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It's a Swing Thing

1/8/2014

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It’s a Swing Thing
By Yuki Noguchi

Friday, January 17, 2003; Page WE30

You wanna play?

He pauses slightly, mid-spin, as if the hesitation of a half-twisted torso poses the question.

A shimmy shimmy of the shoulders is my answer:

You betcha!

A linger on a turn sets up a joke.

A wriggle of the hips interrupts with a response: Beat you to the punchline!

At its best, swing dancing feels like great conversation. It has playful spirit that's all wit. That razzmatazz, that blues in your shoes, that swing thing. Rhythmic chitchat goes by many names, but avid dancers call it "connection."

You can scan a roomful of dancers and spot good connection. The awkward pair won't have the telltale bounce. The flashy ones with exaggerated moves won't be in sync. It's the couple with the light feet moving in harmony that catch the eye.


Connection is a chemical measure of how much you get each other on the dance floor. It's spontaneous. It's goofy. It's magic.

And I'm addicted to the stuff.

Luckily for me, Washington supplies the best swing dancing on the East Coast. This area sustains a retro-boom partly inspired by the Gap advertisements of circa 1998, which featured poorly executed, inauthentic swing-dance routines as part of their pitch for khaki pants. While venues in Boston have petered out over the years, and New York's scene has faded to give way to the next trend, Washington's swing subculture continues to provide plenty of venues, live music and good dancers to satisfy my near-daily cravings.

The number of venues during the week even exceeds that of San Francisco, a major hub of swing: Mondays at Chevy Chase Ballroom; Tuesdays at Clarendon Ballroom; Wednesdays are best at K2 in Beltsville, but Lulu's Mardi Gras Club on M Street is closer to downtown. It's Chevy Chase or Zoots and Dolls in Fairfax on Fridays; Glen Echo Park on Saturdays.

For the unindoctrinated, the scene might appear a bit cultish.

My mother, who lives nearby, feels she's lost her daughter to a hobby. I come home to her sober messages on my voice mail: I guess you're out dancing...again.

But Mom, there's joy in a swivel! I need a balboa turn! Jazz is playful, and swing is silly. It mesmerizes and intoxicates. It's as good for the soul as it is for the body.

Longtime dancer Larry MacDonald smiled like Buddha when I asked him what he likes most about dancing. "Harmony," he said. "Harmony I achieve with a woman. My whole life, I've been trying to get that off the dance floor."

My friend Erik Newton started dancing four years ago after seeing an elderly man kiss his wife sweetly on the forehead after a dance.

"I want that," he said.

Couples, though, are the anomaly in the swing scene. The style of dance is often cast in an oversexed role, as in "swinging lifestyle," but that's a misperception. It's mostly a single person's sport, and the norm is to go stag. Though you dance with a partner, you typically switch almost every song.

It's not uncommon to find yourself dancing with someone with whom the only thing you have in common is dance.

Age, in particular, is where swing shows its greatest diversity. I've danced with a high school student whose mother is also a regular. One of the most playful dancers I know is a man named Barry, whose college-age daughter often accompanies him to dances. Sometimes it's the parents who hook their kids on dancing, but more often parents are the ones who become hooked watching their children dance. (My mother took swing lessons for a while so she could see me.) A typical dance will get strong representation from twenty- and thirty-somethings like myself, and an almost equal number of men and women like Larry MacDonald and Bob Schmitt, my middle-aged bachelor pals. The retired reverend Arnold Taylor, an excellent dancer at 77, still vividly remembers learning to dance in grange halls during the Depression 72 years ago.

Swing dancing is light and funny, and in a buttoned-down city that often takes itself too seriously, that can be refreshing.

It's also almost laughably wholesome. The main thing about swing dancing is the dancing. There are those who come to scope out a date, but they usually fall into two categories: the uncommitted types who give up after a few dances yield them no dates, or the converts who discover that they'd rather be dancing than romancing, anyway.

There are some rules of engagement, of course. In no particular order, they are: Do nothing untoward; if someone asks you to dance and you're out of breath, politely decline, but seek them out for a dance later; remember that you, too, were once a beginner; don't eat raw onions before dancing; be nice; change shirts when you get too sweaty, and for heaven's sake throw away the ones that smell like mildew.

Those are really the things that matter when you're a swing dancer. Unlike many Washingtonians, dancers generally don't care what you do for a living.  I've danced with dozens of leads (leads are male dancers, female dancers "follow" the leads) who at best know my first name and how long I have been dancing, but don't seem to care one iota what I do during the day to support my dance habit.

As habits and vices go, this one is inexpensive. Admission typically costs $5, up to $15 at the most, for a famous 16-piece band event or fundraiser. I figure: That's the cost of one night of bar-hopping in Adams Morgan spread over a whole week.

I started dancing about two years ago, after watching one of my best friends from college hone her swing skills during a brief stint living in San Francisco.

My introduction wasn't easy. I spent most of my time observing from the sidelines, hoping a good lead would take pity on my poor skills and dance with me anyway, all the while burning with envy as I watched the better dancers glide and turn in perfect synchronicity with their partners.

Breaking into the scene can be intimidating. All beginners become acutely aware of a caste system on the floor and feel it would be disorderly to ask a Brahmin to dance. I found that chatting with people on the sidelines, being friendly and mustering the guts to ask a better dancer paid off.

Initially, I made a host of beginner's mistakes, starting with my clothing. I wore black platform shoes that looked the part but didn't give me the cushion or the stability that swing dancing requires. I wore shirts and pants that weren't fitted enough, so the excess material trapped air and sweat and slowed my movement. I had long hair that reached almost to my waist and did violence to men's faces when I spun around.

On occasion, some dancers take pains to fashion their hair Rita Hayworth style and comb through vintage shops to find the right zoot suit or dress. But on any given night, the vast majority of dancers seem to prefer function to form. I am one of those people: I dance in my old running shoes and tape the underside with duct tape to slide better. I wear pants and skirts made of soft material that doesn't chafe, even after hours of bouncing around. I wear fitted shirts or tank tops that allow my skin to breathe but are tight enough that they don't flap around, trapping air as I move. I cut my hair to shoulder length and keep it tied close to my head.

Many things about swing are similar around the country. The etiquette, for example, or the way dancers dress up or dress down. Dancers on the whole are also consistently friendly, especially to dancers from other cities.

Yet every city has its own style. Sometimes it's so distinctive that you can identify a stranger's home town by the way he or she dances. This happened recently with someone named Ray, whose style reminded me of the smoother, slower blues style of my friends in St. Louis, where I grew up. Sure enough, Ray, who was in Washington for a few days on business, was from Cleveland -- a stylistic cousin of my Midwestern home town. The reverse happened to me when I was dancing in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco one Sunday a couple of months ago and met Rob Wooldridge, a likable English teacher who instantly identified me as an out-of-towner because I carried my upper body with more "tension" in my arms.

In that sense, dance styles are like regional dialects. It's not clear where they come from or who perpetuates them, but they betray your dance origins.

Insofar as Washington has a distinctive style, it is what my colleague at The Post and fellow dance lover Jen Balderama calls "Hollywood style with a Washington flavor."

Hollywood style is a subset of swing typified by a very taut connection in the arms, so that the follow is leaning back slightly, keeping an elastic but tight link with her partner. The effect is that the dancers look as if they are swinging around in elliptical shapes, gliding rapidly backward with the follow swiveling from her hips in a distinctly sexy way. As the name suggests, this is typical of a style found in Los Angeles; in Washington, it is combined with a speedy jitterbug flair.

What determines a city's style has a great deal to do with who teaches in those cities. In Washington, the most marketed, and therefore most accessible, pair of teachers is Tom Koerner and Debra Sternberg, which makes them the proverbial parents of the swing style here.

There are other teachers in the area as well. John "Psychoboy" McCalla teaches classes in Bethesda, Frederick and Baltimore. Donna Barker teaches swing and other kinds of dance, generally in Arlington. Zoots and Dolls in Fairfax hosts Friday night dance parties preceded by dance classes taught by various teachers.

Most people who learn to dance in Washington, however, start with the duo of Koerner and Sternberg, who usually host five or more dance parties a week. They teach five nights a week, including an hour-long beginners lesson followed by an intermediate class. Their sessions cost $96 and last eight weeks. Following the intermediate class, people start to file in for Koerner and Sternberg's open dance parties, which usually draw enough people to cause traffic congestion on the dance floor.

Koerner, who calls himself a "recovering" divorce lawyer and has a penchant for off-color jokes, said the classes are attracting more and more new students -- as many as 120 people in one of last season's classes. After years of practicing law, he is trying to make a full-time job of his passion.

