Are you sure you have good timing?

My last post about dancing to blues raised some interesting thoughts about the rhythm of the music we dance to. Regardless of the music’s rhythm, however, we should always have proper timing.

We all know the importance of timing. (Or at least, we should.) Timing by definition is the precise placement or occurrence of something in time, and in the context of dance, that means executing movement at the right time with respect to the music. After all, our function as dancers is to express and physically represent what we hear, so timing our movements to the rhythms and melodies we hear is critical.

Annie Hirsch was invited to speak with the Bay Area West Coast Swing Community last year at an event hosted by The Next Generation Swing Dance Club. During the interview, she was asked what in her mind defined swing. Her response? “Three things: timing, timing, and timing.”

And for those of you who compete, you know it’s the first of the Three T’s upon which you’re judged (timing, technique, and teamwork).

But what exactly does it mean to have proper timing?

When I taught syncopations to my students last month, we came upon the discussion of timing, and I framed timing in three ways:

1. Starting with a down beat. This is the obvious one. The music we dance to has an even number of beats, paired in a downbeat (accented beat) and upbeat (unaccented beat). We sometimes refer to this as the “boom-tick” sound in the music. The downbeat is the odd count (1, 3, 5, 7) and the upbeat is the even beat (2, 4, 6, 8). Leaders should always initiate new patterns on the downbeat. It’s proper timing and it just feels better.

2. Spacing your movements accordingly. This one is pretty fundamental. You can start with a downbeat, but if the time between your steps doesn’t match the time between the beats, then you’re dancing off time. The rhythm of the music needs to match the rhythm of your movements, and that means that your movements happen at the same pace as the music (whether it’s stepping or something else). I see lots of dancers who start with the rhythm then lose it somewhere in the middle of patterns, resetting at the start of the next pattern. You should maintain the rhythm of the music throughout your dance.

3. Dancing triples on downbeat-upbeat pairs. This may not be as obvious, but it’s still important for keeping proper timing. We break the music into two-beat increments: a downbeat followed by an upbeat (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8). A double is two steps in one of these pairs, a triple is three steps in one of these pairs. That means that a triple starts on a downbeat and ends on an upbeat (1&2, 3&4, 5&6, 7&8) – not the other way around (2&3, 4&5, 6&7, 8&1). I often see followers tripling off time, and it’s usually because the leader prepped the follower on a downbeat so the follower was forced to triple through a turn starting on the upbeat. This results in that awkward fumbling of the footwork after the turn. If you want to maintain timing, you should keep your triples properly placed with the music.

Timing isn’t just something we teachers and judges pick on for fun. It’s essential to being a proficient dancer, for your own movement, for connecting with a partner, and for expressing the music. So make sure you’re always on time (in dancing and in life!).

How do you think about timing? What challenges do you face with maintaining timing in your dance? How do you teachers approach timing with your students?

What do you mean you can’t dance to blues?

Someone recently told me that he had trouble dancing to blues. This was not the first time I’ve heard this sort of remark from a fellow dancer. And it’s not just beginners I hear it from, but even more experienced dancers too.

When pressed further as to what they mean by “I can’t dance to the blues,” there seems to be an unidentifiable culprit to their trouble, leading to answers along the lines of, “I don’t know. I just don’t get blues.”

What is this strange phenomenon? Is there an official diagnosis for this condition? Blues challenged? Selective musical genre disorder? Idontgetbluesia?

What don’t you get about the blues? It’s a straightforward musical form. It’s got a beat and melody and rhythm like any other song. In fact, blues by definition is grounded in acoustic instrumentation with a strong rhythm section, so more than much of the other music we dance to, blues has a clearly defined rhythm with a clear downbeat and upbeat.

And why can’t you dance to blues when you can dance to every other genre we dance to? That category of music you dance to so easily that you call “contemporary” is actually several genres of music – R&B, pop, soul, funk, hip-hop, dance, alternative, and rap (and more). Each has a different kind of instrumentation and rhythm, and yet you seem to have no problem dancing to all of those.

