impossible, and from the outside looking in, they may even look quite skilled.

I would love it if more people focussed on improving their connection rather than learning flashy moves. I am looking for people that I enjoy dancing with, more than people that are interesting to watch. (PSA: You can be both!! But please start with being a better partner.)

From what I’ve learned so far, Blues is mainly danced in close embrace, which is very similar to Balboa. I’m sure my Balboa experience is helpful here, but I also know I have a lot to learn and I am very eager to do that. As in Balboa, if you don’t have good connection, the whole dance is a total disaster. Once you get there though, ssoooo sooo good.

(I think this is also the main appeal of Balboa, to me. It may not be as impressive to watch as Lindy Hop, but it is super enjoyable to experience when you have a good connection with your partner and the music.)

Solo Improvisation – To me, this is the scariest part of Blues. I have never liked being the centre of attention and have no interest in performing. Somehow having a dance partner makes things much easier for me. Also, as a follower, I love being able to rely on my partner to decide what’s happening next. Admittedly, I’m not thrilled with their ideas 100% of the time, but as I addressed in my Swing dancing post, this is the one area of my life where I can just be in the moment and not have to make decisions, so I find it’s still a good trade-off.

Solo dancing does come up in Swing dancing, but there’s not always as much emphasis on it as in Blues, so I’ve mostly been able to avoid it. While Blues dancing is still a lead/follow dance, there is more opportunity and expectation of solo improvisation and this is an area where I am not very comfortable. I expect that as I become more familiar with the movement of the dance with a partner, I will also become more relaxed about this part. (Fingers crossed, anyway.)

What I do know is that from Day One, over 6 years ago, dance has forced me out of my comfort zone on a regular basis, and this has improved my life in almost every aspect. I see no reason to sit back now when there’s so much more to explore, and I’m really looking forward to expanding my repertoire so that I can more fully appreciate and enjoy traditional swing and blues jazz music, at whatever tempo is being played.