The fact that he may be doing just that is a sign that a new generation of dancers is coming up through the ranks.

"We don't have a Britney Spears or a Run-DMC to, you know, promote Lindy," said Sternberg, who at 49 is a superbly perky woman who performs death-defying over-the-head aerial moves to frighten and inspire her students. So Koerner and Sternberg promote like crazy. "We always see new generations coming through; you have to rely on people who are going to start dancing" to keep the scene alive. She has been dancing for 15 years, and together with Koerner spends most weekday and weekend events teaching two, hour-long classes.

Critics of Koerner and Sternberg say they don't teach much about posture, body frame, stance and other fundamental skills that enable a person to communicate well with a partner. They go over that in the first class but then quickly proceed to teaching steps and routines of progressive difficulty, so that often by the end of the class some students are kicking around haphazardly off the beat.

I took one class from Koerner and Sternberg -- the only class to date I've taken in swing. I found that I learned most from the charity of leads who could teach me the fundamentals.

What makes good dancers is not how many moves they know but how they carry themselves. The most advanced dancers will spend hours on the most basic steps to improve their dance style. It makes sense, because swing is just a bunch of variations on a handful of basic step sequences: the triple step, the eight-count Lindy circle, and what are called Charleston, balboa and shag. If those aren't etched deeply and cleanly in your muscle memory, there is not much point to building your repertoire.

The person most responsible for my dance education is probably Jason Aldrich. He and I make fun of each others' politics, but he loves dance as much as I do, and he's a supremely patient teacher.

Jason has a smooth style that is clear yet gentle. He doesn't -- as some beginner leads do -- jerk my arms out of their sockets to get me to move quickly. If I keep my arms with the proper amount of tension, I effortlessly end up where he intends me to be. Keeping my balance when spinning or turning with him is also easy, because he counterbalances my weight with his. Mainly, it's the combination of these two things that makes us have a good connection, so that when he decides to do a complicated move, I can generally follow, because my body naturally responds to his lead.

I have kept up my commitment of dancing at least three nights a week for the last two years, except when I was running a strict regimen of 40 miles a week to train for the Marine Corps Marathon. During that time, I disappeared from the dance scene for about six months, but I returned to it at an even more feverish pace three months before the marathon because I injured my knee.

Dancing became my de facto training. I danced six or sometimes seven days a week -- an average of probably 12 hours altogether. That unorthodox regimen kept me in sufficient shape that I ran for the first time in three months on marathon day and was able to complete the race in about five hours -- within 30 minutes of my original desired time.

Dance feels like a more balanced exercise than running, and getting a workout happens to be a byproduct of the fun.

Doug Won, a wonderful dancer in the St. Louis scene and an orthopedic surgeon, told me the arm movements -- even simple pushes and turns -- get the heart pumping faster. Most of the songs fall in medium to fast tempo range, but the exercise is low-impact, so the heart works at that ideal range that helps the body burn fat, rather than sugars, he said.

Swing dancing has another health virtue that probably contributes to its appeal to older people: It spares the joints. Contrary to popular perception, swing dancing is not a set of gymnastic flips in which the woman lands with a jarring thud; few people perform those moves except for purposes of performance. So the knee injury that I sustained doesn't bother me at all, even when I twist, turn, bend and bounce.

Longevity is on dance's side.

Washington's swing scene shows no sign of fading, and those who are nourished by it show no sign of aging.

It stays because it draws you in, sticks to you and lingers. When Ella Fitzgerald's voice caramelizes a dance floor, who can resist partaking of that sweet joy?

Yuki Noguchi covers telecommunications for The Washington Post.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

 

 

 

 

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Lindy Hop History

1/8/2014

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(Streetswings Dance History Archives: Lindy Hop)
 
The very first known form of swing was the Texas Tommy in 1913, which later changed to the Mooch and Sugar in 1916 and even later called the Break-A-Way by 1919. During the 1920's when the Charleston was becoming all the rage, the Breakaway and Charleston would start to mix with and was forming a new yet unnamed dance style with a few other dances thrown in the mix.
 
In 1927 this style was finally acknowledged and given a name by a fabulous swing dancer named George "Shorty" Snowden. 'Shorty George' from New York's Harlem was to re-name the 'break-a-way' the "Lindy Hop or Lindbergh hop" after the famous pilot "Charles Augustus Lindbergh"

(Lindbergh made his thirty-three hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean to France successfully on May 20, 1927.) There are two main stories about the name that go something like this (the 1st one being the main one, second being more correct):

1) In September, 1927, a newspaper reporter having never seen this style of dance before walked up to the winners at a dance marathon contest in Central Park in New York, (known as the un-official start of the Harvest Moon Ball Contest (later to be tried again in 1934). This reporter asked the winning couple (Shorty George!) what it was that they were doing, as he had not seen it before. Shorty thought for a second and replied "the Lindy Hop... We flying just like Lindy did!". The newspaper reporter did an article on the contest in his newspaper and described what he saw calling it the "Lindy Hop."

 2) A dance derby (marathon) which started on 6/17/1928 at the Manahattan Casino, (155th Street and Eighth Avenue in Harlem, New York.) Shorty George (#7) was Dancing in a (supposedly non segregated) dance marathon and decided to do the Breakaway, a reporter for the New York Graphic (?Walter Winchell maybe?) observed and came over and asked what kind of dance he was doing, Snowden without stopping, thinking quickly replied "The Lindy Hop... Were flyin' just like Lindy did!"... supposedly he reported this in his article. Fox Movietone News also captured Shorty's feet in this derby on film. Shorty became one of the remaining four couples out of eighty left dancing before the marathon was closed down on 7/4/1928. The New York Times announced: "NEGRO DANCE DERBY ENDS.; Stopped After Sixteen Days by Order of Commissioner Harris." However there are publications that use the term Lindy Hop (dance) prior to this date, so number one is maybe closer to the correct story.

The Lindy was going to become famous in a rapid pace of time, so fast most instructors around the country had no idea about it. The Woodland Daily Democrat Newspaper on September fourteenth of 1927 Miss Sullivan said that "the Lindy Hop" placed third in the annual Dance Masters of America (D.M.A.) conference held in New York and was described by Miss Sullivan when asked about the Lindy Hop, however it was the Lindbergh Wave Waltz that took third and that is what she described (dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum-dum-de-dum), it was obvious she had no idea what the reporter was talking about. The Kinkajou was first and the Dixie Stomp being second place and the Lindy Wave Waltz was third.

In the last 90 years the Lindy has become the first form of swing as we know it today (the Great Grandfather of all Swing if you will) and along with the Charleston were the main dances of the 1920's. The Charleston mixed in with the Lindy, as well as other prior forms of dance such as the Texas Tommy, Turkey Trot, Apache Dance, Black Bottom, The Shimmy, The Strut, Cakewalk, The Frisco, Foxtrot, Tap and more. These dances were known as "Jazz Dances." The Lindy was the first form of swing "White America" had seen and was about to fall in love. Some of these folks would go to the famous "Savoy Ballroom" in Harlem and watch the "African-American dancers" strut their stuff.

Many of these dancers in 1920's were teaching many of the "White Folks" to do these dances, thus, they were making a "honorable living" in a very racist period of time. This became very competitive among some of African-American dancers, some would clip papers to their back with phone numbers or a studio name written on them while they danced. If you liked the way a dancer danced you could then get in touch with them and take lessons. Through this type of competition, the dancers would start to do more wild and crazy stuff to get the attention of the spectators.

As time went on, dance contests became more and more "attention getting." In the 1930's a dancer named "Frankie Manning" *claimed to add the first Air-Step" (lifts/ flips) into the Lindy (Al Minns and Leon James as well). These and other "Air-Steps" or Aerials had been done for years before in other dance styles such as the tango, waltzes, Flash and Acrobatic dance acts, apache dance etcetera,through many exhibitions by professional club entertainers, but supposedly had not yet been done in the Lindy, especially with the speed in which they would be done, plus add the element of surprise and these aerials would become completely unique to the Lindy Hop.

In many interviews Frankie describes how his first "Air-Step" took place: "Frankie and partner were practicing for a dance contest to try and beat then King "Shorty George Snowden" at the Savoy, Frankie and partner, worked out a back flip they *saw (??) and it worked, they did it in the contest and beat Mr. Snowden."

Also in a book called "Swing as a Way of Life" (1941) states that "young dancers like Al Minns, Joe Daniels, Russell Williams, and Pepsi Bethel produced the "Back flip, Over Head and the Snatch!." At any rate, this started the attention getters on to a new agenda... Aerials!

