PROPOSALS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND SWING MUSIC AND IMPROVE SWING DANCE MUSICALITY
Social dancing, unlike sport or competitive dancing, is not based on the reproduction of highly difficult, aesthetic styling, and maximum precision choreographic movements. Social dancing, in our opinion, is characterised by the unpredictability of the outcome, not knowing which steps and movements arise from the interaction of music and dancers, and among the dancers themselves. In fact, we believe that one of the main attractions of social dancing is the possibility that two specific dancers and the same music can create a new completely different form of dance and interaction each time. The possibility of a dancer being a little bit different in each dance and with each partner is what attracts us.
This unpredictability is based on granting and obtaining freedom. First we have to give freedom; be creative and let our partner do the same; break the rules that we have been taught; stop doing what we have repeated hundreds of times; allow things not to go exactly as planned. Obviously this is very difficult in the early stages of the process of learning the language of dance. At first we need rules and we must obey them (i.e. the leader begins the swing out with the left foot, the follower puts their left hand on the left shoulder of the leader...). If everything is too unpredictable it will be very difficult to interact efficiently with the parner. It is for this reason that, at first, we tend to constrain our freedom. Thus, from the point of view of efficiency and body coordination, during the learning process, our muscles tend to be more tense, more rigid. This occurs is naturally. It is a resource for our motor system to restrict the possibilities of movement to some parts of the body and to concentrate on performing movements in others. We also tend to repeat the steps that are we are more comfortable with and better trained to do. We prefer to dance to a kind of music that is more familiar, simpler, more linear and only dance with partners when we know their level, their way of dancing, their possible responses. But little by little, we open up to the possibility of being more unpredictable, more variable, more exciting.
Secondly we have to make as many movements as we possibly can absolutely automatic to achieve freedom. The neural resources that we have not have to use for the basics of the dance can be used for the more creative aspects of dancing. Some of these things that can be automated are interpretation and understanding of the music. We are talking about the ability to read what the music is telling us, to extract the information that was put in by the composer when he wrote it and by the musicians when they play it for us. This includes aspects such as feeling the pulse, identifying the 1 count or recognising the structure of the musical phrases. There are also less tangible aspects such as the color and energy of the music that each piece gives us.
In addition, at the end of the road of musical interpretation, there's musicality, the ability use your dance to express what music is saying and makes you feel. Musicality can also be interpreted as a dancer's ability to give music a certain role in the dancers interaction. In fact, we think that musicality is one of the factors that can simplify this interaction.
Certainly you can dance and have fun without understanding or expressing music with the movements of your dance. Musicality is only important for those dancers who want to incorporate these aspects into their dance. It is not essential or better to be musical. Not everyone has to be, or not be musical when dancing.
But, while musicality might not be as important to everyone, there are aspects related to musical understanding and interpretation that are essential and, if they are not well integrated and automated, can limit dancing. You can dance without musicality but still being able to enjoy a lot your dances but, most likely, you will have difficulty efficiently interacting with your partner and dancing well if you have problems with the pulse or the recognition of the 1 count. In fact the lack of efficient tools designed to resolve these limitations can even cause some dancers to give up dancing.
The material that you can find on this website is the result of several questions that fellow dancers, thinking that we could help them in aspects of musical interpretation and musicality when lindyhopping, have asked us over the last years. They considered that we seemed to easily interpret music and express it in our dance and they asked us to try to explain how we managed to do it. This resulted in us giving workshops, some small group working sessions, and creating audiovisual materials and resources to work on at home. Our proposals have been enriched by the contributions of other dancers that have experimented with these materials and attended the workshops. They are the ones who have encouraged us to create new material and ultimately make them public so that everyone can take advantatge of them. Therefore, the proposals that are on this web are continually evolving. They will also be enriched by your comments and contributions, that we hope you will send us.
Interestingly, to date, our approach to musical interpretation and musicality has always been an intuitive exploratory game, without any rules. However, in order to be able to expalin it we have had to try to rationalise and systematise and then, use this structure to create training proposals that may be useful to other dancers.
We are aware that we are trying to streamline spontaneity. This seems a contradiction, but we hope that our rationalisation will let others find spontaneity. We believe that we all have the resources to be musical within us. For some dancers these resources will emerge spontaneously. Sometimes they emerge as they begin learning to dance. In other cases the process takes more time. We are convinced that when these resources do not emerge spontanously, we can encourage the process with exercises that can help dancers find their own resources and create guidelines that help us to focus our attention on issues to promote the emergence of our own musicality.
We must confess that this process has been very rewarding for us. We have learned many things. It is helping us better understand music and to be more musical. For that reason alone it is worth devoting part of our leisure time to it. If, in addition, it makes some of you enjoy your dancing more, then the satisfaction will be complete.