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.

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.

Top Ten Car Tunes for Social Dancing

Posted on May 28, 2015 by WildBill

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

Investment Titan Bill Gross Strikes a Dance Pose

Posted on October 17, 2014 by WildBill

Dancing is a great way to stay physically and mentally fit, especially when your day job is on the downswing. Bond trading guru and co-founder of the giant PIMCO recently parted company, which—perhaps along with a couple of drinks–gave him the impetus to overcome his inhibitions and lack of recent practice to take to the dance floor. (For those who don’t recall, Stayin’ Alive was the theme song to both the popular Staying Alive movie and its even more popular predecessor about the hustle dance, Saturday Night Fever.)

“Dirty Dancing” Musical Puts Romance Back into Couples Dancing

Posted on November 1, 2013 by WildBill

The famous “lift” (don’t’ try this at home) that is the signature image of this movie is just its public face … which is rated by one expert as the sixth most famous dance pose in all movies ever. But there is lots going on behind the scenes in this drama. Impressive as it was on the big screen in its 1987 debut, we had “the time of our life” seeing it on stage in London this month. The male lead Johnny, Paul-Michael Jones, is a British champion Latin and Standards dancer, so had plenty of dancing talent. And while there are a lot of choreographed “theater art” moves in both the movie and this stage version, there are also a lot of scenes of young couples doing sexy dance steps that shocked their waltz-and-foxtrot-oriented parents. We don’t know if any of many “millenials” (under 30’s) have watched this, but we’d bet that they would find it at least as interesting as the newer version of “Footloose”. Not surprisingly in show business, there is a story behind the story, as detailed in this 25th anniversary tribute.

Murder Mystery Books Set in Dance Studio

Posted on September 12, 2013 by WildBill

A series of murder mysteries—Quickstep to Murder, Dead Man Waltzing, and The Homicide Hustle–with a beautiful and adventuresome heroine who is half-owner of a dance studio has lots of entertaining action that might inspire a movie or two. Author Ella Barrick makes no claim to be an expert dancer, but her sources on studio owner, dance teacher, and student behavior know their stuff. She even parodies Dancing with the Stars, with the thinly-disguised “Ballroom with the B-Listers”. Wilddancer liked the Quickstep and Hustle ones best, but all three are easy to read and good entertainment for non-dancers and dancers alike. And they put the romance back into dancing.

We need another good dance movie or two to get people excited about couples dancing again. Dancing with The Stars and So You Think You Can Dance are good entertainment, but they’re reality shows intended for watching (and making money for TV networks). And they are increasingly featuring dance types that social dancers can’t do. We hope that Hollywood beckons to the author and produces a film as good as Strictly Ballroom (1992) or Shall We Dance? (the Japanese one in 1996).

Can a New Song and a New Movie Reignite Interest in Hustle?

Posted on July 10, 2013 by WildBill

People say that The Twist killed touch dancing. And that about 15 years later the Disco craze (with its signature Hustle dance) brought it back (for a while, at least). (More recently, Hip Hop, which is influencing what “freestyle” dancers do when there is a dance floor and rap music, may be killing touch dancing again.) According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the hottest song this summer is Get Lucky, from a pair of 40-year-old French guys called Daft Punk. Get Lucky has a solid disco beat, which ought to please dancers who still do, or can do, the Hustle. Since it took from the song’s release on April 19 until the July1 Businessweek issue, and Wilddancer hasn’t heard it yet on a dance floor, it may take more than this song to make Hustle popular again. Interestingly, though, was the purposely seductive way the song was introduced, which seems to have been initiated more by the musicians than the marketing folks at Columbia Records. Even more interesting to us, though, was that the marketers discovered that their audience wanted to participate in the launch, saying that they felt “We don’t want to be treated like consumers. We want to be treated like dance partners.” It remains to be seen how many of those (passive) listeners will become (active) dancers.
And another very recent boost to this disco theme occurs in the new (July 5, 2013) movie from popular Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, titled I’m So Excited, from the eponymous 1982 disco hit by the Pointer Sisters. Three gay flight attendants on this farcical “flight from Hell” do a dance routine to the song (which is unmistakably a Hustle tune, though on the slow side for Hustle dancers).
Hustle dancing’s heyday was marked by the Saturday Night Fever movie and jammed disco dance spots like Studio 54, and like many fads it declined dramatically over time as the “fever” subsided. But the dance itself is sexy, Hustle groups have stayed active around the USA, and there is an association (the International Hustle Dance Association). There is even an IHDA Bronze Hustle Manual written by Billy Fajardo, Jami Josephson, and DVIDA that has been accepted by the NDCA (National Dance Council of America). We understand that this manual serves as a syllabus to guide judges for competitions. Most of the other books on Hustle—including The Engineer’s Guide to Hustle Dancing—are a little long in the tooth, so the real proof that Hustle is being reborn would be publication of Silver and Gold level sibling manuals by the IHDA.

Decadance Group Crafts Performances from Social Couples Dancing

Posted on June 8, 2013 by WildBill

Stanford University has been a driving force for technology companies starting in 1939 when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded Hewlett-Packard, and its graduates have created many giant companies in electronics, software, and other fields. But Stanford is also on the cutting edge of couples dancing, perhaps most notably through the vision and energy of Richard Powers. One of the innovative groups that has sprung from this supportive environment is Decadance (a subtle pun on “decadence”), which bills itself as “a social dance performance group that strives to make traditional couple-dancing less traditional”. This team is unlike many of the other teams you can see on TV or YouTube, whose choreography is either secondary to their crazy costumes or outrageous-but-baseless dance steps, because they craft their performances from time-tested dances like waltz, swing, tango, and cha cha. Wilddancer attended their Spring Show 2013: “how I met your mother” tonight. It was terrific! The members of the group had created all of the 15 professional-grade routines (though some of them came from previous performances); such good choreography takes a lot of skill and a lot of time. And the quality of the dancing matched the quality of the choreography. (We could parse many of the figures using our own social dance training, and they were often advanced ones.) You wonder how they can do it AND keep up their studies at a demanding university like Stanford.

Good Tempos for Exercising, Dancing

Posted on April 5, 2013 by WildBill

Quoting Costas Karageorghis, deputy head of research at the School of Sport and Education at London’s Brunel University, the April 2, 2013 Wall Street Journal says workout music between 125 and 140 beats per minute is best to boost stamina and motivation. Of the 17 couples dances that Wilddancer covers today, for which the standards federations or experienced teachers give tempo ranges, 7 of them are in this range, 6 are slower, and 4 are faster. Given our focus, we’d say that all 17 are fine for motivation because they are fun. Officially slower ones such as the (slow) waltz and the bolero are more romantic than fitness-producing, but samba, hustle, and polka are energetic … at least as measured by the sweating and shortness of breath they produce. And the faster ones–quick step, Viennese waltz, salsa/mambo, and country two-step generally use songs of shorter duration (except many salsas are long … maybe a measure of macho for male dancers).