Over the years aerials became a main attraction in Lindy competitions and exhibitions, however, aerials were not permitted at most clubs and ballrooms during any social type dance while on the dance floor except during exhibitions or contests as too many dancers and people around these dancers were getting hurt. Even the famous Harvest Moon Ball eliminated Aerials during the contests for a brief period of time.

The Savoy Ballroom opened in 1926 and was the main haunt for Harlem's dancers. During this time the original Lindy or Break-A-Way looked more like couples Charleston, with a splash of the other dances thrown in rather than today's style of Lindy. Shorty George was at the head of the pack during this time frame. The Savoy would later prove to be the breeding ground for swing as the main dance.

In the early 1930's, Hubert "Whitey" White was the head bouncer at the Savoy and noticing an opportunity to make some cash decided to form a group called "Whitey's Hopping Maniac's," later to be known as " Whitey's Lindy Hoppers ". It was a pretty open market for him as his only competition was "Shorty George and his dancers" who were doing most of the exhibitions and shows around town in ballrooms and clubs such as the Cotton Club at the time, Shorty would join Whitey's very first group as well but later quit.

Whitey had auditions and picked some dancers to start his group. This was to become the form of Lindy Hop we know today. During the Lindy Hoppers reign, the Lindy was to take on a newer "Sophisticated or cleaned up look." The Hoppers went on to become the main Swing groups of the time and traveled all over the world performing in many exhibitions, movies, and stage shows. About the same time ... Dean Collins was to bring Savoy Style Lindy, a smoother and slower form to Los Angeles in the early 1930's which gave birth to today's modern West Coast swing.

When Benny Goodman became the "King of Swing," the Lindy Hop would become known as the "Jitterbug." The term Jitterbug would eventually be applied to all styles of swing over the years and the term Lindy Hop would almost be forgotten about as the term Jitterbug took the reigns. The main way to tell if the "old movies" (1930-50's) feature Lindy, West Coast (called rock and roll) or East Coast Swing is:
1) If they do Sugar pushes its West Coast Swing (Dean Collins choreography).
2) If no Sugar push its Lindy (probably Whitey's Group).
3) If however there is no Sugar push, Whip or Lindy Circle then it is East Coast Swing (standard movie choreographers/ stock dancers).

Another form of swing that was extremely popular among white America about the same time was the Shag.


As time progressed on, many factors would come into play to change the look and feel of the original Lindy. Music being the main factor of change as it seemed every ten years the music changed. ie: Ragtime to Jazz to Big Band to Big Band Swing to Rock and Roll to Bop to Motown to Soul to Funk etcetera and many secondary styles of music surfacing as well such as Latin music, Psychedelic, Folk Music, Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Rock a Billy, Country Western, Beach Music etcetera. These music changes would give new semi-pro dancers who could care less about the past (somewhat same as today) a new lease on the dance but were doing it differently as the older dancers either got married, had kids, died, became handicapped for various non dance reasons, overwieght and didn't want to go out, or just got older as well as other factors to long to go into here, so the dance was changing but was still the same.

Another main factor was that many "exhibtion dancers" of the day were trying to invent their own versions as well (example Champion Strut), usually unsuccessfully as that was the thing to do for many years, similar to the Line dance craze a few years back, everyone became a choreographer. New dancers are always gullable when the words "New Version or improved or updated, modern etcetera are used to sell them, however the older pros who lasted kept it somewhat in check as they usually taught the best. These newer "semi-pros" were similar to going to a chiropractor to have your tonsils removed.

Jitterbug/Lindy or whatever you want to call it stayed as King for many era's, but alas, all must give way sooner or later. The Twist dance became the death blow for the Lindy Hop/Jitterbug in 1959. (See Twist page as to why.)

Many folks ask what style of swing/Jitterbug is best, West Coast, East Coast, Whip, Push, Lindy, Shag etc. However, there is no best style. The best style would depend on what type of music you are dancing to at the time, Geographics, the theme of the dance being held, the speed in which the music is played and the dance knowledge of you and or your partner. If you're partner only knows one style of swing, then their style would be the best style to dance with them at that time. If they only know one style they usually will declare that the style they know is the best style above all others and usually will make derogatory statements.

Swing (Jitterbug) is a wonderful dance form in all it's versions that fits all types of music, Personalities, Finances etc. Calling yourself a swing dancer means you can at least do the basics in many forms of swing and a few well. So learn to swing dance whatever style, you're unique and your dances should be varied and your style should represent your knowledge of dance that other, newer dancers (and they are the majority) don't possess, and not limited to only one. However you will eventually find you like them all and soon you will understand the importance of them all as well as understand why there are different styles to begin with. So enjoy them and mainly smile, laugh and have fun.

Notes:
During this time, many things were being named after Lindbergh, even Al Smith tried to start a dance named after him (Al Smith Hop). Eleanor Powell did a "Jig Hop" in the "Fine and Dandy" Broadway play in 1930, which is related. Also there was a dance called the "St. Louis Hop" in 1926 and is described in Betty Lee's Book, it is a form of swing. In 1914, a dance called the "Aunt Jemima slide" may also be related. The November 1927 Dance Magazine has Lindy and Lindy Hop Lessons advertised by Charles Sadler and Prof. L. Gonzaga.

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It's All About The Humpf

1/8/2014

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*** It's all about the humpf ***

 Swing is a broad term for a group of social dances  that are mainly danced to various kinds of jazz music. The sheer flexibility of Swing dancing adds to its richness and makes it a great social dance to learn. Swing dancing is a social dance, but unlike Ballroom dancing, it emphasizes musicality and improvisation in the sense that the mood, the phrases and the "humpf" of the music will very much affect the way you dance and the way you execute every moves. The art of swing dancing is to adapt to the mood and beat of the music.




*** It's all about the music ***


But first and foremost, Swing is Music. What is Swing music? Swing music is a kind of Jazz music. It has African roots and European roots. The classic swing dance bands were Chick Webb, Count Basie, Jimmie Lucenford, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller. Louis Armstrong... Swing music does not have a hard beat. It has a strong flow. Swing dancing is jazz dancing. You play. You improvise. You syncopate. Rock (&Roll), Rockabilly, and various other musical forms evolved from Swing music. Swing music started in the mid-1920's, and was really popular among African Americans until it entered the mainstream around 1935. It was wildly popular until about 1945, when people danced much less, and Jazz, which had always been dancing music, stopped being popular. R&B and Jump Blues, which had grown out of Swing, combined with Country & Western and gave rise to Rock & Roll. This too was started by African Americans. R'N'R eventually grew into Rock, and became completely undanceable. In the 1970's there was Disco, and later Country & Western and Rockabilly.





In the 1980's, several people rediscovered authentic Swing music and dancing, inspired by the Lindy Hop in such films as Hellzapoppin' and Day at the Races. This lead to a resurgence of real Swing music, as thousands of people learned to dance Lindy Hop from the old masters like Frankie Manning and Al Minns, and the new masters, like Steven Mitchell and Ryan Francois. The film Swing Kids, which contains Swing music and dancing, was choreographed by Ryan Francois.





At the same time, in the 1980's several Rock, Rockabilly, Ska, and Punk bands were inspired by the popularity of Swing, to call themselves Swing bands. This music is often called Neo-swing. It sounds and feels a lot more like Rock than Swing, often with a hard beat, and an angry edge. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Royal Crown Revue and Brian Setzer Orchestra are Neo-swing bands. Squirrel Nut Zipper are inspired by pre-swing music - ragtime and hot jazz.




And then there are many, many contemporary authentic swing bands -- Bill Elliott, Eddie Reed, Dean Mora, Jennie Loebel, Lavay Smith, Joe Salzano, Lindy Hop Heaven. Swing music is pure joy. It puts a smile on your face.





Swing is Jazz music. Jazz is Dancing music. Swing music is pure joy.


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Dancing Makes You Smarter

1/8/2014

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To Dance Is a Radical Act

1/8/2014

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To Dance Is a Radical Act

The practice of dancing is vital to our survival as humans on earth.

Published on November 29, 2011 by Kimerer LaMothe, Ph.D. in What a Body Knows


To dance is a radical act. To think about dance, to study dance, or to practice dance in this 21st century is a radical act. 

Why?

Because if dancing matters—if dancing makes a difference to how we humans think and feel and act-then dancing challenges the values that fund modern western cultures.

How so?

1. Mind over body. A first and fundamental value of western cultures is the one that privileges our mental capacity, in particular our ability to reason, over and against our feeling, sensing, moving bodily selves. I think therefore I am. We believe that "we," as thinking minds, can exert control over our bodily actions, and that we should. We believe that achieving such mind over body mastery is good, and even our ticket to success in any realm of endeavor.

