New Year Dance Postcards

Celebrating the dawning of a new year has been a part of human culture for a long time. Fortunately, dancing fits very well into any sort of revelatory event. Remember the Yuletide dancing chickens? For the New Year's Eve ball below, I give you...dancing cats and dogs!!! How egalitarian!




An elegant affair, I'm sure...




Technically these two are skating, but skating is a form of dance, after all.



An enchanting scene in the moonlight before or after the dance.




Me neither. :-) Kidding. My dances all belong to Gary.

Masquerade New Year's balls were common way back then.

Another masquerade party.

Sweet and old fashioned.

The New Year's kiss...especially nice at the end of a dip. I'm very much looking forward to mine.

Frosty The Snowman

Another arctic blast from the past...

Suzy Snowflake

Possibly the creepiest animation I've seen!

The Bop - Part I

The bop. It's funny, you hear a name like 'the Big Bopper' and you don't link it to an actual dance. The other night, while pouring through Flickr feeds for dance pictures I stumbled across the insert from a Ray Conniff album entitled Dance the Bop and there were the steps distilled down into words and pictures. Now, I have a theory that you have to know how to dance before you can learn verbally but that might just be me. None the less I thought I'd give the insert in the eight pages in which it was originally printed.

Page one is a typical cover sheet. I feel for the poor Siamese cat that got roped into being the 'cool cat' for the album art shoot. I have to wonder if the animal belonged to Conniff, Art Silva, or some plebe at the record label. Probably a fifty year old teen who, in the middle of a concept meeting, piped up with something like, "So there's this cat and we print 'the cool cat says…'but see, it's a real cat…" Shortly after that he found himself parking at the back of the lot and getting a lot of looks while he ate his lunch alone in the cafeteria.

Cool Cat informs us we should use the book as a study guide - damn and I'd planned on using it to sort seeds and stems. That's probably evidence that the authors of this guide were less hep than they'd like to have thought. Mastering every step before proceeding seems a bit unproductive. I mean, to be a master don't you have to absolutely and totally grasp a step to the point where you're a resource that others come to for instruction (i.e. a master)? Waiting until you've reached that Zen-like level of dance sensei-ness could result in never getting past page one of the instruction manual. I also question step three of the 'To Start' section - ever try to read a book while dancing? Not sure about you but I'd puke. I'm pretty sure a true master doesn't puke on the dance floor.

The author of this instructional guide, pictured staring dumbly into the middle distance, is Art Silva. Art seems like a real authority figure in spite of his apparent youth. He comes off like a James Dean-esque Marlin Perkins, expanding in definitive tones on the habitat and customs of teens of the era. He knows the kiddies well enough to tell you what they approve of wherever they congregate. The byline claims Art's a dancer, actor, and instructor. Dancer - I'll buy that, instructor - sure, but actor? IMDb would differ; it has zero references to Mr. Silva. Possibly an oversight, maybe he worked in films too small to be noticed - history has a way of erasing people from existence.

Ray Conniff, on the other hand, has withstood the test of time. I took a moment to listen to some of his music - good stuff, but so help me I can't imagine 'bopping' to anything the man performed. Saying Ray Conniff and Bop in the same breath is a bit like saying Lawrence Welk and Jitterbug together. There's a slight possibility the encantation will rip a hole in the fabric of reality and you'll be attacked by flying monekys. I mean, can you really think Rebel Without a Cause and hear the strains of Tico Tico playing in the background? Go on, try. I'll dial 911 for you.

Hair Flair

Warning: girly post.

As I’ve stated before, dancing is an unusual activity in that it is athletic, but also artistic, and therefore most dancers want to look good when they dance. This can pose various problems. Makeup must not run. Clothes must stretch. Shoes must be comfortable. And all jewelry must be secured.

Speaking as someone who has had earrings fly off in the middle of a fast Lindy, reminded of said fact by the man the earrings had flown into, the last is perhaps the most important. Drippy mascara and a giant rip might cause one embarrassment, but it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Sparkling missiles do.

And that goes for hair adornments as well as the more traditional jewels. As much as I love my rhinestone clips and bands, they won’t stay in my hair. At least, the way I wear my hair; I don’t like it to be lacquered within an inch of its life. But I have found something fun to add a bit of dance safe sparkle to one’s hair…hair on a clip.

These things are called various names…if you do a search for “clip in hair” you will find them. (I like easiLites for real ones, Clarie’s for synthetic.) Both real and fake have their ups and downs. Real hair has an inherent creepiness…just whose hair was it? The up side is it looks, well, real, even when it is dyed wild colors. You can put them in and curl them as you would your own.

The synthetic kind is plastic. It looks it. However, since it isn’t real, you can find pure colors and tinsel not ever found with real locks. Another down side is you can’t use a curling iron. Trust me on this one. I wasn’t stupid enough to do it on purpose, but one evening I was in a hurry and…let’s just say I ruined a perfectly good iron.

Both are easy to put in, stay firmly in place, and are easy to remove. For the holidays they are especially nice. New Year’s Eve I’m wearing a glittery rainbow top and hair flair to match. Ahhh, New Year’s…where too much sparkle is never enough.

