Weekend dance events can cause information overload. Classes and social dances present a deluge of new ideas. Coming into the event, I generally have a set of ideas I have been marinating on. Heading into St. Louis, I was thinking about a similar set of concepts as I was going into Uptown. I was concentrating on musical measures, and hoping that in doing so I would dance more musically. By the end of the event, a series of experiences left me with something different unexpected. It changed my relationship with pulse.

Erin Morris taught a pair of classes which spoke to my incoming musicality intention. She brought in a drummer, Steve Davis, to play while we danced. Erin used “Mary had a Little Lamb” as her first teaching tool, since it was a song she was certain everyone knew. Steve played a straight rhythmic variation of the song on the drums. He then changed his playing style to make it swing. To do so, he noted the emphasis on the 2 and 4. He described playing looser. He showed how early jazz used the high hat to establish the and-a-2 swing beat, while modern jazz moved away from the high hat to play the syncopation on different places of the kit.

Steve sang the melody of “Mary had a Little Lamb” while he played. By doing so, he shaped his drumming to be a reflection of the song’s melody. As a drummer becomes more familiar with the melody, he said, they shift away from playing it directly, and start improvising around it, filling in spaces around the main melodic rhythm. This allows for interesting variation, while still honoring the core of the song. Erin had the dancers practice a similar thing. She had us “Mickey Mouse”, which was stepping on each note of the melody. This ensured our bodies were synced with the central idea of the song. She then had us mix stepping on the melody with stepping off around it. Moving between Micky Mousing and not was the tool for creating interesting movement improvisation that reacted to the melodic center.

The session moved on to Mikey Mousing to another song with broad familiarity, “Satin Doll”, sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Erin and Steve tackled the question of how to approach a song one doesn’t know: how can a dancer Mickey Mouse a song they’re hearing for the first time? Steve noted that dancing is rarely reactive. You can’t hear a sound, and then have the body react. The action of a song happens too quickly. One has to cultivate a sense of what will happen. To do that, Steve advised dancers to start learning a set of melodies, and gradually build up familiarity with more and more. Swing songs have standard patterns, so learning a subset will allow one to predict what will probably happen in a song one hasn’t heard. Erin said that she thought about song structure a bit differently than Steve. She doesn’t explicitly think about AABA patterns. Instead, she thinks about the beginning and the end of a section. Steve added that the end of the phrase was where the good stuff happens.

Along with the musicality work, Erin peppered in various technical suggestions and combinations. She spoke about two different interactions with the floor: pushing off and up, and sinking down into it. She commented that she saw most of us pushing off, and wanted more sinking down. We practiced a basic six count pattern, trying to feel how the rockstep went down into the floor and came back up. For the slow portion (of the quick-quick-slow-slow pattern), she had us scoop upwards in closed position. It was a simple variation, but hard to get to feel right. She then incorporated the scoop into a swingout. Then followed up with a swing out variation which had leads hold on the six and eight for two beats, then kickball change into the two.

Towards the end of class, Erin fielded a question about looking at the floor. She said she often looks at the floor, because that is where her attention is. She said that she commonly looks towards the part of the body where she was expressing the music. She looks at her hands, as a way to draw attention to them. Her comment reminded me of how B. Parish suggested hip hop dancers draw a shape with their hand, in order to intentionally draw a viewer’s attention to a a place away from the body.

Gabby Cook and Nathan Bugh led several classes during the weekend, which left me with several more technical insights to marinate on. The first came from Nathan, after he asked the class what defines connection in a swing dance partnership. His answer stuck out. He said. connection means affecting your partner’s balance. Gabby reinforced this idea with her own insights into how one establishes good balance.

At the beginning of the last class of the weekend, Gabby had dancers intentionally transfer weight between their feet. We stood on one foot, then slowly descended our floating foot to the floor. As soon as the second foot touched, we transferred the weight to it fully, and raised the opposite foot. Gabby said that this full weight transfer was one of the essential elements of dance. She advised us to practice this motion often, in order for it to become consistently balanced.

Gabby brought a chair out the middle of the floor, and sat on the edge of it. She demonstrated how in this sitting position, the legs were free to move independently, as was the upper body. Clips of early Lindy Hoppers, she said, showed how the middle of the body maintained a steady position in space, while the legs and upper body did different things. Maintaining that athletic posture, with the butt extended slightly backwards, the weight centered, and the core strong, allows a swing dancer to stay connected to the floor while also staying ready to move.

I had a conversation with another lead during one of the social dances. He said that a teacher critiqued his dance for dropping the pulse at certain moments. He was encouraged to maintain a consistent, visual bounce. I started noticing this consistent visible pulse in dancer’s whose style I admired. I practiced maintaining this bounce in myself, and it helped tremendously in feeling the groove. I combined this practice with maintaining Gabby’s recommended posture. These two ideas in unison helped me better understand why swing dance felt different from other dances. I could feel the swing beat more easily, and it was easier to share that feeling with my dance partners. I started feeling the “w” shape of the triple step. I started being able to intentionally drop out the pulse in order to signal a new rhythmic idea. In watching the instructors social dance, I noticed how each has a different kind of pulse, but it is always visible.