This idea that reason is our definitively human part was greeted with much hope and fanfare by early modern philosophers and politicians, economists and poets. If only all humans can learn to exercise their reason, it was thought, then many minds will be able to arrive at the same answer-at true and certain knowledge, at a common good, at world peace.

However, we humans are not rational minds dwelling in bodily containers. We are bodies. We are bodily selves whose movements are making us able to think and feel and act at all. And if we are to achieve a just and sustainable world, then we must make sure that our processes of getting there honor the wisdom and agency present in the movement of our bodily selves.

To dance is a radical act because dancing reminds us that the bodily movements we make make us who we are.

2. Individuals first. Second only to the value we accord mind over body control is the value we grant to a sense of ourselves as individuals first. We aim and claim to be independent and self-sufficient, generating our own resources and meeting our own needs. We enter into relationships, ready to stay or go based on the benefits of that relationship to us.

Yet, we humans are not individuals first. Before we can ever think or say "I," we have already been formed and enabled by others. We are who we are by virtue of the relationships we create with those who support our lives, from the day we are born to the day we die. And if we want to create healthy and life enabling relationships with others, then we must acknowledge that we are interdependent bodily selves.

To dance is a radical act because it reminds us that we, as bodily selves, exist only as an expression of the matrix of relationships with ourselves, others, and the natural world that enables us to be.

3. Write it down. A third value we hold dear is that of writing as a medium of knowledge. We grant an authority to words over and above any other medium as the one most able to document, preserve, and transmit truth and knowledge of any kind. This valuing of the written word flourished with the invention of the printing press and its first use: printing Bibles. People of any class or race or gender could access for their own individual selves the greatest mysteries of God. All they needed to do was learn to read.

However, as we now know, not everything that is written down is important, and not everything important can be written down. There are forms of knowledge that exist in media other than verbal ones. Reading and writing themselves are bodily activities demanding the precise articulation of muscle movement. Words cannot grant themselves authority. That authority comes from the lived experiences they express, and the lived experiences they enable.

To dance is a radical act because doing so implies that there are forms of knowing that cannot be mediated to us in words, which give words their meaning.

4. Sit whenever possible. A fourth value derives from the other three. We privilege the kind of work that we can do sitting down, while thinking, reading, writing. We spend years of our lives learning to sit still so that we can master these tasks. When we succeed, we are rewarded by forms of employment that allow us to sit some more. When we are tired at the end of the day, we sit to be entertained, to be fed, to be cared for. We want someone else to do the heavy lifting. We work hard, so we can sit.

Yet, as bodily selves, we are born to move. We are born moving as the medium in which we learn, adapt, invent, and nurture the relationships that support us in becoming who we have the potential to be. Moving our bodily selves in such ways gives us pleasure—even our greatest pleasure.

To dance is a radical act, because when we do it, we remember the primal joy of moving our bodily selves.

In sum, if we dance, and if we claim that dancing matters, then we are also affirming that we are not simply rational individuals whose best health is served by sitting and writing. We are bodily selves, sensing, feeling, stretching-and reaching for the knowledge, justice, and peace we desire.

So what are we to do?

We need to find the dancer in each of us, and the dance in what we do. We need to breathe to move and move to breathe, and so cultivate a sensory awareness of our bodily selves as movement. When we do, we will have what we need to be able to think and feel and act in ways that remain faithful to the body of earth and our bodies of earth.

1. Dance for the span of the universe that you are. All we are, as humans, is a span of flesh and consciousness. We each are a tiny swath of the universe where whatever energy it is that composes the universe is alive in us, as us, coming to life through us. The movement of life expresses itself in every movement we make. Every movement we make shapes that energy, gives it form, and sends it along.

To dance is to play with the movement that is making us. It is to cultivate a sensory awareness of how this movement is making us, and of how our own movements, as we shape and transmit the energy of life, are making us. To dance is to play with this movement in ways that allow us to discover and exercise our capacity to make our own movements—movements that align with our health and well-being. Dancing, we create ourselves. We become who we are. We are what we think and feel and do.

When we dance, then, we don't do it for our "self," per se. We don't do it in order to win a response (preferably praise) from others. We do it to participate consciously in the ongoing creation of what is as that creation is happening in us. We do it to let the universe that is us live through us.

When we do, we find in our bodily selves the ideas and motivation we need to move creatively and constructively in response to the social, psychological and environmental issues that concern us. We can, because we care. We care, because we feel what it is to be a bodily self. And with that knowledge, we have the surest moral compass there is.

2. Practice dance narrowly, understand dance broadly. Often, when we begin to study dance, we start with one technique or one teacher, and quickly identify ourselves as students of a given technique. We perfect particular patterns of movement, and then build on what we have learned. In time, our movements gain strength and grace, and the timbre of a signature style.

At the same time, we always need to remember that no one form or technique of dance is itself dance. A form is a catalyst to dance. The exercises of a given technique are helpful because they draw our attention to certain ranges of movement, quicken our awareness of these possibilities, and guide us to release our own energy through them.

Dance, however, is infinite. There are infinite possible patterns of sensing and responding, even within one relational bodily self. To dance is to exercise our capacity and willingness to play with the movements that we are and discover what we can do. This play can involve making new movements or animating movements of a given technique so fully that they become our own. In either case, however, the form is not the measure of the dance, only a tool for helping us find the dancers we are, and the dance in everything we do.

3. Welcome every obstacle to movement as an opportunity to become a better dancer. When I talk about dance, one of the questions I am asked most frequently concerns those with limited movement. How can someone who is ill or paralyzed or physically compromised dance?

I reply: dance is creative movement. Any human who can move at all—who can breathe or blink or wiggle a pinky finger—and has the desire to do so, can learn to play with the range of sensory possibility that that movement opens up. He can create and become new patterns of sensing and responding. She can invite the neural network of her bodily self to create new connections. When we move in such ways, we align with the forces of creativity—of healing—at work in us. We dance.

The same logic holds for dancers who are sidelined with an injury. In so many cases, an injury happens because one part of the body—a strong part—is carrying more weight than it should. The injury is thus an opportunity to slow down, and find more sensation, more freedom, more play, so that we are able to animate larger and more dynamic patterns of stretch and strength.

When we understand dance broadly, we know that anything that happens to us in our life, pleasing or not, offers us an opportunity to deepen our experience of dancing and enrich our ability to dance.

4. Keep the love alive. After spending time learning a new form, the novelty may wear off and our enthusiasm pale. Suddenly the movements that seemed so life-giving are routine. They don't produce the same sensory excitement. Inevitably the four-fold values named above creep in; we begin to try harder by exerting the power of our minds over our bodies, or we long simply to sit.

We humans are so good at creating habits. We are so good at getting caught in our habits, and forgetting that we were the ones who created them—even when we dance. Yet dancing remains our most potent resource for stirring to life the sensory awareness that reconnects us to our own creativity. As we play with movement possibilities, we open to the life-enabling currents in us that are always looking for places to break out in new forms.

So when we dance, it is up to us to keep the love alive—to return to the pulse of our breathing, to reconnect with the movements that are making us, and so open to receive the energies of the universe coursing through us.

There is a dancer in each of us, and a dance in everything we do. Once we find that dancing energy, we have the most powerful resource there is for evaluating the impact of the movements we are making in all realms of our lives; for comprehending and empathizing with the pain we are creating in ourselves and others, and for sensing how to move in ways that will better enrich our lives as bodily humans in community on this planet. If we are to survive the 21st century, we must.
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Swing High, Swing Low

1/8/2014

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Swing High, Swing Low

By April Witt

Sunday, January 29, 2006; Page W08


The mystic poet's words ring true: Dancing is when you rise above the world, "tearing your heart to pieces and giving up your soul"

The tall man clasps the woman's right hand in his left and draws her to him. He encircles her waist with his right arm. It is late. They are tired and sweaty, but exhilarated.

He hopes the band will strike up a swingy rendition of the tune he likes to think of as their song: Heaven. I'm in Heaven. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.

It doesn't, but once the music starts he feels as if he's in Heaven anyway. He extends his left arm slightly to swing his favorite dance partner out away from him before pulling her close again and lifting their clasped hands to set her spinning. The pair whirl together effortlessly, as if she is reading his mind instead of the subtle gestures and weight shifts he uses to signal new moves.