Is it the swung rhythm that throws you off? Well, first of all, not all blues is swung. Blues is both a musical genre (or style) and a musical form (or structure). As a genre, blues is defined by its instrumentation, its themes, and a walking bass line. As a form, it is cyclical, meaning it is a repeating progression of chords (twelve-bar blues is the most common example of this but only one of many examples). So lots of blues are in song form (verse-chorus structure) and lots of blues have straight timing instead of swung rhythm. Heck, much of B.B. King’s music is song form and straight time, and he was the King of Blues. Coincidentally, there are pop songs with blues form (e.g. “Give It To Me Right” by Melanie Fiona) and some with swung rhythm (e.g. “Stutter” by Maroon 5).

As for having trouble with swung rhythm, a big part of the problem is lack of practice. Ideally, teachers are including blues and swung rhythm in their classes, to expose students to these forms. (Unfortunately, that probably isn’t the case. I’ve heard that in Europe there is a dearth of blues, though I was fortunate to hear it played in Germany…)

Of course, plenty of people might argue there’s no need to bother, that blues isn’t relevant or necessary, and we don’t hear much of it anymore anyway. (We probably hear more Latin rhythms in our music than swung rhythm these days…) But everyone should at least be exposed to blues and learn to dance to swung rhythms.

First of all, blues and swung rhythm are the foundations of West Coast Swing. It is this kind of music upon which this dance evolved and came into its own. So from a historical perspective, it’s important to understand where the dance came from.

Second, the instrumentation of blues creates a very downward feeling and the swung rhythm creates that pendulum or syncopated feeling – you know, what we and musicians call swing. Both the downward feeling and the pendulum feeling are integral to the foundations of this dance (and all swing dances) – they create the feeling we should have in West Coast Swing. Like learning to play Mozart before you play Gershwin, you should understand the proper feeling and movement of blues before you master the music that came afterwards.

Third, as dancers, you want to continue pushing the limits of your movement and your musical interpretation. We are constantly dancing to new music that challenges us to grow and develop our skill set. And blues is another genre of music that offers different musical rhythms and instrumentations that we can add to our toolkit. If the goal is to be able to dance to any music, then being able to dance to blues should be included. Blues can push you to apply and develop your musical interpretation skills in ways other musical forms can’t.

And if nothing else, competitions will continue to include swung blues music. This is in part because judges want to see that kind of music included, in part to showcase a more traditional style of the dance, and in part because they know that some people struggle with a swung rhythm and it can be used to separate the boys from the men. So if you want to succeed in competitions, you’d best get a handle on your blues.

I know I’m biased and fortunate to have had exposure to blues and swung rhythms early on, before I even started dancing (as a jazz musician) and before I started West Coast Swing (as a lindy hopper). So yeah, I guess I get blues – the feeling, the rhythm, the timing. But it’s not impossible to learn, nor is it even that difficult, if you simply pay attention and apply your swing fundamentals (body mechanics, footwork, timing) to the music. As with anything else you want to learn, it takes focus and practice.

So what is this nonsense about not being able to dance to blues? You’re very capable. Just put on some blues and dance!

Do you hear a lot of blues where you live and dance? Do you have trouble with the rhythm? Did your teachers expose you to blues in classes? Post your comments below!

Are you setting good goals for yourself?

I like New Year’s resolutions. I know some people say, “Why bother?” but I think there’s value in taking stock of where you’ve been and looking forward to where you want to be in another year from now. Resolutions can help create a vision and set a direction for getting there. They give a focus, push us to grow, and help us achieve our dreams.

For all these reasons, I’ve been working with my students to help them set goals for the year. But I think there are good goals and not-so-good ones. The difference is not in the substance of the goal, but rather in how the goal is defined.

