The Rhythm of Life

Gary and I had a very busy weekend; lots of dancing, of course, and we also spent some time with friends and family. Hey, we do have other interests. :)

One of the outings we took was to the annual Indian Market sponsored by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art here in Indianapolis. It’s a neat museum; I believe the only one of its kind in the US. Every year they sponsor a celebration of Native American lore, music, and art.

So we went. It was hot. After a quick tour through the market, we settled into seats under a cooler tent. The first band took the stage, Blue Stone Project. I was intrigued; one band member warmed up a traditional flute, but I noted an electric guitar and drums. (Found out later all the musicians had played for years, the guitarist played with Iggy Pop and Patti Smith!) I started to get excited, because I love traditional music blended with modern instruments. I guess that’s not surprising; Gary and I are experimenters when it comes to mixing different dances together.

I sat on the edge of my seat as they launched into their first number. And I was not disappointed; the flute player wove a haunting melody over rock and roll style drumming; the guitar sneaking in behind with nice back beat that….wait…one two three ah four five ah six…you could do a slinky WCS to it!! Gary thought the same thing! We didn’t get up and dance, but we purchased the CD and will be at home.

On the way home I started thinking about music and dancing. Music goes deep into the soul; I truly think it’s part of our core being, and in fact, research has shown that you can “map” DNA into music notes. Check this out:

I never put dance into that universal category until I began dancing myself. Now I believe dancing is a physical way of expressing a connection to music. For me, it’s even MORE powerful than listening, because every part of your body is involved.

So there we were listening to what was probably a very old Native melody blended with a swingin’ WCS rhythm. And it mixed perfectly. Maybe that’s because dancing, like music, is such an ancient part of us. In the past, we may have danced for more practical things like a good crop or success in battle, but we also danced for enjoyment and connection to others. I think that feeling of connection is the most primal link we have with music and with dance, whether it is a connection to another person, to a group of people, or that sense of “otherness” you sometimes get when experiencing music and/or dance.

Check out this photo of my sister and her husband dancing. They are good dancers. But I have to admit that is not the main reason I love to see them dance. Anyone looking at this photo can see the love and connection they have with each other. I feel happy when I watch; for them, for my wonderful marriage, and for all the other couples on the dance floor.

Music and dance are universal. This is why Gary and I can mix latin and swing and it works. This is why a Native group can add modern rhythms to traditional melodies and it works. And that is why in an air conditioned, pole barn of a building, my sister and her husband can interpret the sounds they hear as an expression of love just like long ago couples did in a moonlit glade or an open plain. The rhythm of life is as old as time. The trappings may be modern. But dancing taps into something ancient…something we all share.
As our favorite DJ, Ron Fentz, says, “let’s dance.”

Road Rocket Rumble Part II - Keep 'er Tight and In Control

It'd do my soul good to claim that over the weekend I've been a lazy slob of the sort prone to neglecting their blogging duties. I could go on about how I lazed by the pool and drank Mai Tais .while eating bonbons. Alas it wouldn't be true. I won't go into the gory details but the synopsis involves two computer desks, a truckload of books, and a lot of climbing stairs. Yeah, the pool would have been a lot more relaxing. So, excuse making out of the way - this weekend was Road Rocket Rumble 10 and it lived up to its name in many ways.

Friday we arrived around 7 o'clock expecting to park in the hotel parking lot and search for the event. Somehow it slipped my mind that this event did involve hotrods and they couldn't be parked inside the hotel. So, I pull up to the hotel where two women greet me. I roll my window down and lean out to tell them we've come for the dance. Their response? "Dance? You mean the bands?" Okay, yeah I mean the bands - that should have told me something there - more on that later - but yes, we came for "the bands". The ladies at the gate promptly directed me back to a field we'd passed on the way in - the one with all the cars parked in it - and we hiked to the hotel in 90-degree heat.

The place was jumping. The last time I saw cars so freaky hopped up the driver was one of the Munsters. Every vehicle had been chopped, lowered, and tricked out with chrome and side pipes. We signed in with the first Bettie Page look alike of the day and headed inside to find the ballroom.

