No such dance as blues dance

Yeah, you heard me, there's no such dance as blues dance. Oh sure, you can find endlessly tedious online discussions about what is or isn't "authentic" blues dance (gag me), but that's just a bunch of hot air, and blues dance ain't about hot air and history and what's authentic. Blues dance is what blues dancers are dancing, period. And good blues dancers make it all up as they go, every time. Blues dance is improv. It's a beautiful thing to behold. Every blues dance is different, and it's all made up on the spot, a creative collaboration of 2 dancers.

Beware: some self-appointed dance rulers are trying to make blues dance an "official" dance with rules, moves, and a blues dance pope whose ring (ahem) you gotta kiss. How pathetically lame; never trust anyone who wants to rule. It's an old trick, you know: dance teachers trying to protect the cash cow by calling their version official. It's slimy, but sadly effective; some people will believe anything, follow any bogus ruler.

No blues dance style or music either

Blues dance doesn't even have an identifiable style, and it's not always done to blues music. If you go to a blues dance and watch, you'll see all kinds of styles. Blues dancers do like the feel and tempo of slow blues, but blues DJs also play downtempo stuff from other genres. If there's a lot of non-blues in the mix, the event might get called fusion dance instead of blues dance. Blues dancers know they can go get their jollies just fine at a fusion dance.

What it is: partnered improv

Blues dance is partnered improvisation. Partnered rather than lead-follow, because (as I write in more detail elsewhere) blues dancers love to mess with the whole lead-follow deal. Both partners improvise, and both respond to their partner's improv. Boy-leads-girl is an easygoing starting point, and provides a loose framework of sorts for the dance, but it's very loose indeed.

As a blues dancer, you bring whatever you've got from your own dance background to the party, and you make up a dance using that and whatever your partner brings. It's fun sometime to have some vocabulary in common with your partner, but not necessary. What counts is the ability to lead and follow and respond creatively. Moves are irrelevant. Blues dance is skills-based rather than content-based.

Everybody follow

If you're both improvising, what holds the dance together? Both partners follow the music. Y'know that old timeworn bit o' wisdom for follows, about following your lead no matter how deaf to the beat he is? It DOES NOT APPLY to blues dance. Blues follows stay with the music. Get used to it. If you wanna play, guys, you're gonna have to learn how to hear the beat, or at least follow your partner in that regard. In blues dance, the music rules supreme.

Half the fun, of course, is fooling around with the music: playfully resisting it a bit, chopping it into odd-sized chunks, dancing 3:2 on it and all like that. But the music still rules; the dance feels fabulous in part because you both dance in the music's arms, and however much you play and experiment on the rhythm and phrasing, you break with the big breaks and resolve with the big phrases, and your dance is a sweet whole thing in the arms of the song.

An opportunity to play

Blues dance is an opportunity to play with a self-selected group of generally excellent dancers who are creative, playful, egalitarian about dance, and not afraid to get close. Blues dance attracts good dancers because it offers the opportunity to be a good dancer and dance with other good dancers in a way that other dance events don't. That's why we love it so much.

The close embrace common in blues dance screens out people who are uncomfortable with their own bodies and thus not so much fun to dance with. The improvisatory nature of blues dance screens out people who are excessively rule-oriented or find it hard to be creative and responsive, and thus not so much fun to dance with. The fact that blues dance relies on dance skill rather than a big bag o' moves attracts dancers with lots of skill or natural ability who aren't interested in bagging moves; move-baggers generally aren't so much fun to dance with. The result is a roomful of people who are incredibly fun to dance with.

What about beginning dancers?

Blues dance is tough for beginning dancers because it calls for skills they don't have. All the good blues dancers I know are people with deep background in other dances and a lot of skill at leading and following. Because blues dance is hip & sexy, it's attracting new people to dance, but they, and the people who try to teach them, run into the problem of no dance background, no dance skill. So now you find blues dancers who are really into the scene, but all they can do is kinda grind and do lots of dips. I mean like, really, lots of dips. That's their only move. Dips.

The emerging art form of contemporary blues dance is danced by people who have deep skills that they've developed in other dances, like swing and Latin, and maybe ballroom and modern and jazz, that they bring to blues. You can't do what they're doing without developing skills. Blues is not the best place to develop dance skills, because learning new skills is all about drill and practice and repetition, which is pretty antithetical to blues dance. If you're naturally gifted in the dance department, it may work fine for you to get your dance skills together on the blues dance floor. But that's gonna be pretty tough for a lot of people.

So how do you teach blues dance?

Teaching blues dance is teaching lead and follow, teaching partnered improv. Whatever specific content you may have in mind, it's not really gonna help a newcomer get this thing called blues dance unless it's helping him or her tune into lead and follow, and how that works in blues dance. We're teaching people to improvise together; giving them routines to practice is not gonna further that. Overheard at the blues dance: "What the hell is that guy doing?" "He's practicing some sequence he learned in the pre-dance lesson." In other words, he's not dancing blues. He's not improvising. Teaching blues style lead-follow, teaching partnered improv is not easy. But that's the job.

What blues can offer other dances

What you can learn in blues that you don't usually get in most other dances (tango being the big exception here) is what it really means to lead and follow. Blues dancers love to mess with the whole idea of lead and follow, but the best dancers do that a place of exquisite bodily knowledge of what leading and following really are and how they can work. Learn the skills that go into the box, then try stepping outside the box. Learn the rules so you can break 'em.

This is what blues has to offer other partner dances: exposure to blues dance will help any dancer learn about lead and follow and creative response, all things they can take back to other dances. This makes me very happy about our emerging dance form and its place in the larger community of partner dance.