Nathan Bugh's essays

Hey kids, have you read Nathan Bugh's essays from his website? No? I had not seen them till today. and they are all the shit, so I'm just gonna link them.

Where's the beat?

Sync or Swing?

Infinilindy

Ladies First

Know, you don't

Random rant on being told to do it "naturally"

Possibly my biggest pet peeve in taking dance classes is when I am told to do some movement "naturally" without any additional explanation.

I am intensely awkward*. You tell me to do some shit "naturally," and I will do my best, but it will still be wrong.  

re: Plight of Lindy Hop Followers

So, over at Rhythmic Rambling back in December, Rachel wrote of followers slogging through learning/skill plateaus:

Suddenly, after dancing for 6 months or a year, followers realize that they’re pretty much relearning how to do everything in order to dance with well with others.

She talks about how it can be more frustrating/ego-crushing for followers than leaders at this point (a year or so in) partially because the leaders get a lot of the ego-crushing "you know nothing" out of the way early. Whereas it is reasonably straightforward to be able to effect a basic level of following, which people can often pick up very quickly, so at the beginning, followers' egos have an easier time.

I totally agree with her, especially since I went through this you-know-nothing-relearning HARD in about that time frame in my dancing, and feel like I repeat it cyclically. I would like to add another thought to this discussion, also, that I talked about with one of the instructors at a recent weekend. I had booked a private lesson, and when they asked if I had specific questions or goals for the session, the answer was no, because...

Declining a dance (a thing that you, Yes, You! are allowed to do.)

So a friend of mine was recently co-teaching a drop-in beginner lesson before a night of dancing; I was watching the door and listening. To conclude the lesson, he said that there were only two rules for swing dancing. Following the obligatory Fight Club joke, he stated that the first rule, was the leads had to ask some follows to dance at some point tonight (and that it would be sad to leave all the lovely ladies waiting). Second, he stated that if someone asked you to dance, you had to say yes.

And then I threw up in my mouth a little.

Can I deconstruct that response for y'all a bit? Why that made me sick even though my personal philosophy still leads to basically same result-- I will virtually never say "no" to getting asked to dance.* I swear to god that I am aware that there will be people who think I'm more than a little "Stop the penis party" with this, but hey, this is my blog and my opinion and you don't have to read any of it that you don't want to.