He swivels, she swivels. She keeps on swiveling until he lightly touches her slender waist to stop her motion. As they face each other, he distributes his weight evenly on both his feet. He then pulls his feet slightly apart -- setting up a Lindy Hop move called Maxie's Stop Step. She matches his movements as he does the splits, hops to cross his feet and then uncrosses them. They both know he's preparing to launch a slide, which will end with a dramatic stomp. He strikes a pose and freezes, playfully delaying the denouement. She listens to the music, trying to predict when he'll unleash that stomp. She intuits correctly. They slide, stomp and laugh, in unison.

The dancers mirror each other uncannily with one exception.

Frances Gail Courtney is a natural beauty whose wholesome, symmetrical features are lit by a perpetual smile.

Steve Terry's face is a ruined landscape of unexpected planes and proportions. One eye is higher and deeper set than the other. From the tip of his ear down, his face is improbably small. His mouth is twisted and gnarled. Yet, as he glides across the dance floor with Frances Gail, amusing her with his quick, clever moves, he manages to look rakish.

It is a fall Saturday night at the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park, the storied venue for dance and romance that opened its doors in 1933. The band is taking a break. Hundreds of swing dancers sit on the 7,500-square-foot spruce-maple dance floor. They watch as a troupe of middle-aged people wearing sailor suits files out before them and lines up in formation.

The dance team is called the Eight Week Wonders. For the next 2 minutes 4 seconds, team members perform, more or less in unison, an exuberant series of swing-dancing moves with names like the whip, the lawn mower and the jazz box. Their broad smiles are even more striking than their moves. As they twist, turn, jump and strain at the screaming-fast pace of 240 beats per minute, they look euphoric.

"We're all a bunch of repressed technocrats leading a double life," says Tony Nesky, a member of the dance team who is an environmental consultant. "You've got the assistant deputy undersecretary of soybean policy by day. By night, he's Jim Carrey. By night, we're throwing women over our backs."

The team -- whose members include a basement-waterproofing salesman, a dentist, two scientists, several lawyers and an expert on State Department protocol -- is the creation of local swing-dance instructors and impresarios Tom Koerner and Debra Sternberg of Gottaswing.com. "I feel like a drug lord," jokes Koerner. "Only the drug I sell is swing. The Eight Week Wonders are some of my crack babies."

Tonight, the Eight Week Wonders are practicing a new routine they'll perform in the upcoming Virginia State Open dance competition.

The Wonders -- named for the eight-week courses Koerner and Sternberg offer, at a cost of $99 per person -- take inspiration from generations of swing dancers: the manic, quick-stepping athletes who popularized the Lindy Hop at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s; the World War II soldiers who romanced their gals to the strains of big bands led by Glenn Miller or the Dorsey brothers; the teenage jitterbuggers of the 1950s.

There are better, younger, hipper and more agile dance teams in the region's thriving swing-dance community. But none is more inclusive than the Eight Week Wonders. Some Wonders have sinking centers of gravity or bad backs. So routines are choreographed to accommodate a back row of dancers who can't execute the handstands, flips and throws that are the crowd-pleasing athletic extreme of swing. The number of people on the team hovers around 30 active members. The rules are simple. Team members don't have to show up for practices or performances if they don't want to.

"I'm just a nerdy little white guy who was saved by dance," says the 5-foot-9 Koerner, 47, who quit practicing law full time to teach dance with Sternberg and host at least four dance parties weekly. "I didn't want to run a team where we had to cut people.

"We're like a family," he says. "We have to take the bad uncle back when he gets out of prison. Our motto is, 'If you have 99 bucks, you are on the team.' The best part of the group is that after we dance we all go out to Pizza Hut, which world champions can't do because they have to watch their weight."

In their dancing prime, Koerner and Sternberg captured the Virginia State Open Lindy Hop championship six times. Now they say winning isn't paramount. Some Wonders credit them with fostering a community of dancers whose friendships transcend divisions of status, political affiliation and Zip code.

"This is what I've been looking for," says Hilary Cairnie, a partner in a law firm. "It's beyond a hobby. It's a parallel universe. You ask any swing dancer who is devoted to it, 'Gee, if they didn't have dance in their life, what would they do?' What the heck would I do? I wouldn't even want to go there. I could join the country club. I could golf. I'll pass on all that. Just let me dance twice a week, every week of the year, and I'm engaged."

Although the Eight Week Wonders are close-knit, few know precisely how one of the team's most admired stalwarts, Steve Terry, a 48-year-old systems design software engineer, became disfigured. They just know that Steve and his dance partner, Frances Gail Courtney -- who goes by the no-nonsense moniker F.G. and is, at age 38, one of the youngest Wonders -- are natural dancers with innate rhythm. Watching Steve and F.G. during performances helps lesser dancers keep on the beat.

Steve doesn't volunteer information about his disfigurement any more than he allows it to make him self-conscious when he's dancing. He dances five or six nights a week at local venues. He arrives jauntily, in a white Mercedes SLK 320 hardtop convertible with red leather seats. He makes himself an upbeat presence. When a fellow dancer remarks that she wishes the winter weather outside matched Steve's vintage shirt emblazoned with a balmy scene of palm trees, he taps his forehead and says, "It's all up here."

He takes the attitude that everyone has sorrows to overcome. He just wears his on his face.

On a dark, cold Sunday night in October, the stretch of Lee Highway in Merrifield that houses the Elan DanceSport Center is nearly deserted. In a brightly lit second-story window the Eight Week Wonders can be seen spinning: together and apart, together and apart.

From the street, the moment evokes the scene in the movie "Shall We Dance" in which the successful, ennui-ridden character played by Richard Gere glimpses a lit dance studio from a passing train and is filled with longing.

Inside the studio, the Eight Week Wonders are huffing and puffing through their newest routine, "Life Goes to a Party."

The Virginia State Open competition is one month away.

Up close, the routine looks a bit ragged.

Kevin Connor, a loss-prevention analyst for the insurance industry, gets lost trying to execute the kick steps of the Charleston while traveling around a circle of dance partners. He's supposed to join hands to dance a few synchronized kick steps with each woman before kick-stepping on to the next partner -- and all without actually kicking anyone by mistake. At one point, Connor realizes he's out of sync, briefly comes to a complete stop, and laughs at himself.

Looking on, Koerner shakes his head fondly. "If I told these guys we were going to do a new routine where we'd all be throwing each other around at 200 miles per hour, they'd show up and try to do it," Koerner says. "They are somewhat delusional . . .

"I feel like the guy in the 'The Music Man' who was selling the big parade. There is a scene in the movie when the townspeople look at their children and believe that they really are wearing great uniforms and playing shiny new instruments. Because we have these goofy outfits and dance to these really fast songs, there is this illusion that we are channeling the great Lindy Hoppers from the Savoy Ballroom. But none of us are. We're all about two-and-a-half minutes of fun in the sun."

For some of the newer members of the Eight Week Wonders, the Virginia State Open will be their first dance competition.

"I'm a wreck," says Kathy Schwartz, a court administrator who is Connor's partner in dance and in life. "I don't want to be the one who messes up for the other members of the team."

Schwartz and Connor are so determined not to let the team down that they've been practicing nightly in their Bowie home. They shove the kitchen table off to one side and tie up the pendant light fixture so they can spin across the linoleum.

Schwartz isn't half as worried about executing the moves as she is about facing the judges. "I am incredibly shy," she says. "My throat closes up thinking about getting up in front of a crowd. I have to take my glasses off when we perform so I can't see people looking at us."

Frank Morra, 61, has been swing dancing since the 1950s and once landed a guest spot on "American Bandstand."

Today, he's a scientist who helps design electricity-generating plants. A member of the Eight Week Wonders since 2001, he's not at all sure the team should bother entering dance competitions.

Up close, the routine looks a bit ragged.

Kevin Connor, a loss-prevention analyst for the insurance industry, gets lost trying to execute the kick steps of the Charleston while traveling around a circle of dance partners. He's supposed to join hands to dance a few synchronized kick steps with each woman before kick-stepping on to the next partner -- and all without actually kicking anyone by mistake. At one point, Connor realizes he's out of sync, briefly comes to a complete stop, and laughs at himself.

Looking on, Koerner shakes his head fondly. "If I told these guys we were going to do a new routine where we'd all be throwing each other around at 200 miles per hour, they'd show up and try to do it," Koerner says. "They are somewhat delusional . . .

"I feel like the guy in the 'The Music Man' who was selling the big parade. There is a scene in the movie when the townspeople look at their children and believe that they really are wearing great uniforms and playing shiny new instruments. Because we have these goofy outfits and dance to these really fast songs, there is this illusion that we are channeling the great Lindy Hoppers from the Savoy Ballroom. But none of us are. We're all about two-and-a-half minutes of fun in the sun."

For some of the newer members of the Eight Week Wonders, the Virginia State Open will be their first dance competition.

