Does “In The Mood” Put You OUT of the Mood?

Posted on July 6, 2016 by WildBill

The experts on musical taste formation say that our tastes are mostly formed during our 14-24 age range. For example, a 60-year-old today would relate to music popular during 1970-1980 and an 80-year-old today would relate to music from 1950-1960. Someone born after the heyday of swing (the Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, et al era), could logically say “‘In the Mood’ puts me out of the mood”. MAYBE folks who have been dancing a long time would relate to music from the time they started dancing (especially if they took a lot of lessons at that time).

Disco Balls Survived Longer Than the Hustle Dance

Posted on June 15, 2016 by WildBill

Louisville, KY recently had a big party to celebrate its newest monument, an 11-foot diameter, 2,300-pound disco ball, to commemorate the city’s longtime role as the capital of American disco-ball manufacturing.

The heyday of disco-balls was during the 1970’s, when disco dancing was so popular. The signature dance at the time was the hustle, a sort of swing with several variations that takes some skill to make it look and feel good, but the music’s strong beat often also brings lots of unskilled “freestyle” folks onto the dance floor. For Wilddancer, it was difficult to learn the dance figures just by watching, because of their strangely syncopated steps in comparison to the more common and intuitive east coast swing or west coast swing dances.

Disco’s popularity was also helped by the Saturday Night Fever movie starring John Travolta (with his white suit and signature pose), with the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive” song. And it also got a boost from the funny send-up of “Staying Alive” from the movie Airplane!

The disco feeling and faster tempo of that song are much better matches to the figures of the hustle than those of “The Hustle” that is often played today by disk jockeys unfamiliar with the dance.

Lindy Hop Dancer Frankie Manning Would Have Been 102 on May 26, 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016 by WildBill

Frankie Manning didn’t invent the “Lindy Hop”, but he was instrumental in making it popular. The Lindy Hop was a “street dance”, i.e., something invented by the dancers themselves, rather than more elite dancing instructors. (In that respect it shares with the sophisticated Argentine Tango, which grew out from its origins in brothels.) It was being developed at the Savoy ballroom in Harlem (a black ghetto in New York City), and got named the Lindy Hop by one of the dancers there (Georges “Shorty” Snowden) when he was asked by a journalist what its name was, who groped for an answer and found it in the headlines about Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. Lindy went national and became higher class (and its name was changed to Jitterbug), particularly with Benny Goodman and big band swing starting in 1936. Frankie Manning wandered by the Savoy in 1929, and soon became a passionate Lindy dancer and the ambassador for it … to the extent that he was worshipped around the world for his artistry. Frankie’s favorite song was Count Basie’s “Shiny Stockings”, which seems slow to Wilddancer for Lindy Hop, but you can see hundreds of folks doing it in a tribute video made on his 88th birthday. We at Wilddancer had been dancing for 10+ years when we saw a swing dancer do a back flip onto his hands, and back onto his feet during a “For Dancers Only” program at Stanford University on April 14, 2000 by Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. It must have been Frankie Manning, who would have been “only 86” at the time. And he was 89 when he astonished a crowd in Sweden.

Women Are Much More Enthusiastic Than Men About Social Dancing

Posted on April 23, 2016 by WildBill

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.

President Obama’s Tango in Argentina Boosted Both Dance and Statesmanship

Posted on March 31, 2016 by WildBill

Some pundits likened President Obama’s dancing the tango during a state dinner in Argentina, when terrorists were killing people in Brussels, to Nero “fiddling” while Rome burned. But we believe that his dance performance, when coupled with his visit to Cuba, was an important step (no pun intended) in showing his solidarity between the U.S. and Latin America. Obama has generally shown that he is a good sport. And the tango is the Number One tourist attraction in Argentina, so to the Argentines the fact that he gave a decent account of himself on the dance floor can only help the relationship between the two countries.

Argentine tango is a challenging dance. It is unlike the American social version or the International competition version, and tangueros often dance only the tango. The place or event where they dance is a milonga, and milongas are found around the world. A few years ago, Wilddancer was traveling in Seoul, Korea in the evening, and when the taxi rounded a corner, he saw a whole group of tangueros dancing outdoors in a vacant lot.

Chicken Soup When You’re Sick; But the Chicken Dance Is Good Any Time

Posted on February 26, 2016 by WildBill

According to a study by an Oxford University experimental psychologist group dances and memes like Gangnam Style, the Macarena, and YMCA make us feel good because we are socially connected. Actually, it doesn’t take a lot of research to deduce that people feel good when they do these dances; all you have to do is to see the enthusiasm with which people—especially men—jump up and race to the dance floor to strut their stuff. And apparently the more ridiculous the dance, the better you feel, which accounts for the popularity of the Chicken Dance.

The Gresham’s Law of Social Couples Dancing Today

Posted on January 7, 2016 by WildBill

Gresham’s law is an economic principle that is commonly stated as: “Bad money drives out good”. But this principle has much broader applicability. For example, to social couples dancing.

Human beings have a long history of dancing in some form, be it as individuals, couples, or groups. The first couples dance Wilddancer recognizes that is still being taught and done today in most western countries is the Mazurka, which started in the 1500’s. The first Waltz (the Volta) dates back to 1556, with many variations since then. The Ländler arrived in the Austrian countryside about 1690, then moved to Vienna and a variation became the Viennese Waltz. After these came (in historical order) the couples dances Bolero, Paso Doble, Polka, Merengue, Habanara and Milonga (now Tango), Foxtrot, Rumba, Samba, Lindy Hop (later called Jitterbug), Cha Cha, Mambo, East Coast Swing, Jive, West Coast Swing, Texas Two-Step, Hustle, and Nightclub Two Step.

People who have danced for many years will tell you that the Twist killed touch dancing. If so, the “Freestyle” that people have done for the last few decades (essentially waving your butt while shifting your feet a bit) has danced on its grave. Its two main virtues are that it does not take any training and it doesn’t take much space on a dance floor (assuming that the dancers are not too drunk). But it really isn’t a guy-gal couples dance, as one sees a lot of gal-gal couples (either the guys are in short supply or have two left feet). But the net result is that the unskilled dancers are monopolizing the dance floor and displacing the skilled ones, ergo Gresham’s Law of Social Couples Dancing.

Even worse, according to an essay entitled Dancing Properly by noted British philosopher Roger Scruton, Freestyle removes the sociability of the physical contact, and perpetuates the bad manners so rampant in current times.

(Almost) Any Dancing is Better than None

Posted on October 14, 2015 by WildBill

Dancing in some form is nearly as old as the human race. And social couples dancing is only part of the whole spectrum of dancing, with close neighbors that include group dancing and individual dancing. You won’t find an entry in Wikipedia for the Elvira line dance or the Swim individual dance, even though a lot more people (well, maybe a lot more Americans at least) likely did (and in the case of the Elvira still do) these than ever did the Viennese waltz. Inexplicably, Wikipedia DOES have the Stroll, the Pony, and some other of these generally easy-to-do party dances.

Practice Makes Perfect

Posted on September 10, 2015 by WildBill

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”.

2015 National Dance Day is July 25

Posted on July 22, 2015 by WildBill

If this is late July, it must be time for the annual National Dance Day celebration. You can see the background for this event on our original post. Yeah, we know that its scope is lots bigger than social couples dancing, but it’s a good excuse to get off your butt and move to the music. You can see more details here. Even better if you meet a special someone and see how romantic couples dancing can be. And then maybe you’ll be inspired to take a few lessons, and learn to move together as a couple.