Stepping and Sweets

'Tis the season - as Lucy Van Pelt would say, "Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho, and mistletoe and presents for pretty girls." Well, she left out Christmas parties. This past weekend we attended the Brickyard Boogies Christmas get together and I tossed my culinary glove in the ring for the annual cookie contest. I didn't win but I had a great time trying. Here's the recipe I used in case you're interested:

Chocolate Mint Wafers

1C AP Flour plus more for dusting
1/4t Baking Powder
1/2C Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
1/4t Salt
6T Unsalted Butter
1/2C Sugar
1 Large Egg
1/2t Vanilla Extract
12oz Semi-Sweet Chocolate
1/4t Peppermint Extract

1. Wisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
2. Cream butter and sugar with an electric blender. Beat in egg and vanilla. With mixer on low, gradually add flour mixture; mix until just combined. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour (or overnight).
3. Preheat oven to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Form balls of dough (approximately 1t each) and place on prepared sheets 2 inches apart. Dip the bottom of a glass in flour and flatten balls into 1 1/2 inches round (1/4in thick).Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until slightly firm to the touch - about 8-10 minutes. Immediately transfer to wire rack and cool completely.
4. Combine chocolate, peppermint extract, and 1/8t salt in a large heat-proof bowl and set over simmering water. Heat, stirring occasionally, until smooth (2-3 minutes) and remove from heat.
5. Replace parchment on baking sheets. Holding each cookie across the tines of a fork, dip in chocolate to coat completely, then tap underside of fork on side of bowl to allow excess chocolate to drip off. Place on parchment and repeat until all cookies are coated. Decorate with nonpareils if desired. Refrigerate until chocolate is hardened (at least 1 hour).

The cookies were a hit among my friends and family, but as I said, they didn't bring home the prize. The winner was a great batch of almond sugar cookies. When the whole subject of cookies and dancing comes to mind I do have one bit of advice: dancing and over-indulging in cookies don't mix. I advise sticking to the sugar buzz stage!

The Hatfields and the McCoys

I apologize in advance for going on and on about our ballroom struggles, but since this dance blog is supposed to be our complete dancing journey, Gary and I both feel we must report what we are thinking and experiencing. I also believe Gary and I are fair people. We will never blast anyone, but we realize this is our opinion, and opinions are just that, no more, no less.

Dancing, in many ways, is a microcosm of human behavior. There will be different opinions, usually around those who want to maintain the status quo vs. those who want to change it. Within dancing this manifests itself by the push and pull between ballroom studios wanting to codify and preserve, and club/street dancers wanting to expand and evolve.

Take swing dancing. Before the Internet and before traveling was commonplace, every city had their own swing; west coast and east coast of course, but also more intimate city/area dances like the Arkansas street swing, the St. Louis imperial swing, and the Detroit bop. Each locale reveled in their own style. However, when folks did come together, dances merged and spawned new variations. The swing styles of the 1940s therefore, didn’t look anything like 1950s styles.

Then came studio swing. The formally wild and free dance was captured, roped, and gentrified. They had to…how else would they teach it in large numbers? Now everyone could learn to swing, not just young city hipsters. Ballroom studios also preserved the dance; who knows how many wonderful swing varieties faded from existence because people stopped doing them? The swing taught in ballroom studios might be a bit stiff, but at least it exists. Also to ballroom’s credit, many people don’t live in the areas street swing “evolves”. Or perhaps they are too shy to “get out there” and learn on the fly…maybe they need to learn by prescribed steps. And maybe, just maybe, learning by dance experts is not so bad; a little ballroom technique never hurt anyone.

But of course, as with many large institutions, what was once one of many ways to learn to dance became the only way. Ballroom swing, with its formal movements and codified steps, began to think of itself as the holder of the dance chalice, as it were. Only they could interpret and teach the correct expression of swing; any variation was wrong, sloppy, or silly.

Street swing dancers revolted. Some even formed their own studios. And many became just as high and mighty as ballroom studios; only we can teach swing. Ballroom studios kill the natural expression and evolution of dance. Ballroom studios are exclusionary and pretentious. And so on.

Swing dance is only one example, unfortunately. The latin community feels much the same way about salsa and other latin street dances now found in ballroom studios.

Ultimately, we need both. If club/street dancers didn't exist dances would become stale and old fashioned. Without ballroom studios many dances would die because there would be no one preserving dance styles and teaching the masses. What I don’t like is the assumption …from both sides…that the other is wrong.

There are studios where the old and the new happily co-exists; someone, for example, knew the tango before he or she combined it with west coast swing, creating swango. And that someone probably had ballroom instruction. In previous posts I’ve stated that these egalitarian studios are mostly found on either coast, not in the mid west. That’s a shame, but Gary and I are determined to create our own virtual eclectic studio.

Heck, perhaps by the time we’re done we can all have a big party. With dancing, of course. :-)

PS. Check out the Galaxy Studio, not on a coast, but in Texas! Their motto is “there’s a dance style for everyone”. It doesn’t look fancy, but then, they want to offer low prices so everyone can learn to dance. They teach all styles of dance including Break Dance, Hip Hop, Ballroom, Sexy Stiletto (don’t know what that is but sounds wicked and fun), Zumba, Ballet, Classic Strip Tease, and more. Cool. A waltz class down the hall from a strip class. Gotta love that. One two three, flick those panties. I think I shall call it…saltz, hee hee.

http://www.galaxydances.com/galaxy_dance_studios_home.html