I say ballroom strictly in the conceptual sense. When I was a kid, I went to a crappy public school. Good old IPS 107 was a boomer service centers - one of those mid-sixties soulless government buildings with acoustic tile ceilings and asbestos-wrapped hot water pipes. The kind of place the fifties generation sent their kids to have the spirit and originality taught out of them. Well, the classrooms in that place were about the same size as the 'ballroom' where the Road Rocket Rumble bands played. Cozy would be a euphemism; uncomfortably close would be more like it! In spite of the tightness of the confines, the bands were fab.

Rumble Club hewed to the psychobilly side of things: speed, booze, and speed. I give them a seven for skill but I just couldn't dance to them. My inability to get on the floor wasn't the band's fault, it had a lot to do with the fact nobody else was out there dancing. The place was kinda dead in spite of the band's efforts. When we did manage to get ourselves on the floor the tempo was blistering - so much that we had to dance at half speed just to manage a triple swing.

The second band up was a little slower. The Star Devils gave us a chance to dance and we were on the floor until we were dripping with sweat (not too hard considering the AC had to be set to simmer) and sometime around 11 o'clock we dragged ourselves off the floor and packed up our shoes.

As I collected my belongings, an old fellow came across the room and put his hand on my shoulder. He leaned in and said, "Nice dancin' - you keep her tight and in control." I thanked him and as he walked away I wondered if that actually was a compliment or an admonition. Kelly had to remind me that one of the few other couples dancing that night were a pair of Lindy Hoppers and by comparison our EC Triple must have looked like precision flying. Sometimes a venue is too small for a dance and sometimes, when it is, I guess it leaves you looking like a wild dance-thug. I don't know.

Day two came a little early for my sore muscles. We showed up in time to take a few pictures but the hotrods doing burn-outs in the driveway kinda' sent me to the dance floor without doing too much strolling. Too much gasoline and burning rubber gives you the feeling you've either walked out onto the bricks at the Indy 500 or maybe into the middle of a Mad Max flick. Besides, the sun threatened to reduce us to Shrinky Dink status so we made for the Michigan Room.

On our second night I got to see the Rockabilly Swing in the wild. A few kids (god I hate using that term because it implies I'm not a member of that clique any longer) took the floor while the DJ spun disks and they definitely tore it up. Lesson one about Rockabilly Swing: The steps are tiny. I'm not talking small, I'm talking itty-bitty as in you go through about twenty steps before you make a full revolution. This was news to me. In my version of the dance I'd make a full revolution in five steps, maybe. Since that day I've reduced my step size and added a bounce.

That bounce is important. I know from Lindy Hop that the bounce keeps you light on your feet and makes speed easier to obtain. Rockabilly isn't any different; you need to keep off the floor as much as possible to be able to do some of the complex spins. Definitely another learning point.

Day two of the Rocket Rumble kind of reminded me of day two of a family reunion. Everyone seemed to be getting a little cranky. People came in from the parking lot once the sun went down and soon the tiny dance floor was crowded with chairs. Kelly and I stuck around to see Pearls Mahone and the One-Eyed Jacks, a Chicago-area band was more our speed. They played a little Wanda Jackson and a little Patsy Cline, everything in between had a beat. Second on stage was the Hi-Q's, a Detroit band that chewed up the chords a little fast for our feet. We called it an evening but not before being asked where we learned to dance again.

I like to point out those times that people admire our dancing. It's not because I crave confirmation (although that's nice) but it's because I'm the sort of person who can focus on the negative all too often if I let myself. I worry over my ability to do a turn or get a step and sometimes I forget that we often get compliments. I think the biggest one came on Sunday when we took my dad out for Father's Day breakfast. He chose Cracker Barrel and while we were waiting for a seat Kelly spotted a couple people wearing Road Rumble tee-shirts. They recognized us as 'those dancing people'. Hey, there's a lot worse to go through life being known as!

