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Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning. |
Friday, November 21, 1997
We had an informal dance party at Denys Howard's house tonight. Denys's house is a nice, funky, older one-story in East Fremont, between Stone Way and the Aurora bridge. His hobbies involve stuff, like sf books, zines, comics, and cool toys, but he has it all well organized and as neat as I'd like my place to be. He has a very nice wooden floor, good for dancing on.
This impromptu hop was brought about by several factors:
Because Denys's mail was a bit unclear to me, I showed up at 7 PM when the intended arrival time was 8! But he wasn't put out, he just invited me in. He and I chatted and did a little dancing till the others arrived. During the course of the conversation it finally became clear to him why I'd been pushing the Century Ballroom, which I always qualified as: "It's on Capitol Hill, you know." Capitol Hill is known as the gay neighborhood of Seattle, and the Swing Girls who teach at the Century were founded to promote gay- and lesbian-friendly swing dancing (though straight folks like myself are welcome of course). When what I'd been meaning to communicate finally sunk in, we howled with laughter!
Finally Kate and Glenn arrived, then Karrie. We danced for a while, then ate some pizza, then danced some more. Glenn said that my dancing with him, and the hints I was able to give him, were both helpful, which was good to hear. Since I am a beginning to intermediate dancer, it would be very possible for me to give him very bad advice, or just to confuse him totally. Kate was mostly being reminded of dancing she learned at her father's knee growing up, but Glenn was starting from scratch.
Dancing with people who study elsewhere is valuable, and the more I do it the more I'm convinced as to the excellence of the Swing Girls instruction. The differences between what I've learned and what is taught at Living Traditions were fine points, but when I passed along what I've learned, Denys and Glenn said it made sense to them.
Denys enjoyed learning the drape, where the lead lifts the follow's right hand and puts it behind his own head, then gives the follow a little push on the hip as they travel away from each other, with the follow's hand tracing along the top of the lead's arm till they are hand in hand again. Very easy, and quite jazzy looking!
But since the Living Traditions folks really hadn't learned spins yet, I didn't get to practice them, and that is what I really need to work on.
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On the woodburning (nonfunctional) kitchen stove that is in Denys's dining room, there were some snapshots of Seattle Fandom from the seventies and early eighties. It was touching to see them all looking so young and pretty! I really enjoyed the evening, and I hope we do it again.
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