Social dancing is an optional activity, so people can simply not do it during these days of the CoronaVirus. One of the dances that would be most dangerous is the Salsa Rueda. The people most impacted are dance teachers, who are unable to make a living now. But where there’s a will there’s a way … or several ways. One way is to sit down, maintaining the required “social distance” and avoiding heavy breathing. Another way is to minimize contact by using hula hoops and gloves.
Why do men die young(er) than women? There are lots of reasons. One of those reasons is “It’s Always the Man’s Fault.” That is especially true in social dancing, not only because that is chivalrous, but also because the man is in charge (he leads, she follows). In fact, it is one of the few times that a woman has to do exactly what a man tells her to do. But that causes a lot of stress and strain of leading. We have heard dance teachers opine that it takes a man four times as long as a woman to learn a dance figure.
The worlds of competition dancing and social dancing don’t overlap too much. Sometimes the studios where they learn do overlap, though. Wilddancer and wife took many lessons from another Senior Champion, James Kleinrath, at the now-extinct Imperial Ballroom in Redwood City, CA, where we frequently saw Winston and Lily Chow practicing. Their devotion and discipline were admirable, and it paid off when they won a Senior Championship. James told us that to become really good dancers, one needs to enjoy practicing. Perhaps that separates competition dancers from social dancers, because we did not have the time nor the attitude to do that much practice. And we wanted to be able to do a wider range of dances than most competitors can do, enabling us to dance in a wide range of venues to a wide range of music. Plus, the social dance floor is a whole different place, with dancers of all abilities that need to be avoided, while competitors normally can expect other competitors to obey the “rules of the road”.
Couples usually go dancing for fun. And depending on the tempo of the dance and the length of time they dance, it is also good for fitness. But according to recent research, there is an additional benefit from dancing that doesn’t occur from exercise such as walking or running that produces the same amount of sweat. That benefit is improved balance which, especially for older folks (those same ones that actually know how to do touch dancing), can prevent falls and injuries (sometimes so serious they are hospitalized and die). This benefit comes from the unpredictability of a partner’s actions (similar benefits occur in doubles tennis). Skeptics could point out that the less skillful the dancers, the greater the benefit, while advocates could argue that the more skillful dancers have a lot more alternative moves, so they can surprise their partners in a variety of different ways, providing pleasure both to themselves and to onlookers.
Some of the best songs written about cars are among the best ones for dancing, too. Wilddancer often gets asked by dancers (who’ve had some lessons, so they know the difference between an east coast and a west coast swing, for example) to recommend songs for bands or DJs to play for dancing. Here is our personal list, which fortunately includes seven different dance steps:
1. Cuda Janet (Plymouth Barracuda) by Wild Bill Coggshall (2014) – West Coast Swing
2. Pink Cadillac (Cadillac) by Bruce Springsteen (1984) – Hustle
3. Little GTO (Pontiac GTO) by Ronny and the Daytonas (1964) – East Coast Swing
4. One Piece at a Time (Cadillac) by Johnny Cash (1976) – Country 2-Step
5. Hot Rod Lincoln (Lincoln) by Commander Cody et al (1972) – 10-Step (this is a kind of polka that’s simple but fast; you can see it on YouTube
6. Mustang Sally (Ford Mustang) by Wilson Pickett (1966) – West Coast Swing
7. Little Deuce Coupe (1932 Ford) by Beach Boys (1963) – East Coast Swing
8. Little Red Corvette (Chevrolet Corvette) by Prince (1983) – Cha Cha
9. Jaguar and Thunderbird (Jaguar & Ford Thunderbird) by Chuck Berry – Country 2-Step
10. In My Merry Oldsmobile (Oldsmobile) by Bing Crosby – Viennese Waltz
Social dancing is where you find it. In our persona as Wilddancers we have danced in large public squares and parks in China (as the only Caucasians present–and with the background of a bunch of dance lessons–we naturally drew a crowd, all of whom wanted to dance with each of us). And this outdoor dancing happens in the U.S. as well … especially in places like San Francisco where the weather is usually good. (A little chilly sometimes, but when you’re doing the fast-tempo version of swing called Lindy Hop you get warmed up pretty fast.) Not only is it free, but from a small group with a boombox nearly 20 years ago it has expanded to a group as large as 200 on some Sundays, complete with instructors. This all takes place Sundays from 11am to 2pm on the sidewalk behind the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park.
Couples dancing needs a lot more promotion than it usually gets, but right now it may be getting a bunch of free advertising thanks to the growing list of household names sponsoring ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White. According to the Wall Street Journal, their sponsors include Airwave (a Japanese mattress company), AT&T, Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble, Ralph Lauren, and VISA. “Dancing with the Stars” has apparently boosted interest in ice dancing, and its choreographer Derek Hough helped the couple with their routines.
Not tennis players, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal’s reasoning was based on a handful of tennis players’ lack of success on the reality show “Dancing with the Stars”. But there are lots of factors beyond the stars’ dancing ability that play big roles determining their rankings on that show–the judges’ biases, the general popularity of the stars, and especially the show’s ratings (watchership). And the Journal’s definition of dancing was pretty broad, and included a bunch of stuff that goes well beyond couples dancing. But their point may be well taken. All-time tennis champion Martina Navratilova’s professional dancer partner, Tony Dovolani, blamed it on the need for tennis players to be “heavy-footed” when they hit the ball … a far cry from the classic “tripping the light fantastique” that is the goal of a ballroom dancer. Other tennis players put it down simply to lack of dance–or even music–experience due to their focus on tennis from an early age that leaves little time for recreational/social activities. And speaking of social, the smile on a dancer’s face counts for a lot, but tennis champ Monica Seles underlines that in tennis it’s how the ball is hit that counts.