Sure, goals are by definition a little broad, but I’m a believer in SMART goals – specific, measurable, aspirational, realistic, and time-bound. Yes, “aspirational” is different from “achievable” or “attainable” and that’s on purpose. I think good goals aren’t things that we are already equipped to achieve, but things that push us to grow, learn new competencies, and reach new limits. (Besides, doesn’t “realistic” imply that they are achievable?)

In that vein, I ask my students two questions:

What is something that you’ve been struggling with this year that you’d like to overcome?
What is something new that you’d like to learn?

I also ask them to think about two kinds of goals: finite achievements and systems or habits. Finite achievements are end results, clear measures of success, or defined indicators of competency. Systems or habits are the repeated actions or practices that we engage in on a regular basis. For instance, a finite achievement is being able to do two spins and remain balanced, whereas a system would be to spend 15 minutes each day practicing turns. Usually the systems are what help us succeed at the finite achievements, and they are just as important (if not more important) as finite achievements. (And how often and how well you practice is everything when learning to dance!)

When defining your goals, be careful about misguided ambitions. For instance, I’ve had several students tell me that one of their goals is to make a certain level of competition (e.g. “I want to be Intermediate by the end of the year”). What does this really mean? It means you got enough points to compete in a higher level. So what does it take to get there? It means attending more events, competing more often, spending more money on travel. But does it say anything about your dancing? If you say, “Well, I need to be better to be Intermediate,” then I would push you to define what it means to be “better.” If you start telling me that you want to be smoother or more musical, then I would say you’re on the right track to setting a good goal for yourself. Competition in and of itself does not say anything specific about our dancing; at best, it is merely an indicator of overall progress towards some other goal. Your goal should be more specific than a level of competition if you actually want to achieve something this year.

I encourage students to come up with 2-3 goals for the year. Some come up with 4 or 5 – a mixture of finite achievements and system goals – but I discourage setting more than that. It’s not about failure: I think it’s good to have an aspirational goal that will be so difficult to achieve (but still realistic) that you run the risk of not achieving it. These goals push us the most, and usually if we do not succeed, we still gain a lot in its pursuit. No, the reason I discourage too many goals is that it splits your focus. Goals are good because they can keep you focused, but if you have too many goals, it disperses your efforts so that you don’t make much progress on any one thing.

So pull out a piece of paper (or better yet, your dance notebook!) and jot down your goals for this year. Review them with your instructor, and think about how you can achieve your goals this year. And then, get practicing!

And happy New Year! May 2016 bring new levels of success and achievement in your dancing!

Perspectives on degendering competitions: Editorial

Over the past year there has been a strong effort to make West Coast Swing competitions gender neutral, meaning men can compete as followers and women can compete as leaders. This degendering of competitions has raised a lot of questions, caused many concerns, and stimulated plenty of debate about the purpose of competitions, the logistics of how we implement competitions, and even the definition of roles in the dance. To shed some more light on this subject, I asked a few different leaders of the degendering movement to share their perspectives and insights here on this blog. Be sure to read earlier posts by Kelly Casanova, Kim Sifter, Jonathyn Jackson, Faith Pangilinan, and Andy Bouman.

I started writing this post explaining why I competed as a follower in the Novice division at Boogie by the Bay last year when I have points as a leader in the All Star division. But that’s not what’s important to discuss. The reasons I competed as a follower were that I didn’t know how competent I was as a follower and I believe in following the system and earning your way up. The more important thing to discuss is why being proficient in one role does not automatically translate into equal proficiency in the other role.

I’ll say it again: Being good at one role does not automatically make you good at the other. The denial of this truth is what drives the current World Swing Dance Council rules (no longer guidelines) and serves as the basis for the contempt people have for what they perceive as “sandbaggers” – more advanced dancers dropping into the Novice division to compete in the other role.

(By the way, in my own experience, people who oppose more advanced dancers switching roles and competing in Novice aren’t other advanced dancers, or even Intermediate competitors. Neither are they the leaders I’ve drawn in contests, who are actually very kind and gracious. No, the only ones I’ve heard complain about me competing as a follower in Novice are other Novice followers, who didn’t feel it was fair to compete against me, and a few Novice leaders who are generally opposed to the idea. I’m not saying they can’t complain, but just pointing out that, at least in my experience, the complaints have come from a minor few.)