"I'm a wreck," says Kathy Schwartz, a court administrator who is Connor's partner in dance and in life. "I don't want to be the one who messes up for the other members of the team."

Schwartz and Connor are so determined not to let the team down that they've been practicing nightly in their Bowie home. They shove the kitchen table off to one side and tie up the pendant light fixture so they can spin across the linoleum.

Schwartz isn't half as worried about executing the moves as she is about facing the judges. "I am incredibly shy," she says. "My throat closes up thinking about getting up in front of a crowd. I have to take my glasses off when we perform so I can't see people looking at us."

Frank Morra, 61, has been swing dancing since the 1950s and once landed a guest spot on "American Bandstand."

Today, he's a scientist who helps design electricity-generating plants. A member of the Eight Week Wonders since 2001, he's not at all sure the team should bother entering dance competitions.

Some swing dancers talk about the Zen of dance -- those transcendent moments when well-matched partners both lose and find themselves in the music and their movements. Skilled dancers seek those moments the way an expert skier hungers for the long run through perfect powder.

When this night's rehearsal ends, it is almost 10 o'clock. Steve and F.G. keep dancing. They are dancing so intensely they seem not to notice that the others are changing out of dance shoes, donning coats and exiting onto the dark street below.

Steve and F.G. bounce around the room together as if floating, trancelike, within their own private champagne

bubble. At that moment, the partners seem to have more in common with the Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul, and other ancient practitioners of ecstatic dance, than with the Jazz Age Lindy Hoppers of Harlem.

"Dancing," the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi wrote in the 13th century, "is not rising to your feet painlessly like a whirl of dust blown about by the wind. Dancing is when you rise above both worlds, tearing your heart to pieces and giving up your soul."

One of Steve Terry's earliest memories is twirling. He recalls, as a toddler, dancing around the living room with one of his brothers, while his father, an engineer, played boogie-woogie on the family piano.

"We'd be turning around and around and around, making ourselves dizzy," Steve says.

"That was a fun time."

Steve grew up in Oakville, Ontario, about 25 miles from Toronto. When he was 16 months old, his parents noticed a bulge on one side of his face, which turned out to be a malignant tumor. Doctors surgically removed the tumor, and radiated the lower half of his face to destroy stray cancer cells. The cure worked, but the radiation severely stunted the development of his head, face and neck. It left him disfigured and with functional challenges.

Today, Steve is 6 feet tall and broad shouldered. His esophagus remains so small that it is difficult for him to swallow some foods. His lips are misshapen. To sip from a mug of coffee, he tilts his head back, then forward, before running the mug across his mouth to catch potential drips. His speech can be difficult to understand. He speaks in a voice that is high, nasal, breathy, strained and free of rancor.

Some swing dancers talk about the Zen of dance -- those transcendent moments when well-matched partners both lose and find themselves in the music and their movements. Skilled dancers seek those moments the way an expert skier hungers for the long run through perfect powder.

When this night's rehearsal ends, it is almost 10 o'clock. Steve and F.G. keep dancing. They are dancing so intensely they seem not to notice that the others are changing out of dance shoes, donning coats and exiting onto the dark street below.

Steve and F.G. bounce around the room together as if floating, trancelike, within their own private champagne

bubble. At that moment, the partners seem to have more in common with the Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul, and other ancient practitioners of ecstatic dance, than with the Jazz Age Lindy Hoppers of Harlem.

"Dancing," the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi wrote in the 13th century, "is not rising to your feet painlessly like a whirl of dust blown about by the wind. Dancing is when you rise above both worlds, tearing your heart to pieces and giving up your soul."

One of Steve Terry's earliest memories is twirling. He recalls, as a toddler, dancing around the living room with one of his brothers, while his father, an engineer, played boogie-woogie on the family piano.

"We'd be turning around and around and around, making ourselves dizzy," Steve says.

"That was a fun time."

Steve grew up in Oakville, Ontario, about 25 miles from Toronto. When he was 16 months old, his parents noticed a bulge on one side of his face, which turned out to be a malignant tumor. Doctors surgically removed the tumor, and radiated the lower half of his face to destroy stray cancer cells. The cure worked, but the radiation severely stunted the development of his head, face and neck. It left him disfigured and with functional challenges.

Today, Steve is 6 feet tall and broad shouldered. His esophagus remains so small that it is difficult for him to swallow some foods. His lips are misshapen. To sip from a mug of coffee, he tilts his head back, then forward, before running the mug across his mouth to catch potential drips. His speech can be difficult to understand. He speaks in a voice that is high, nasal, breathy, strained and free of rancor.

"I'm a medical guinea pig," Steve says. "They were, like, 'Let's try this and see if it works.' This was 47-some-odd years ago. They were just doing their best."

As a boy, Steve proved agile and daring. His father built a hockey rink in the back yard, and Steve glided around it fearlessly. He loved to ski, racing down the slope, bouncing effortlessly over moguls, knees bent, poles back. It made him feel free. "My mom, she was always encouraging me to just be normal like everyone else," Steve recalls. "She didn't put any limits on me. I was normal in every other way. This was just the way I turned out."

When Steve was 13, the family was driv-ing home from a day of skiing, tired and happy in their big eight-cylinder Mercury, when it began to snow heavily. "The wind was blowing snow over the road," Steve recalls. "My dad was driving. There was a car ahead of us in the same lane. We couldn't see it until it was too late. At the last minute, he saw the car and swerved to avoid it. There was a car coming in the other direction. We hit head-on."

Steve's father was killed instantly. His mother's back was broken. She was hospitalized for several months.

In Steve's memories of that time, grief melds with physical agony. In the year following his father's death, Steve underwent a series of reconstructive surgeries on his face. He spent more than four months in the hospital. The radiation he'd received as a toddler had left Steve unable to open his mouth wide enough to receive even routine dental care. A Toronto dentist wanted to pull all of his teeth. Instead, Steve's mother and his doctor opted for surgery. Surgeons removed sections of bone from Steve's ribs and grafted them to his jaw. To hold Steve's refashioned jaw in place temporarily, doctors wired it to a circular metal frame they fitted over the top of his head like a halo.

There were complications. "They ended up doing a skin graft from my shoulder to my face," Steve recalls. "That was bad. It was very painful. They had me all doped up. They had me in isolation because they didn't want me to get infected."

Steve recounts these details reluctantly and only when asked. "I don't want people to feel sorry for me," he says matter-of-factly.

There is only one detail of his ordeal that Steve volunteers: His mother, a widow with three other grieving children to tend at home, took the train into Toronto daily to visit him in the hospital. "My mom," he says, "deserves credit for being an angel."

Steve was resilient. By high school, he was such a strong skier that he joined the Canadian Ski Patrol, a volunteer group that provides first aid to injured skiers. Steve and three buddies from school formed a first-aid team and won several competitions.

Steve was smart, a perpetual A student. Yet he came to realize that some people looked at his face and assumed he was stupid. "If I'm at a restaurant with someone, the waitress will ask the other person what I want to order," he says. That's tough to take, he says, but not as tough as the rare lout who looks at his face and laughs.

In college, Steve studied engineering, as his late father had. For the first time, he moved away from his supportive family. He lived in a group residential hall. He skied and played squash. Driven to succeed, he studied too much, socialized too little, and maintained excellent grades at the price of not having much fun, he recalls. "I tried to be the perfect person, to know everything and always be the smartest guy in the room," he says. "My insecurity came from how people looked at me, not how I looked at myself. We are all vulnerable to how other people communicate our value to us . . . I became a perfectionist because I figured that would make other people accept me."

In 1988, Steve moved to Northern Virginia for work. Eventually, he was living and working out of his Herndon townhouse. He communicated with colleagues and clients primarily by e-mail or phone. As a single telecommuter in anonymous suburbia it was easy to feel isolated.

"I just coasted along, not thinking there was too much meaning in life," he recalls. "Basically, I was just working, eating, watching TV and sleeping. That was about it."

He tried not to ponder what life might have been like with a different face. "Not knowing anything I could do about it, I didn't dwell on it," he says. "That's just the way it was. That's just the way that life is."

Steve experienced a spiritual awakening. His new faith, he recalls, inspired him to see himself through his maker's eyes. "Instead of trying harder to get other people to accept me, I understood that God already accepted me the way I was," he says. Christian theology gave him an intellectual framework for understanding and transcending his own suffering. This passage from Galatians 2:20 sums it up, Steve says: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that which I now live in the flesh I live in the faith . . ."

Yet Steve, man of faith, was still a man -- corporeal and lonely. Once, at a church singles social, Steve watched a couple do something that mesmerized him. They were swing dancing.

