"You do mostly Lindy, right?"

I totally blew off Constitutional Law homework tonight to go to the Big Red Barn swing dance. It's going to be a weekly affair on Tuesdays, so I didn't really have to go tonight, but it's the first one, and the swing club is one activity I really want to make sure I have time for this year. Besides, Tuesdays are horrible nights for me anyway, tonight is better than most Tuesdays will be because one of my classes for tomorrow was canceled, so I figured I'd take the opportunity. Plus, while Rob is going to try to get up here as often as possible on Tuesdays to go to these, tonight he was a bit under the weather and stayed home. Normally this is a sad thing for me, but tonight it worked out well. We tend to only dance with each other, which is horrible for our skills in general, although we often look very good together.

But especially as a follower, you only learn to be a truly good dancer by dancing with a lot of different leaders with a lot of different styles. Being a new kid in town (naturally there's been quite a turnover since I was involved in the club two years ago) I decided the best move would be to take the initiative and ask a lot of different guys to dance. I had some really good leaders that I really enjoyed dancing with . . . and a few bad leaders . . . and a few fairly good dancers where I just crashed and burned trying to dance with them.

That was kind of frustrating / humbling actually, because the worst dances were the ones where the guy was like "Do you know Lindy?" And I said "Yeah!" *sigh* I don't know what it was . . . maybe it's just that it's easier to fake it when you're doing six count East Coast, so I got along better in those dances, but the 8 count Lindy dance, which theoretically the MAIN type of swing I do, I really was sucking at tonight. I'm not used to dancing it w/ anyone but Rob, and these guys had very different styles. The sad thing is it's not like my East Coast was 100% on either - twice I had guys say, as they noticed the styling and footwork I was doing with their six count dance, "Oh, you do mostly Lindy, huh?" Which is another bad thing because it means that I wasn't switching between the two dances smoothly. When the second guy said it though I made a mental note to really pay attention to my footwork, and after that he and I had what I thought was a great dance. I think our skill levels were somewhat on par.

On the other hand Kurt, the slightly sketchy PE instructer that first taught Rob and I how to dance and who heads the rival swing dance club at Cornell (The Hot Tin Roofers or something, I can't remember - it's the jump swing club, which is a really fast form of jitterbug / East coast), seemed fairly pleased with my dancing and said "you know, I have some guys that would really love to have you in my second level swing class. We have about four more guys."

Anyway all this writing is mostly intended as sort of a self-evaluation tool for me, kind of a way to go over the high and low points. Even back in undergrad I never went swing dancing on a regular basis; it was often a once a month thing. And the two years I was living in New England, I really only went dancing a few times a year - maybe four or five times maybe. That's pitiful - but the sad thing was Rob and I often caught people's attention, and sometimes even got compliments. Of course that's probably also because we were doing Lindy in a West-Coast swing world, and we adopted a little bit of the Andy Reid style (almost out of control so that people are amazed you don't fly into walls - but actually being totally in control). Of course, I think sometimes people were probably a little annoyed at how much space we took up, if people gave it to us. Almost-out-of-control Lindy is a very space consuming dance. ;-)

But the really good people around here are the ones who do this swing dancing every week. The reason the BRB dances are on Tuesday is because Wownet used to be on Tuesday - free dances at the internet cafe down on the Commons. The cafe part was just an excuse to have a really good dance floor - the owners built it specifically to have a spot for free weekly dances. Unfortunately, since the cafe's menu consisted largely of variations on Peanut butter and jelly, they eventually folded. But people go used to having a weekly, free DJ'd dance on Tuesdays. So thus the Tuesday BRB deal.

Personally I think it's a great way to revive the club, which has been struggling a little. In order to really create a vibrant, sustainable lindy scene you need to make it a regular part of people's lives, not just on a monthly basis (in the "old days" BRB dances were the last Friday of every month only) but on a weekly basis. And having it on the campus ensures more people will come - getting down to the commons for the various events that ISDN (the Ithaca group) was kind of a hassle plus it was out of the comfort zone for a lot of Cornellians.

The Cornell group however traditionally has been the stalwart champion of the Lindy scene - with some serious competition from the jumpswingers (who actually showed up in force tonight and constituted more than half the crowd, I'd say.) ISDN is more West Coast focused. Lindy and jitterbug / jumpswing / East coast can all exist in perfect harmony, because you use the same music for both (although the ultimate jumpswing tempo requires VERY FAST LINDY, which many people won't even bother attempting . . . thus the Andy Reid out of control style.^_~ ) West Coast on the other hand generally uses oldies rock, which is a hell of a lot harder to do East Coast (and variations jitterbug jumpswing) to, and all but impossible to Lindy to. So keeping the Cornell club alive and kicking ensures that there will be a place for those of us who enjoy Lindy / East Coast over West Coast.

Although really, all of us should probably learn all the styles . . . I've come to the conlusion that I really ought to take some West Coast classes one of these days.

But every live band swing dance has at least one "Really Sweaty Guy", and they always insist on doing West Coast with you, which is far more sultry, far more bodily contact . . . and EW!

Okay nobody really has read this far anyway, since the whole discussion of swing techniques and various dances will bore anybody not into swing and be obvious to anyone who is, so since I'm just talking to myself here I'll stop.

Oh I lied. I have to say on another note, I told El about the dance tonight, and she actually came - albeit to try to find guys she could recruit for the ballroom team. I object on the idea that I want the good leaders to stay in the swing scene - but there's certainly room to do both since the swing scene is far less demanding than ballroom (at least ballroom team). So I actually randomly found a new Masters student here, an excellent excellent leader, whose style seemed like he might be able to be transformed into a ballroom dancer, and I introduced her. His comment was that she was amazing to dance with, and she was also impressed with his leading skills. And I talked him (and tentatively El) into coming to the live band swing dance on Saturday.

I wish I had danced better tonight especially because I really wanted El to be able to see some quality swing dancing . . . and I wanted to show off. ;-) Unfortunately there was not quality swing dancing coming from me tonight. Nor were there any of the truly top notch, unbelievable to watch dancers there like Sky, Sarah, Andy, and Lucy of the old days. They've all moved on to cities with bigger scenes where they can make a lot of more money probably teaching lessons. *sniff sniff* my first teachers, all gone! (Kurt doesn't count.)

Ah well. but now I must sleep, because despite what I said I'm not going to blow of Con Law completely. I just have to get up early to do it and deal with the lack of sleep.

*sigh*