Jonathyn already did the math from Boogie by the Bay last year: of the 13 advanced dancers who competed in the Novice division in the opposite role, only five made finals, and only two placed. The judges clearly did not favor the advanced competitors because of their status in the traditional role, nor were they biased against them, as some of them did indeed make finals. Surely, if being an advanced dancer in one role equated to equal proficiency in the other, then all of those advanced dancers would have made finals over their Novice-level competitors. And yet they didn’t. There was disparity among those who switched roles, and not all of them were proficient in their nontraditional role. This contest was not a fluke but rather part of a pattern – a pattern that reflects reality.

Yes, advanced dancers generally have better body movement, better overall technique, better musicality, and a better understanding of the dance. So why then are so many advanced competitors not easily beating out lower-level competition when they switch roles?

Because being good at one role does not automatically make you good at the other.

But why? Why would a dancer who excels in one role not instantly excel in the other?

The answer is mindset.

Mindset does weird things to our bodies. I see it all the time: people walk into class with good posture, moving from their centers, balanced and relaxed, only to begin dancing and turn into a combination of Quasimodo and a newborn foal. The only difference? Their mindset. The mental focus on dancing makes them use their bodies differently. It’s not that they can’t move properly, but rather that their minds are directing them to move differently.

Similarly, a great dancer with a high quality of movement may lose that high quality when transitioning to another role. Think how many followers go to lead with a wide stance, hunched posture, even an arm lead. What about guys who learn to follow and hunch forward, tighten their arms, and don’t anchor properly? These are people who supposedly have better body movement, better partnership skills, and better musicality, yet they look just as inexperienced when they switch to another role. Why? Because leading and following are not the same. One is about moving yourself to communicate something and the other is about moving yourself in response to something. The fundamentals of body movement are the same for each role, but the mindset that’s required is different, and this in turn affects how we move in the dance.

The strong desire to communicate and the strong desire to be responsive make us do things that we know aren’t right. Followers learning to lead think it’s all about executing patterns and moving the follower, even if they don’t enjoy following pattern-driven leaders who force them around the dance floor. And leaders learning to follow will try to anticipate in an effort to be responsive, even if they don’t enjoy followers who anticipate and ignore their leads. We don’t want to dance with these kinds of partners, but when you step into their shoes, it’s a different matter entirely.

Anyone who has learned the other role knows that it’s a different experience. And because it’s a different experience, with a different mindset and a different application of skills, it requires effort to get good at it. When I started following, I just did it for fun, but then I started following so I could be a better teacher, and I quickly became aware of my flaws. It took a lot of focused practice to maintain my posture, to find my anchor, to correct my frame, and to make sure I was following properly. I’m still working on following more advanced and complicated leads, spins and turns, and developing my dance. These aren’t things that happened over night but rather over the last couple of years. And I’m sure it will take a few more years to get where I want to be with my following.

Few if any people can switch roles and instantly be successful at it. As with learning your primary role, you need instruction and regular, focused practice to reach a level of proficiency. Just doing it more does not make you good at it. It does not make you a better partner, it does not make you easier to dance with, and it does not make you more enjoyable to dance with. People who wish to learn the other role (and I encourage it, since it teaches you a lot about your primary role and the dance overall) should seek instruction on how to do the other role and then practice to improve.

If people are upset that I danced down to compete as a follower, because they think I’m better than Novice as a follower, that’s their right (and also flattering). I know it can be frustrating to compete against people who you feel are ready to advance to the next division. But to assume that any advanced dancer switching roles is automatically a threat to a Novice dancer is incorrect and not based on the facts. The bottom line is that leading and following are not the same. They require a different way of thinking which in turn directly impacts how we move our bodies. As a result, proficiency in one way of thinking and doing does not automatically translate to the other.