Determined to learn how, Steve drove to Glen Echo one Saturday night in the late '90s, parked his car and sat. He was trying to work up the nerve to go inside for the free lesson routinely offered before Saturday night dances.

"Being single is kind of tough and lonely," he says. "I was trying to get involved somewhere. This looked like it would be a good thing to get involved with. At the same time, I was there all by myself. It was pretty nerve-racking to go in there, to go someplace you've never been before, not knowing who is going to be in there or what it is going to be like. I just remember sitting in the car in the parking lot and praying to God to help me through it."

When Steve entered the ballroom, it was empty. In his anxiety, he'd arrived early. He stayed for the class, then spent the rest of the evening watching other people dance. The next week, he returned. He kept returning. He signed up for one series of lessons, then another. He struggled to master the steps. Like any novice dancer, he also struggled to find the courage to make himself vulnerable by asking a stranger to dance; to not be crushed when rejected.

Steve kept dancing. He became proficient in a wide range of swing-dancing styles and steps, and gained a reputation as a confident leader who could make his partners, whether beginners or experts, dance their best. He became such a fixture on the region's swing-dancing circuit that fellow dancers took more notice of his moves than his face. "I think of myself as normal," Steve says. "If I'm somewhere people aren't used to me, I'm different enough that they look at me. It's nice to be in a place where I'm treated just like everyone else . . .

"All people have the same issues to deal with. If you think God is in control of everything, and things don't work out how you want, you have to wonder, am I going to be permanently angry with God? I had to learn to forgive God. I had to learn to forgive myself for not being perfect, and then try to forgive other people. At a dance, when you go up to ask somebody to dance, and they say no, that's pretty hard to deal with . . .

"My philosophy is that nothing is ever perfect. No matter how good a dancer you are, no dance is ever perfect. You are going to make mistakes. Your dance partners are going to make mistakes. So the best thing to do is practice how to recover. When you get distracted or miss a step, you don't want to stop there. The thing to do is keep dancing so no one even knows."

When the Eight Week Wonders were formed, Steve didn't join the team right away because he didn't have a regular dance partner. Steve thought he'd lined up a dance partner, but at the first rehearsal the woman he'd thought had agreed to dance with him was partnered with another man. "She was very apologetic," Steve recalls. "I don't know what really happened, if she didn't understand what I was asking her or what. So I'm standing there without a partner . . . In that first class they separated the class into the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots, the people without a partner, just circulated among themselves." He didn't go back for a while after that.

Eventually, Steve joined a different dance team with a woman he'd met at a dance class. "Her focus was on perfecting the moves," Steve says. "My focus was on having a good time and getting to know her. She wanted me to perfect the moves. I wanted her to be my friend."

The collaboration didn't last. In 2003, Steve joined the Eight Week Wonders. He tried a succession of dance partners but none of them worked out. So he was without a partner once more.

Last February, Steve was dancing at the Chevy Chase Ballroom in the District one night when he saw F.G. and asked her to dance. F.G. had been taking swing-dancing lessons for only a couple of months, but Steve could tell right away that she was a natural. He felt like a talent scout who'd made an astounding discovery.

F.G. recalls being nervous as she accepted Steve's outstretched hand for that first dance. "I had seen him on the dance floor," she says. "I was flattered and excited, and a little worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up. Of course I wondered about the face, just wondered in that human way what had happened. I was concerned about not being able to understand him when he spoke. But I got used to that pretty quickly. I saw that he was a great dancer. That's what I saw."

F.G. grew up in the rural Alabama town of Fort Deposit, where there was one stoplight and a population of 1,000. Everybody in town knew that F.G. danced on the high school drill team and that way back in first grade she'd been her class representative to the homecoming court. Everybody knew everybody in Fort Deposit. If the police chief spied F.G. walking home from school, he'd tell her to hop into his squad car so he could drive her. Folks in town thought nothing of giving one another a hug, a reassuring hand squeeze or a pat on the back.

"There's a lot of social lubricant there," F.G. says. So when F.G. moved to the District for work, she found it stiff, closed, aggressive-defensive and more than a little hard to take. "D.C. is so transitory," she says. "Nobody is really from here. People move fast. They don't really hug . . . You are scared to death to touch anybody because you might get sued."

Trained as a public-interest lawyer, F.G. is the director of grass-roots outreach for the National Wildlife Federation. During a party at an environmental conference, a colleague asked her to dance and led her through some swing moves. She enjoyed the experience so much that she signed up for swing-dancing lessons last January. It was part of a 2005 New Year's resolution to get out and socialize more.

"I came away from those first nights of dancing just euphoric from the music, the human contact -- body and soul -- the movement," she recalls. "It would take me a good two hours to eat and wind down so I could go to sleep."

F.G. started dancing several nights a week. "I kind of went nuts with it," she says, laughing. She'd roll into work tired at 10 a.m., work into the evening and leave the office just in time to catch a dance class or dance at 8 or 9 p.m. She hadn't kept hours like this since law school, only the library was never this much fun.

She was so happy and grateful when a skilled dancer led her through a rousing swing number that she didn't care if this was Washington, not Fort Deposit. "Sometimes I just had to hug their neck," she says.

F.G. found herself dancing through her days as well. A co-worker once caught F.G. executing a jazzy pirouette at the copy machine. "Nice spin!" F.G. recalls her saying. Waiting for elevators, standing at crosswalks waiting for the light to change or standing at her kitchen stove stirring a pot, she'd practice standing on one foot to improve her balance.

Then, she met Steve at the Chevy Chase Ballroom. After they'd danced together a few times, he asked her to be his partner in the Eight Week Wonders. She hesitated. She was just finishing Koerner and Sternberg's eight-week beginning swing course. She worried she couldn't keep up with the team. "I knew it was going to work out," Steve recalls. "I knew she knew how to follow. What she didn't know, I was good enough I could cover for her."

Turned out he didn't need to.

After one of the new dance partners' first team rehearsals, Steve asked F.G. to join him at the Silver Diner in Merrifield for a cup of coffee. "I was, like, I'm going to ask this beautiful woman to coffee," Steve recalls, "If she says no, I'm going to be crushed."

She said yes. Over coffee, Steve shyly handed F.G. an envelope. Inside he'd placed a photograph of himself as a baby. He'd wanted her to see his baby picture "because I was cute," he says simply. For the next four hours, Steve and F.G. talked. He told her about his childhood cancer. They both talked about their families, their jobs, where they'd lived, what they believed. When they stopped talking, it was close to midnight. Steve felt as if he'd found a rare soul able to see him as he was, not as he appeared. It brought to mind one of his favorite passages from a poem by William Blake:

This life's dim windows of the soul,

Distort the heavens from pole to pole,

And lead you to believe a lie,

When you see with, not through the eye.

"I felt it was a time we connected," Steve recalls. "Our souls connected. That's what I think. It had a lot to do with the fact that I felt I could trust her. I was happy to get to know her and have her know me."

Becoming friends made dancing together richer, F.G. says. Dancing became a fluent conversation between friends able to finish each other's sentences. When they weren't dancing, the partners often traded e-mails about dancing.

Steve e-mailed old movie clips with dance moves he wanted them to learn. They critiqued the previous night's dances. They compared observations on how dance is a metaphor for life and shared thoughts on why their partnership worked.

"Steve is the perfect lead," F.G. says. "He's very clear on what he wants you to do. He delivers enough force to help you get wherever he wants you to go, but not so much that it throws you off. I want to realize as accurately as possible what he's going for. I like it even better if I throw my own thing in there and surprise him. There is a little negotiation going on. But it's all good. It's spontaneous. It's creative. It's just so joyful it's hard for it to ever be bad. Each dance is something we've created together."

F.G. is the perfect partner, Steve says. "One of the objectives of the lead is to get the follower to smile," he says. "It means you are pleasing the other person. If you are dancing with someone who is looking around the room and not paying attention to what you are doing, it's, like, why are you here? I don't ever have to work too hard to get F.G. to smile. I could dance with her all night."

F.G.'s step is as light as her spirit. Sometimes, when the partners dance, Steve says, "I imagine both of us floating on a cloud up to Heaven."

In the first months of their partnership, Steve and F.G. danced together so much she had to start icing her knees some nights. She jokingly implored Steve not to feed her addiction to swing by telling her about new dance venues. "I'd say don't tell me about any more nights I could dance!" F.G. recalls, again laughing. "I'd say 'La-la-la-la-la. I'm not listening.'" When the Eight Week Wonders took photos, Steve and F.G. each mailed copies home so their moms could see the two of them together hamming it up striking dance poses in their team costumes.

