In Praise of West Coast Swing

In Praise of West Coast SwingI admit to more than little trepidation about learning the WCS. I knew it was a slowed down version of the lindy hop, and so I thought that meant, well, boring. Kellys like fast, hoppy, springy dances like the lindy hop and ECS and the salsa. Saying that, you'd think by now I'd understand that sometimes I am actually wrong about things. After all, I was wrong about my now favorite pastime, dancing. But no, I had a bias towards WCS. That's a dance for other people, I thought. You know, those people who don't mind going slow.

I'm happy to say I was wrong. About everything. The WCS can be slow and sexy, but it can also be fast and funky. And it is certainly not boring. In some ways it is more complex than ECS, because the man and the women's parts are different, and...there is more room for improvisation. That means I can add extra flourishes whenever I want, which is really fun. And this dance lends itself to the creation of new steps , which Gary and I love to do. We are both artists, and making up steps is another pallet.

The other thing about WCS is the body control it takes. This dance is all about slinky hips and rippling torsos. It is a dance where the man is the man and the woman is the woman. It is, dare I say, harder to do than hoppy. The WCS is at its heart a drop dead sexy dance. And as much as I love ECS, lindy hop, and rockabilly swing, those are not sexy.

Finally, as I looked into wcs I discovered it too has many, many varieties. There is the slow, slinky kind that we are learning in our dance class. There is a hip hop/WCS fusion that incorporates lots of hip hop jumps and spins. There is a dark swing which is done to goth music...kinda looks like vampires doing the swing. There is swango, a mixture of tango and WCS. Also a kind that blends hustle with it. Some couples even dance WCS to very fast rock and roll that most people would do the ECS to.

So...Gary and I have decided to craft two distinct kinds of WCS; one slow and slinky, the other faster and more hip hop. WCS has become equal in my liking to ECS. Amazing. Maybe next time I balk at a dance I will remember this.

Nah.

July in a Nutshell

Sorry to say I've been slacking off on my writing. I'll give the standard excuses: work's been crazy, time's been short, and I've been busy with a lot of stuff. To tell the truth there probably were several chances to sit down to write an entry but I just didn't do it. Confession is good for the soul, right?

Anyway, July was great - slower in terms of dancing than most months but I think that's because (in the modern era) people view summer as a time to 'go do things outside' which precludes dancing. For Kelly and I, not so much. We'd happily spend our summer on the dance floor…if there were more dances to attend. I sweat whenever I dance, it doesn't matter if its summer, fall, or the middle of the winter I'll be dabbing my forehead with a handkerchief between tunes.

July in retrospect? We attended a dance at the Riolo on the Fourth - it's a great venue for an Independence Day dance. The Riolo is surrounded by great windows that offer views of the city and, in this case, the annual downtown fireworks display. The evening was well arranged - dancing up to just before the fireworks and then easy, air-conditioned viewing from the studio without having to fight the crowds. My only complaint was the fact that the Riolo's usual (free) parking lot was closed and we were forced to pay for parking.

During July we also started to pick up two new dances and we dropped one that we just didn't like so much. The newcomers to our ever-growing dance card are the West Coast Swing and the Cha-Cha. These are two dances I'd recommend to anyone who's decided that they want to learn to dance and they plan on attending ballroom or swing dances such as those held at the Starlight Ballroom or Indiana Roof Ballroom. In the past we always sat out cha-chas and WCS - but when you're at a ballroom dance that (especially the cha-cha) means you're sitting quite a bit. Picking up these two dances means that we'll be able to enjoy more of the music from the dance floor and less from the sidelines.

The victim of downsizing? That'd be the Hustle. I have to say I never did really like the hustle. There was all that 1970-something baggage and too many visions of John Travolta in a polyester leisure suit with a half-unbuttoned fly-away collar shirt and a gold medallion. Not exactly the kind of image I wanted to portray in clothing or in dance styling. There also was the realization that about 90% of the tunes we danced the hustle to we could also dance either WCS or cha-cha. The math was easy.

So, that was July. Now, to write about August without falling behind!