Recently on a Facebook group I sometimes read, someone asked a question about people feeling fatigue talking about race-, sex-, femin- and may other isms that they are passionate about. Specifically how to approach people about a topic you’re passionate about, but might be tiring or a turn-off for them.
This was my reply:
I’m writing this post on a three year-old MacBook Pro while waiting for the water in my friend’s electric tea kettle to finish boiling so we can have some Organic Fair-Trade Rooiboos tea. We’ve just finished a 15km bike ride to and from her anti-squat flat in Utrect, Netherlands (It’s like Amsterdam, but smaller, less tourists and feels like city where people live) to get coffee at the StayOkay café at the StayOkay youth hostel run by Hostelling International (It’s so obscure that until today it didn’t even have one review on Yelp!) on 20 year-old 3-speed bikes to get a cup of good coffee and get into “the only think like nature you can get around here.”
It’s then that I realize, I might have become a hipster. (truth be told, I considered myself a hipster in college, when that meant something like rockabilly with the bowling shirts, dickies pants and two-toned shoes – back then we called the modern day hipsters either “Bohemian”, “Art Students” or “Homeless People”, I guess I’m saying I was a hipster before it was cool? Or is it back when it was cool?)
I left Copenhagen station last night on the night train to Amsterdam. If you’ve never taken a night train you have two main options. I sitting car or a sleeper car (couchette), Don’t even get me started on the commuter car option (basically it’s not one, you don’t want it). For the first few stops, I had the room to myself and thought I was a pretty lucky guy. Somewhere in rural Denmark, I was joined by a young almost-college aged kid who was going to his first trip to Amsterdam. His english was just good enough for me to realize that he wasn’t there to see the canals. He was an amiable guy and after awhile I went to the shower room to charge my devices.
When you take the German trains on an overnight trip, sometimes you have modern trains and sometimes you don’t. If you’re lucky enough to be on an old-style train, don’t be surprised if the conductors are a bit grumpy when you ask where you can find an outlet. They’re just as tired of people asking as people are of asking the question.
Three women who had a huge impact on the world of Jazz, Blues and R&B. Defenitely worth a listen!
Ethel waters started her career in 1920 as a Blues singer- she was, in fact, the 5th woman to record a blues album. In her career, she also performed on Broadway, sang Jazz, blues, pop and show tunes.
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Chester Arthur Burnett (Howlin’ Wolf) grew up the son of divorced share croppers. He was kicked out of his mother’s home at a young age when he refused to work for 18 cents per day. He was sent to live with his mother’s brother who treated him badly and then around age 14, he ran away and found his father’s family; supposedly walking 85 miles barefoot to reach him. His father loved him and they were happy together.
He learned to play guitar from a popular musician of the day, Charley Patton, who taught him how to use the guitar and “might” have given him his nickname.
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Right now I’m traveling the world teaching Blues Dancing and have to good fortune to be staying in the Malmö, Kobenhavn, Helsingborg region of Sweden and Denmark. This luxury is allowing me to offer blues dance classes in three cities simultaneously and to focus more deeply on material than I would otherwise be able to do while on tour.
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Throwing this in an email because Facebook will manage to lose it. I don’t know if it’s a class thought, a “help me sort this out for myself by talking about it” thought or something to look at in a lesson but…I’m hoping maybe you can at least help me stop making my brain spin every time I think about it.
So, when I was watching you and Ruby dance, the topic of matching your lead vs being given space to stylize came about, and Ruby commented that the less her lead gives, the more she matches/less flashy her movements are because she has little to respond to from her lead.
Is there ever a point in a class to address that sort of topic? Especially as follows are developing their own styles, we definitely get conflicting messages about styling vs matching. Plenty of times we hear “match your lead” and then in solo classes “move with the music” but at least with a number of MN leads, there’s an assumption that if they place a follow in open position, she is not supposed to match the lead except in pulse.
Personally I agree with Ruby that, sure I can make stuff up and solo, but I’d like to have something to react to from my lead. As dancers, I think we get a lot of “match your partner” and then also “leads, listen to your follow/let her do her own thing” (as far as I can figure out, those aren’t the same thing) and it gets super confusing and frustrating when you think one thing will happen when you place a follow in open and that thing you want, but didn’t explicitly lead, doesn’t happen.
I suppose the gist of this is: how does a lead successfully communicate that he wants a follow to do her own thing, and how does a follow explain, short of having a conversation prior to dancing, that maybe she wants or needs her lead to give her feedback?
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I’ll be the first to admit that for most of my life, I haven’t been the most community-minded person. Maybe that makes me a bad person, or maybe it’s because I grew up in the woods about 40 minutes by bike from my nearest friends. Whatever the case, the whole “go-team! Rah Rah! Let’s-do-it-for-the-community-thing” never really sat well with me. I got the whole boy scout thing as far as earning merit badges and learning interesting skills went, but that was mostly so that if I was lost in the woods, or trapped under a burning bear in an earthquake I would know how to escape with only a pair of tweezers, a rubber band and some homemade c4 plastique explosive (like you probably have lying around your house…).
I never understood that community was a thing to strive for. The same with people who use terms like “the people.” To this day when this is used, I get the strange feeling that I’m somehow not included in that group they’re referring to as “the people”.
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Earlier today, I was working with one of my regular collaborators in New Wave, a coffee shop near Logan Square in Chicago this afternoon. When we arrived they were playing some of the New Wave that inspired their name and decor. After a few songs, the music changed to something vergin on Free Jazz that I enjoyed, but my partner did not. After awhile she went up to the counter and asked them to turn it down so that she could work. The barrista did as requested, but he did it grudgingly and then shortly there after switched the music to some truly appalling punk that did not deserve the vinyl it was pressed on. In addition, he cranked the volume to a level that made it impossible for us to speak at less than a low yell.
After three or four songs, my partner asked me to see if I would do any better, since I tend to be a bit less abrasive than her in confrontations. I agreed. There’s something about low-quality punk, caffeine and the Adderall that I take to combat my ADD that made me feel as if I wanted to break things into tinier things.
I took a minute or two to think and here is what I came up with to improve my chance of success compared with our last attempt.
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