I sincerely hope the WSDC reconsiders its position on nontraditional roles, but in the meantime, we as a community should consider the evidence and accept the reality that advanced proficiency in one role does not mean advanced proficiency in the other. Then and only then can we start having honest conversations about how best to establish guidelines that are fair to all competitors, whether they compete in the traditional or nontraditional role.

Perspectives on degendering competitions: Andy Bouman

Over the past year there has been a strong effort to make West Coast Swing competitions gender neutral, meaning men can compete as followers and women can compete as leaders. This degendering of competitions has raised a lot of questions, caused many concerns, and stimulated plenty of debate about the purpose of competitions, the logistics of how we implement competitions, and even the definition of roles in the dance. To shed some more light on this subject, I’ve asked a few different leaders of the degendering movement to share their perspectives and insights here on this blog. Each week I will post a different guest blog, and at the end of the series I will share my own thoughts on the issue. (Be sure to read earlier posts by Kelly Casanova, Kim Sifter, Jonathyn Jackson, and Faith Pangilinan.)

This week we feature an interview with the Co-Event Director of Boogie by the Bay, Andy Bouman. Andy grew up in Chicago but has lived in the San Francisco Bay area most of his adult life. He started ballroom dancing as a student at UC Berkeley in the late 1980’s, but after discovering West Coast Swing in 1990, he’s never looked back. Andy is a former president of The Next Generation Swing Dance Club in San Francisco and also was the Competition Director, MC, and Chief Judge at Next Gen dances for 11 years. Since 1999, Andy has been the Co-Event Director and Competition Director of Next Gen’s annual convention, Boogie by the Bay, a NASDE member event, as well as a judge at other swing dance events across the United States. But Andy’s first love is social dancing. He enjoys all forms of swing dancing, including Lindy Hop, and loves dancing to live music. He is honored to have received the first Social Dancer Award at Swingalicious, an annual dance event in San Francisco.

Why did Boogie by the Bay decide to offer degendered competitions? What led to the decision?

Actually, in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’ve had a history of degendered competitions for quite a while.

Back in 1997, when I first started running competitions for The Next Generation Swing Dance Club, the Next Gen board of directors adopted a policy that our local competitions would be open to anyone who wanted to sign up as a leader or follower. To signal this, we called our monthly competitions “Luck of the Draw” instead of “Jack & Jill.” Degendered competitions at our local dances have been the club’s official policy ever since.

Kelly Casanova also offered degendered competitions at her Swing Break weekend event in San Jose back in 1999 and 2000. I was a judge at that event and witnessed first-hand the Champions J&J finals where John Lindo drew Ramiro Gonzalez. (If you haven’t seen that dance, watch it now on YouTube.) However, Kelly was a bit ahead of her time, and received some harsh criticism (and threats of boycotts or worse) from some people who didn’t like the idea of degendered J&J competitions.

At Boogie by the Bay, we have offered degendered Strictly Swing competitions for many years. However, until last year, we kept the traditional gender restrictions for our Jack & Jill competitions at Boogie. Some Boogie committee members in the past were afraid that Boogie might get the same kind of backlash that Swing Break received if we opened up our J&J competitions. We also were told that the World Swing Dance Council (WSDC) would not award points for any of our finalists if we did not follow the WSDC gender restrictions.

Last year, we thought the time had finally come where we could degender our Jack & Jill competitions at Boogie by the Bay. The “Degendering West Coast Swing” group on Facebook had reopened the discussion, and many WCS dancers in the Bay Area were strongly supportive. We also checked again with WSDC, and were told that while people who danced a non-traditional role would not get WSDC points, there wouldn’t be any other penalty if we changed our rules.

In June of 2014, the Boogie committee and the Next Gen board both unanimously approved the change, and we announced it on the Boogie and Next Gen websites and on Facebook.

Around the same time, the petition in favor of degendering WCS competitions was posted on Facebook and gathered about 2,000 “signatures” in a matter of days, so we knew that there was quite a bit of support in the WCS community.