Fujiyama Mama

Ah, the slide guitar; the mellow sound is enough to melt me in my seat. Don’t know exactly why, maybe because the sound is prominent in surf music and that reminds me of a beach. Anyway. It’s a hard instrument to play; the slippery sound I love so much can easily descend into twang and “slide” off key unless in the hands of a skillful player, and skillful is exactly what I got yesterday at the Road Rocket Rumble, the band was Pearls Mahone and the One Eyed Jacks. http://www.myspace.com/pearlsmahone

All the bands were good, don’t get me wrong; to perform rockabilly nowadays you have to love it, because you are not going to make your living playing it. But Pearls and her band stood out, both for their musicality and their stage presence. Picture a busty redhead in a skin tight dress with huge white pearls wrapped around her neck; her posse of “boys” rather like the silent Darlings on Andy Griffith. Pearl belts out rockabilly like she was born in the backwoods; my favorite was Wanda Jackson’s Fujiyama Mama, woooHOO. Combine Pearl’s lusty delivery with the cutest giggle I’ve heard in a long time, and you get a lead singer that’s hard to ignore. And her band. Wow. All very good, especially the base player and the slide guitarist. Pearl’s funny too: loved the story about escaping Friday’s downpour with a Pabst carton over her head, and pleading to the crowd to buy her Margaritas because she drank ‘em like water. The boys, she added, preferred Blue Ribbon. Funny.

Overall, we had a blast at the Rocket Rumble; we danced and danced, and when we weren’t hopping and bopping until our feet hurt we listened to the music and watched the crowd. Rockabilly culture is an amazing mixture of young and old, male and female. (It is not diverse in other ways, unfortunately.) You’ve got your car geeks, your music aficionados, folks who like to dress up like Bettie Page and the male 50’s greaser equivalent, and people like Gary and me who are not part of the underground so to speak, but we love love LOVE the music and of course, love to dance to it.

Dancing isn’t first and foremost within the rockabilly culture, although people DO dance and dance well, aka, rockabilly swing, which Gary and I have been learning. We saw some stunning examples and I could have watched them all night. Mostly young people doing it because much of the music was lightening fast.

And herein lies something that perhaps the community should think about. As I was reading up on the Rocket Rumble, I saw some posts out of Chicago bemoaning the fact that rockabilly isn't as appreciated like it used to be. I understand; the bands we saw were fantastic, but there wasn’t a huge crowd. And I wish there were more places to hear the music around Indianapolis.

But what comes to mind considering this problem is Terry Lee and the Rockaboogie band. I think they fit into the Rockabilly genre, but the culture that follows Terry is a bit different. You do see Bettie Pages and 50’s guys, but you also see a lot more older people, AND many more folks dancing. The reason for that is Terry plays a more varied selection speed-wise; he might do a blistering Jerry Lee Louis tune, but then puts the brakes on with some slower country numbers. All rockabilly/country/hillbilly, but it gives everyone the opportunity to dance, not just young kids.

If you’re a psychobilly band fine, you do fast. If you advertise yourself as that, people know it. But if you do like Pearl and advertise hillbilly or rockabilly, then my one bit of advice would be to add more slower numbers. People want to dance. I can tell by the way they bounce in their seats, and because older people make a beeline for the floor when you DO play a reduced beat number. Your band is fantastic. I don’t think you can improve musically. Your stage presence is blistering hot. But maybe you could widen your audience participation just a little. And that goes for the other bands too.

Bang bangedy bang bang.

Road Rocket Rumble - I

June's been a busy month. Traveled to Virginia but didn't have time to check out any dance venues (plus my one and only partner didn't come along) and then work became little bit of a mess. Finally things are shaking out and just in time for the 10th Annual Road Rocket Rumble!

For a long time Kelly and I have been wanting to actually see Rockabilly in the wild. Not the domesticated stuff you get on a dance DVD or YouTube (okay, YouTube's pretty much in the wild too). Well, this is our weekend. We've got two days planned at the rumble – tonight we'll catch a band and cruise the vendor stalls, tomorrow we'll catch a couple bands and get real tired.

