The Bop - Part 2

Finally I bring you part two of The Bop. Sounds like a B Movie involving a gang of "good kids turned bad" I can just hear the copy now, "First it was hot music and then hot cars, see teen youth plummet into the chasm of loose women, fast cars, and cheap booze - The Bop will rock and shock you!" Well, now you know why I don't write copy for movie trailers as a living!

Firstly, I'd like to understand how you "march softly". In step one our dear bopping friend Art Silva instructs the female half of the pair (of course I'm guessing it’s the female half of the pair, it might be a Scotsman in an extravagantly long kilt) to lift her heels "quite high" and by step two of the instructions I'm getting the impression of a chicken scratching in the barnyard. Art seems to lack dedication when he writes his instructions, I notice he uses a lot of qualifiers: quite, fairly, slightly, and so on. Part of me understands this - I dance rockabilly and I know that the steps are, shall we say, fluid. The Clave style of the Salsa is the same way. It's not a dance of school figures and specific, named steps. It’s a dance of feeling the music and expressing those feelings on the dance floor.

Now we come to my (pictorially) favorite step. Check out the images associated with step 4 - notice that the first and last are the same picture? You'd think they could have spared the 2¢ it would have required to have two pictures of the model, maybe with a little variation? Maybe Ray Conniff had encountered some money flow issues back in '57. Dance the Bop was his second album and maybe the record execs weren't sold on this wild new music (calling Ray Conniff wild is a little like complaining about "those kids" getting on your lawn). Still, it's a little odd that while they couldn't afford three shots for this step they could afford either a costume change or a whole new model. Go figure, I guess.

I simply love Step 6. "As if you were grinding something under your heel…" Another example of why I couldn't write the copy here. I'd opt for something more colorful, "Imagine you're grinding your male oppressors under you heel until they scream for mercy - but you won't give it to them, no amount of crying could make you let them up! ACTION!" Sorry, back in that B Movie again…