What were the challenges in offering degendered competitions at the event?

The biggest challenge was to figure out how to update our competition rules. We wanted to make our competitions as inclusive as possible, while recognizing that there are well-established levels of Jack & Jill competition in the WCS world.

Based on discussion on the “Degendering WCS” Facebook group, as well as extensive conversations with WCS competitors, we made the fundamental decision that leading and following would be recognized as two distinct sets of skills for our Jack & Jill competitions. So being an All-Star follower didn’t automatically make someone an All-Star leader, or vice versa.

We also decided that if people were at different competitive levels as a leader and follower, we would allow them the opportunity to enter our J&J competitions in both roles at those two different levels.

Since the WSDC didn’t track points for people who competed in non-traditional roles, we had to exercise some flexibility to determine the appropriate level of competition for those people at Boogie by the Bay. So we encouraged people to petition, and we considered “ghost points” from other events that have offered degendered competitions (such as Liberty Swing or Swingtacular).

We also decided to change our Strictly Swing rules, which previously had allowed partners to switch roles during their dance. Since we were allowing people to compete at different levels as a leader or follower, and potentially enter a second Strictly Swing division based on those two different levels, we didn’t think it would be fair to allow partners to sign up for a lower division and then switch during their dance to roles that would have put them in a higher division.

What sort of criticisms or backlash did you receive and how did you respond?

First of all, our overall attendance was up 5 percent from the previous year, and our J&J registrations were up more than 30 percent. So I don’t think we suffered a backlash from making the change. On the contrary, some people told us they chose to attend Boogie over other events to show their support.

We did receive some criticism from a few people who thought it was unfair that some competitors at Boogie who were Advanced or All-Stars in traditional roles made the finals in lower levels in non-traditional roles. However, there were others competing at lower levels in non-traditional roles who did not make the finals. For us, that proved that competitive success in one role doesn’t automatically transfer to the other role. [Editor’s note: See Jonathyn Jackson’s post for more details.]

What were the benefits for your event of offering gender-neutral competitions?

The most immediate benefit was the tremendous energy and excitement at our event. Not only was everyone very supportive of people competing in non-traditional roles, but the social dancing was more degendered than I’ve seen at almost any other large WCS event. Everyone felt welcome, and everyone was having fun. That’s what a weekend event should be all about.

Is there anything you would do differently next time?

We may tweak our rules a bit for this year, but overall we thought it went very well.

What are your thoughts on the current policies of NASDE and WSDC with respect to gender?

As many people already know, WSDC recently announced that it has changed its policies and will begin tracking J&J points for people placing in non-traditional roles beginning February 1st. I am disappointed that they will only record those points at the highest overall level achieved, instead of tracking leader and follower points separately. I’d like to see WSDC adopt more flexibility, so that events like Boogie by the Bay could allow people to compete in both roles in separate divisions and have those final placements count and be recorded by WSDC. But I think the change is a first step in the right direction, and I recognize that not all WSDC member events are on the same page, so the WSDC board is walking a difficult line.

NASDE is a bit different because the 12 member events have agreed to follow the same rules for Classic and Showcase in order to standardize the competitive circuit for routines. Boogie by the Bay is not allowed to unilaterally change its rules for those divisions and remain a NASDE member. It would require a vote of 8 member events out of 12 to remove the gender restrictions on Classic and Showcase couples, and I don’t see that happening right now. However, NASDE has agreed that individual events can follow their own rules for Strictly Swing competitions, which is why we have had degendered Strictly Swing at Boogie for many years.

What would you say to other event directors about offering degendered competitions?

I think this change is coming. It’s just a question of when. The West Coast Swing landscape has changed rapidly in the past few years. More and more, I’m seeing newer dancers learn both roles and dance both roles on the social dance floor. More and more dancers know people who excel in non-traditional roles, and they believe it is unjust that their friends can’t compete in their preferred role at some weekend events. So event directors will need to decide if they want to be out front on this trend or play catch-up.