I promise lots of pictures and much opinionating. We'll be at the Clarion West, Indianapolis which advertizes a big dance floor. My fingers are crossed. I've lived on the west side of Indy for a long time and I know the Clarion but I don't know it for its dance floor. I know it for the fact it's an 80's era hotel in an odd location that seemed tired and run down as soon as it was built. I had some friends who worked in an office building near the Clarion and we used to go to the hotel bar once in awhile. As I recall, it wasn't overly impressive – let's hope I've mellowed over time!

The fest itself is a gangly affair. There are hotrods, pinup girls, retro wear booths, car parts, dance instruction, a daredevil show, and bands. It sounds like having the circus come to stay in your guest room for about a week. What a mess, you'd be finding peanut shells and Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles under the bed for months. The smell probably never would come out of the upholstery. I'm keen on seeing the cars and it'd be interesting to catch the pinup show as well as some of the daredevil stuff which brings up the one piece of advice I'd give the organizers before ever entering the event. Publish a COMPLETE schedule. I know when the bands play but that's it. No idea when the shows are or when the venue opens – I just know we'll head down there before 7:30 tonight and see what we see.

Smarter

Let me start this post with saying I refuse to “grow old gracefully.” Yes, I watch “What not to Wear”, yes, I understand the Lindy Hop and Rockabilly Swing are young in culture and athleticism, blah blah blah.

Saying that, I don’t want to be younger. I do enjoy being my age; things are less of a big deal, I actually like myself, and I’m happier than I ever have been. But I also like wearing skulls and short salsa dresses, even if Clinton says I shouldn’t. I love the Lindy, even though Gary and I are often one of the oldest couples doing it.

OK, so combine this stubborn individualism with being brought up in an era that says work through your pain. Get as strong as possible. Practice practice practice. Heck, when I was running track back in high school I thought I was so lucky to have the boy’s track coach actually give me advice, I did everything he said. (Girls got kicked off the field when a boy made himself known.) Anyway. Lately I’ve also been influenced by a specialist doc who said I was at risk for osteoporosis. He said “you need lots of weight bearing activity.”

So I took that and ran. Literally. It’s not his fault. This particular doc doesn’t see me that often. So how could he know I added to what I was already doing (dance practice, dancing out, dance lessons, and weight lifting) with running, walking, treadmill, biking, hiking…you get the picture. My knees started to hurt. So I did more. They hurt worse. I did some more. Work through the pain. It’ll get better. But it didn’t, and horrors, my dancing suffered. So I researched what I thought I had and diagnosed myself. I had runner’s knee. Yup, that’s what I had. I liked that diagnosis in that it seemed like an athlete’s disease. I read up on it. It said rest. So I did. Some. But my knees still hurt.

After about a year of this I finally decided to go to an oseto specialist. In my line of work I know lots of docs and asked around. I also asked my primary internist. They all said Methodist Sports Center in Indianapolis. I looked at their site; Payton Manning and the Colts go there. And they had a dancer on the front page! I also liked the idea of a SPORTS clinic, not a place where sick/injured people go. Even though that’s why you go.

So I made an appointment with Mark Ritter. They took lots of x-rays, I was impressed that some were standing and not just laying down. The good news was my knees are in pretty good shape cartilage-wise, the bad news was I have bones spurs, especially on the left one. The good doc explained what a bone spur was. It’s not a pointy thing like you might think, it’s a knobby protuberance, essentially, your body is trying to add bone to an area that has worn away. The spurs don’t hurt; the pain comes from when the bone nodules irritate the tissue around it. I got all of that. When I started to ask specific questions he said “the Physical Therapist can answer those.” What I liked about this approach was that the doc clearly knew his expertise…and what wasn’t. Many docs are not like this, and another strong point for the center.

I wasn’t scheduled for PT, so I waited. And I got to see Brad Gerig, a certified athletic trainer. I liked that. He’s a trainer, see, not a therapist. Even though he is. Well. He was different than any physician I knew, and I know docs. I used to work with them, in particular with executive physicians. They aren’t a bad sort; I like them, in fact. But…for the most part they are esoteric, big picture, and in a hurry. When you are a patient you do want the diagnosis, but you also want “small picture”, aka, how does this affect ME, and what can I do to FIX it?