Performances on dancing with the Stars is ABC’s highest-ranked (though declining) show is probably not the best gauge of athletes’ dancing abilities. Male athletes in popular spectator sports are usually big and strong, but not always nimble. Sometimes dance training can improve their athletic prowess, though. Cornell University’s football coach once sent several clumsy players to ex-Rockette Rosalie Bower Amoroso, who co-owns Ithaca Academy of Dance in Ithaca, NY, along with her ex-Rockette sister, Diane. Rosalie’s efforts apparently paid off, as she attended a game where one of her football player students did a “grand jete” (big jump) over a would-be tackler.
Financially, of course, the athletes are better off. Their performance on the baseball diamond, football gridiron, boxing ring, or tennis court is far better rewarded than elite dancers’ performance on the competition dance floor at Blackpool or other high-level competitions.
The dance world is rapidly reaching critical mass, if developments at the combined conference of the World Dance Alliance-Americas (WDA-A) and the Dance Critics Association (DCA) held at the one-of-a-kind Scotiabank Dance Center in Vancouver, BC, Canada during July 29-August 4 are any indication. Highlights included world-class innovative dance routines, strong coverage of the burgeoning urban dance category, a brand-new dance journal, expansion of the WDA to Europe with a fully worldwide conference in Angers (France) in 2014, and a massive government effort to catalog and measure dance in all its forms within Canada. The event was all the more noteworthy because the two organizations are all-volunteer ones, so all the heavy lifting was being done as a labor of love. WDA-A Conference Committee Chairman Scott Martin was everywhere, and did a terrific job before and during the event
The conference focused on dances that are performed for audiences, so the only participants who actually dance are the performers on stage, who take part in “concerts”. In social couples dancing, which—with the exception of Wilddancer—was essentially unrepresented at this conference, there is no audience, everyone participates, and the events are called “parties”. But the WDA-A seems happy to include all forms of dancing, so we will likely see and hear more about social couples dancing in the future, with support from Wilddancer. And with the strong feeling that the organization wanted to be inclusive, to welcome all forms of dance, and to chronicle changes in the dance world as they happen, the WDA-A is in a strong position to grow and adapt. We expect that social couples dancing will be the beneficiary as rhythms and movements from other categories, or even whole new dances, are integrated into what is already being practiced in ballrooms and club venues. We are particularly interested to see what, if any, changes will come via a flow from urban dance (AKA hip hop or break dancing), which is already a social phenomenon but not specifically for couples.
(During the DCA portion of the conference veteran critic George Jackson pointed out an interesting overlap between ballet and lindy hop. Pioneering dance critic Carl Van Vechten wrote in 1930 that the new Lindy Hop would likely follow the pattern he had observed with the Cake Walk, Bunny Hug, Turkey Trot, Charleston, and Black Bottom, in which roughly every decade a black dancer would invent a new step that would become popular with black (and sometimes with white) dancers. Whether or not it was ever done, Van Vechten pointed out that the Lindy Hop “could be danced, quite reasonably, and without alteration of tempo, to many passages in the Sacre du Printemps [Rite of Spring] of Stravinsky” (see Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture between the World Wars, by Joel Dinerstein, University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.))
Just as modern dance broke away from traditional ballet (and postmodern dance broke away from modern dance), urban dance (AKA street dance, break dancing, or hip hop), is breaking away from other forms of contemporary dance. But urban dance is still in its rebellious stage. (To emphasize that they call their events “battles”.) Just as pet cats can only be domesticated within limits, giving rise to the phrase “like herding cats”, urban dance is resisting most attempts to standardize it and create a syllabus. The hard core practitioners don’t want to be taught in a classroom or studio: they want to teach themselves (perhaps by watching YouTube and copying-then-modifying others’ moves). Apparently the purest “break dancers” don’t call themselves break dancers. Nonetheless, cutting-edge dance schools like Arizona State University are offering classes, which are over-subscribed. (And traditional social dance studios are besieged by wannabe hip hop dancers. Even the word “ballroom” now connotes “old-fashioned”.) And while time at the barre in ballet training likely stood modern/postmodern dancers well, likely early training in gymnastics could do the same for urban dancers. Conference speakers pointed out that both ballet/modern/postmodern dancers and urban dancers could have problems with injuries.
We were fascinated with Catherine Limbertie’s survey of Toronto’s Riverdale Collegiate high school students regarding their views on break dancing—-presented at the combined conference of the World Dance Alliance-Americas (WDA-A) and the Dance Critics Association (DCA) in Vancouver, BC, Canada during July 29-August 4. Getting a public school to allow a researcher to do such a survey, and being able to extract helpful findings from a bunch of high school students, were challenging enough. As is common in such research, what people tell the surveyors is one thing and what they do is another. Break dancing is so trendy at the Riverdale Collegiate that there is a break dancing club, which was said to have 100 members, but very few members actually seemed to show up at its meetings/practices. But break dancing skills have considerable cachet; students with recognized break dancing skills used them in their campaigns for offices.