May 2, 2006

Letting Go: Finding God

What happened this week-end was nothing short of a religious experience. I piled into a car with three good friends and headed to St. Louis for Cheap Thrills. I entered as one person and came out another. After three nights of dancing that drew into the early hours of the morning and two days of classes in leading, following, jazz steps, ballroom spins and grinding to hip-hop I found myself more fully converted than I ever have before. You might say I found god.

To preface- the morning before the last night of dancing, Adeoye asked me what my religion was. I spun out some half-assed explanation, involving the divine moments I find in dancing and something vague about being in the desert… and stuff.

An avid avoider of religion, I’ve shunned hippy-dippy conversations about spirituality and blues dancing. Reading discussions online about such things makes me shudder a little bit. Christ- I think, it’s just a dance! Maybe it’s because I’m embarrassed about sharing my spirituality (or seeming lack of) with other people, particularly strangers. I’ve found proselytizers of all fabrics to be embarrassing. They get that far away glazed look in their eyes when they talk about their deity, who to me is as real as Santa or the Easter Bunny. Maybe that’s what religion is, a belief and reverence for something that cannot be seen or grasped by ordinary means.

I’m also careful about my personal space. Partner dancing is an interesting contradiction for me in particular. I hate being touched by strangers. I always recoil when someone I don’t know reaches out to put their hand on my shoulder while talking. I’m acutely aware of people who stand too close. And even friends who surprise me from behind with a smack on the butt get a verbal warning.

So, allowing myself to participate in a dance that requires that I give up control in order for the dance to work has forced me to confront a number of barriers in the last four years. At my first blues party, someone who pulled me too close was met with a glare. I had no idea that there was this thing called blues dance. I was a Lindy Hopper. I danced to big band music in eight count patterns, doing turns and spins and cute charleston steps. A late night in a steamy house, moving to slow sultry blues - with a partner - was somewhat foreign to me. The untrained eye perceives this as a drunken sort of grinding on your partner in hopes of getting laid.

Over time, I’ve become more comfortable with the difference in frame, the lack of a fundamental “step” to learn, and the closeness. It’s possible to have an intimate dance with somebody without suggesting more.

On Friday night, I found it possible to let go in a way that I hadn’t before, to give up a little space to my partners to let them lead me in the way they saw fit, to collapse into their world for a while, their rhythmic lexicon overlapping mine.

Saturday brought a grueling day of classes- topped off by Steven’s Jazz class, which I attempted in entirety for the first time ever. I absorbed only 50% of the choreography, but I think even that did enough in the synapses in my brain to open new learning pathways.

Sunday found me exhausted and sore from the night before, but I stuck through another day of classes- both leading and following. I danced out on the patio, peering in the windows to see what Peter Strom was doing with his selection of dirty hip-hop and then skating over to learn graceful ballroom moves from Mike Faltesek.

I joked on Saturday that we were all tricked into thinking we were at a dance workshop, when really we were being roped into a religious revival - Steven’s Jazz routine was straight up gospel. We praised Jesus. It was a rare case of me being able to appreciate something with such a religious bent without feeling spiritually imposed upon.

But by Sunday night, the sense of the revival made its full resurgence. The dancing was better than normal in the early portion of the evening and then the solo blues contest began. Such a contest never been held before- at least not in the last 15 or 20 years and in the context of a Blues or Lindy exchange. Fifteen or so dancers took the floor as we spread out and made room for them. The judges had told them, “We’ve never done this before. We don’t quite know what we’re looking for. But it’s a cutting contest. You have to outdo your competitors. We’ll let the audience decide who wins.”

I found myself full of skepticism in the first round. Although I often dance alone to blues music, even at a public event, I doubted that anything special could come of this type of competition. I’ve eschewed solo dancing since my first days of Lindy Hop and I found myself criticizing the dancers that I didn’t think were doing real “blues.” I was an unbeliever, a cynic. Then the second qualifying round came and I grew more quiet, intently watching the six final contestants who truly began to charm me with their skills, their braveness in expressing alone, their interpretation of the music. My cynical utterances were quelled by awe and wonder.

And then history was made.

As the final two contestants were chosen for the last round of battle, the audience energy intensified. The final competition between Adeoye and Andrew Slac could not have been choreographed. It was combination blues dance/theatrical comedy. Each chose the appropriate moment to act and to react. The lead/follow dynamic, even when they weren’t touching was palpable and flowed back and forth between them. They made us howl with laughter, sigh with pity and applause and scream their names - and they did it all to the music. Both awed me with their skills. I found myself shouting, “who are these people?!” The video of that performance will be the Hellzapoppin’ of our time.

There was no contest… both tied for first and were awarded trips to blues week-ends around the country and then the two winners were rushed by a crowd and momentarily buried in a pile of bodies.

While I reeled in awe from what I had just seen, the energy of the room did not drop… instead it continued to escalate. When the music finally came back on and people began to dance together again, the energy in the room was the most intense I’ve ever experienced at a dance event. It was probably not unlike that of a mass religious revival. Everyone danced better, harder and truer than they ever had. I had the best dances of my life with people whom I’d never met, with people whom I’d previously experienced mediocre dances and with people who I thought I’d already experienced the pinnacle of symbiosis. More than once my partner and I finished and gasped, “my god! That was incredible!” We took more chances, innovated and related. Or as Damon would put it, we danced WITH ASS.

Though I tried to leave after the sun rose, I ended up staying for the last song of the night… sometime around 7:30 in the morning.

The demands of the judges on dancers to take chances, to invent new moves, to push the envelope is what will change Blues Dance. I don’t know that it will look anything like the “authentic” blues dance that is often espoused. But I do think that the people who were at Cheap Thrills will pass on the passion and intensity in their dancing to create what is authentic for us in this era, rather than mimicking what was done long ago.