Brad nailed me instantly, too much, too long, not the right stuff. Without going into everything, the overall concept was as you get older you have to work smarter. In other words, instead of bashing my body into submission, I should treat it with respect. That means listening to my joints, pacing myself, and constructing a schedule so I’m not over stressing anything. And guess what, when I don’t weight lift before dancing I do…better! And not just less pain, but better, as in how I execute the moves. A-Maze-ing.

I won’t list all the exercises he gave me either, because what may be right for me may not be correct for you. I will add one magical thing he suggested that I never thought would work: ice! I use frozen peas, because I hate peas and because they mold to the body. You can buy expensive thingies too, but for me peas work just fine. I use them after I exercise even a little, and I have eliminated all painkillers. ALL. I had been up to at least 3-5 a week, hard on the liver.

In Indiana you have to visit the doc before you see a PT. I don’t know about anywhere else, but even if it’s not required, do go to the doc. Even if you think you know what it is you could be wrong. I was.

Very few people change the way I think. I’m highly educated, I have lots of experience with all different kinds of people, I research well, and did I say I was stubborn? But Brad changed the way I will treat myself. Dancing may not be the most important thing in my life, but it’s pretty close. Dancing is an expression of Gary and my life together. So what Brad did is monumental. I am going to do everything he says, and hopefully I will keep improving, but the mindset is the most important thing, and I already have that now.

I’ll try to remember that this weekend…one of our favorite events is happening and it has lots of dancing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I’ll probably binge, but at least afterwards I’ll be icing. And resting Sunday. And that is a definition of “aging gracefully” I’m willing to own. :)

Starlight

If you’re into dancing you know just how many dancing venues and ballrooms are named “Starlight”, or more likely the 50’s kitsch version, “Starlite.” In almost any town with a dance community you’ll find one. We have one right around the corner, and it is one of our favorite places to go. It’s not fancy or historic, but the place boasts a fabulous floor, wonderful people, and good music.

Interestingly enough, there were lots more “Starlite” places to go in the 50s; hotels, lounges, restaurants. Items too claimed the name, china, dress makers, and…wrist watches.

At this point you may be thinking and what do vintage wrist watches have to do with dancing? Do I have to say again dancing encompasses everything? J What happened was this: since I now work from home I no longer wear a watch everyday; I have a clock by my desk, I have one on my computer. And often times when I go out dancing I’d rather wear a bling-y bracelet. Saying that, I wanted a pretty watch to wear dancing now and then. I have lots of watches. I love them. But mine are mostly sporty and/or clunky, and I wanted something elegant.

What I didn’t want is another battery watch. The batteries just don’t seem to last, and it gets expensive to keep changing them. So I started looking in antique stores and on ebay for wind up watches. Unless they have diamonds or are solid gold, you can get them pretty cheap, under twenty bucks. No one, it seems, wants to wind a watch every day anymore. I found lots of neat ones, but the brand that caught my eye was called Starlite, by Elgin.

Elgin is a long respect name in watch making, but in the mid fifties the company began to suffer. They resisted mass produced items, until a desperate president hired a business consultant. He told them that Elgin could produce a cheaper version and STILL be the best watch maker. And so they did. One of those brands launched in the 50s was named Starlite, a cocktail watch designed for ladies to go out in: pretty, dainty, and delicate. Sold. I bought a perfect one for 15 dollars. It says Starlite in beautiful script across the face. Sigh.

For me, a watch like that brings back another era; a time when men and women got dressed up to go out, men in suits and women in gloves and dresses. A time when couples went out for dinner and dancing as a normal part of life. A time when a woman sat down at her dressing table and applied rouge, not blush, perfume, not body splash, and slowly wound her wrist watch, dreaming of the night in front of her.

So OK, I’m probably making all of that up. But I wonder, do we truly not have time to wind a watch? I find it rather magical…each small click storing up time to be slowly released, tick by precious tick, as I enter a night filled with starlight, real, or shining down from an enchanted ballroom.

Starlight, star bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I mightHave the wish I wish tonight.