Dance Your Emotions

Part of my personal dance style is to dance pretty much everything "outside the box". That is a reflection of my personality: I've been an entrepreneur since I was a kid, looking for cracks in the markets where I can exploit a discrepancy, do it "different", and make a buck. I do the same on the dance floor.

I do however attempt to dance within the "sense" of a song and a dance style.

How does one do that?

I do it across a range of things, as I walk onto a dance floor with a new dance partner, to a new song, within the context of the "style" of that particular dance venue.

Is the song slow, medium speed, or fast?

What is the Emotion of the music and words?

Is it exuberant? Maybe Country 2 Step, or Rockabilly, or Polka?

Is it tired and heavy? Maybe Blues or Fusion?

Are the Back Beats

Strong (Traditional Jazz, Rock N Roll, Country)?

Weak (Lindy Hop, Balboa)?

Smoothness?

If like "gliding on ice", probably FoxTrot

If rough and jagged, maybe Boogie Woogie or Rockabilly

Synchopated?

Uptown or Downtown (below).

As I'm walking on the floor analyzing the song, preparing for the steps and first moves, I'm also "testing" my partner, to answer several important questions:

• Are they walking in the same rhythm as I am? Are they "feeling" the music like I am?
  
• Are they moving fluidly, like a dancer, or heavily like a construction worker?
• How tightly (in the dance sense) are our hands connected? Is that connection flowing into our arms, elbows, shoulders, bodies, feet?
• Is the connection good enough that I can use it to maneuver into an open dance slot on the floor, or do I have to point and verbally direct?

These questions need answering quickly in a 3-minute song, in order to have time to.....

My goal always is to connect as well and deeply as possible with another person, on as many levels as possible, as fast as possible.

It is to do that on a basis of mutual understandings.

The magic of high-end social dance is that that can often happen in one minute.

Uptown / Downtown Dancing Metaphor

Dance Definitions:

"Uptown" = Physically higher

Where the social and power elite go to socialize

"Downtown" = The cheap real estate in the swamps and flood zones

Where the working classes go to "drown" and forget their sorrows

The dances that correlate with social pecking orders, are also

reflected in the "altitude" of the dance styles. "Uptown" dances are light and smooth and "off the floor." "Downtown" dances are heavy and down in the dirt, "in the floor".

Here is a short tour of a few major dances, from Uptown, to Downtown:

UPTOWN

Ballet Weightless and Soaring

FoxTrot Smooth and Elegant, like Olympic Skating

Waltz, traditional Smooth and Elegant too, although with

the very naughty and sensual momentum of fast waltz turns.

Charleston An elegant expression of joy and naughtiness.

Formal dance postures softened, with inappropriate play added.

Country waltz and 2-steps - the formality and "standing tall" of ballroom

foxtrots and waltz are gone, replaced with exuberance and casual

connections

Lindy Hop 1st Swing Dance. Several inches lower than FoxTrot

Solidly into and connected with the floor, for the foundation to

do fast momentum turns and dramatic Lindy aerials.

Blues Weighted down into the floor, right there at the bay end

of the "Bay Bar", with one foot in the mud. Blues often drops more

inches than even Lindy Hop

Hip Hop / Break Dancing The body has collapsed onto the floor,

way down in the Hood, where nobody wants to be.

DOWNTOWN