"My mom has hers on the refrigerator," F.G. says.

"My mom has one on her refrigerator, too," Steve says.

On a night less than a week before the competition, with F.G. out of town on business, Steve has to dance the Virginia State Open routines with substitute partners. Leading these less familiar partners takes more effort mentally and physically. By the end of the second number, Steve is winded.

"F.G. is the best partner I know of," he says afterward. "We know each other's moves. We know how to react. We know how to recover. If she's there, I'm dancing the routine with the best person. If she's not, I'm dancing with someone else. It's not the same."

But it is something Steve will have to get used to. Not long after Steve and F.G. formed their dance partnership, F.G. began dating an experienced swing dancer. Recently, F.G. has begun learning the Eight Week Wonders' latest routine with her boyfriend as her partner. She's still going to compete in the Virginia State Open with Steve, and be his dance partner for the routines they've already learned together. They will still dance socially together several times a week. Still, not having F.G. as his partner for each of the team routines feels like a loss to Steve.

When Steve and F.G. dance together now, he says, he sometimes feels like he's Fred Astaire trying to woo Ginger Rogers.

"I'll be on the middle of the dance floor," he says. "I'll see F.G. We'll see each other. She runs up to meet me. We stand there for a while in closed position. My right arm is around her waist. And then the band starts playing. I listen to the introduction of the song. F.G. and I get connected with the rhythm. We start shifting from one foot to the other, just getting in the rhythm.

"I just zone out," he says. "It's just she and I on the dance floor . . . We both understand where we are. I want romance, and she doesn't. She's, like, Okay, we'll be friends and that's fine. I'm, like, Oh, let's have romance. That gets into the dance a little bit. It is like Fred and Ginger, how Fred is trying to bring this girl over to his side. I don't ever want to be disrespectful of her, but it is kind of a fantasy thing. So I'm watching her to see if she makes eye contact. I keep watching her face to see how she's reacting. If she figures out I'm feeling too romantic, she puts her finger up in the air and does a funny little shake to her finger. She does that just to break any romantic notions I have. I can tell. That's the kind of thing she does. She just tries to make it fun. It's her way of telling me, 'It's okay, I understand what you are doing, and we have to look at this as fun, don't we?'

"But at some point, a dance could get a little boring if you are not going to be romantic about it. So I'll lean over, and in her ear I'll say, 'Okay, you are Ginger and I am Fred.' She'll laugh. I'll try to ham it up a bit more. I'll imagine that I am Fred Astaire doing all these wild fox-trot moves I see Fred do in the movies. Fred always has his arms stretched out wide. It's kind of like an eagle I guess. He has his arms outstretched in a semicircle arrangement so that Ginger feels like she's in the arms of her partner and she's safe."

"Everybody in!" Koerner says. "Everybody in." In a corner of the ballroom at the Dulles Hilton hotel on a mid-November afternoon, Koerner and Sternberg stand at the center of a tightly packed circle of Wonders. More than 30 people, dressed in sailor suits and suspenders, strain and stretch to reach into the center of the circle and touch hands. "Go, team!" Koerner says as the dancers touch their gathered hands, then fall back and await their turn to perform.

There are five entries in the swing team-dancing category of the 2005 Virginia State Open. The Wonders, shameless, have entered twice. They'll perform one routine as the Eight Week Wonders and a second one as Son of Eight Week Wonders, a ploy, Koerner cracks, that positions them well to capture fourth and fifth place.

The Wonders trot onto the dance floor and form two parallel lines facing the judges. As they await the musical cue to launch their first routine, the dancing lawyers and salesmen, scientists and bureaucrats look as thrilled and nervous as high school thespians on opening night. F.G.'s hands feel like ice.

The competition stage is almost as unadorned as their usual practice room, with just one strand of glittery fringe strung against a back wall lined with four fake potted trees. As the Wonders skillfully execute the moves they've practiced so many Sunday nights, the crowd hoots and hollers approval.

The Wonders form a broad circle and begin a kick-stepping Charleston pattern to move from one partner to another. Morra kicks so enthusiastically he knocks over a potted tree. But the crowd is cheering so loudly for the local team that the tree falls silently, and the other Wonders don't miss a beat.

Near the end of the routine, Steve spots dancers he knows grinning in the audience, and he gets distracted. He starts to lead F.G. into a maneuver from a different routine. Sensing his error, F.G. gently places her hand over Steve's and moves it to the correct position on her hip. For once, it is Steve who instantly responds to his partner's lead. He's grateful and proud of her.

When the music stops, the Wonders file off winded and happy. "It lifts my heart," says Schwartz, the court administrator from Bowie.

The Wonders' next routine doesn't go nearly as well, but none of them seem to care. Most of the Wonders don't stick around to hear the judges announce that the team placed third and fifth.

"I defy anyone to tell me who won the contest last year without first checking the Internet," Frank Morra cracks as most of the Wonders head off to a nearby restaurant to celebrate a team member's birthday. "It's very transitory information."

Steve and F.G. stay behind for the open dancing. They are both still keyed up from the rush of the competition. They want to dance, just the two of them, to unwind like sprinters who've crossed the finish line and need to walk to cool down. Steve offers his hand, F.G. takes it, and he leads her onto the dance floor for a mid-tempo number. As they dance, Steve gets a leg cramp. F.G., worried, wants to know if he needs to sit down.

"No," he recalls telling her. "I'll be all right. I just want to keep dancing."

One week after the competition, F.G. sends Steve an e-mail with the subject line: "bam." She's been offered a job as director of the National Wildlife Federation's regional office in Atlanta. She hadn't sought the move, but will consider it, she writes in her message. Moving to Atlanta would put her within driving distance of her Southern relatives.

Steve tries to send an encouraging reply but admits he is at a loss for words. The next morning, he e-mails F.G. again: "This year, one thing I am so thankful for is you, and your friendship and your kindness . . . Y'know when I read 'Atlanta' . . . I realized how deeply I would miss you. Always, I have to keep reminding myself that God is in control, and He's my source of all that I need. Okay, enough pondering . . . You always have a place in my prayers."

"I didn't want to do this over e-mail, but don't want to tell you at a dance either, and don't want you to hear it from anyone else," F.G. writes to Steve on December 8. "I've accepted the Atlanta job: We can talk about it later. I've been crying all morning, but that will pass."

"Strange," Steve writes back, "but I felt a strong sad feeling in my heart earlier this morning."

Six days later the Wonders perform at an employee holiday party for Exxon Mobil at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner. F.G. tries joking that her colleagues at the Wildlife Federation would "skin her alive" if they knew she was dancing for the Exxon Mobil executives. But neither she nor Steve feels much like laughing. They figure this will be their last official performance as partners on the dance team. After the team dances, Steve and F.G. look for a quiet spot to sit. The mall adjacent to the hotel is closed and desolate. They sit on a bench there for what they will later describe as a wrenching farewell. "It's hard to separate," Steve says. "Hard to close that chapter."

Sitting in the desolate mall, Steve presents F.G. with a Christmas present: a framed photo of them dancing. The photo records a fleeting moment of triumph. Steve holds F.G. aloft. The dance partners beam. Steve placed the photo in a frame emblazoned: "A true friend is one of life's greatest gifts."

On a cold December night, red and green Christmas lights are strung around the Chevy Chase Ballroom. Along one wall, would-be dancers sit on benches and folding chairs. They are waiting to ask someone to dance or be asked. They are waiting for their next chance at the romance of a well-executed dance.

Steve is in a familiar position, looking for a new dance partner. He jokes, glumly, about posting a notice that he's holding auditions.

Some of the tunes the deejay spins are seasonal and lighthearted, but Steve looks stony as he steers one thick-waisted woman around the dance floor. The woman is perfectly proficient in all the expected steps. But she's no Ginger Rogers -- and she's no F.G. She's a mere mortal. When she dances, her feet touch the ground.

Steve is struggling, he later says. He's an emotional wreck from saying goodbye to F.G. just a few days before. Yet he keeps on dancing. All around him, other dancers swivel, kick, jump and swirl. Clasped hands lift together. Arms arc. Linked by light touches and the rhythm of the music, men and women move together and apart, together and apart.

In one of the last songs of the evening, Steve can be glimpsed deftly leading a young woman through the happy throng of dancers. The woman, who wears her light brown hair in a ponytail, moves well. She and Steve move well together. As the song ends, Steve grasps the woman in his arms and dips her backward, ever-so-briefly, in the classic finale to the three-minute romance of a dance. They both smile.

 

1 Comment

    SwingEssays

    Here is where the Lindy nerds meet

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