Swing without a partner

[jdavidb]

What could I tell someone to get them started if they want to dance to swing, but not with a partner? Where do they start?

I've seen a little of what goes on in "jazz class". I don't quite think that's what I'm looking for. Jazz class is more like stage stuff. I'm looking for what a single person can do on the social dance floor.

[Sagitta]

Something along the line of what is talked about in the below thread?

http://www.dance-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=3756

[SwinginBoo]

charleston is something that can be done individually or with a partner

[jdavidb]

True, but Charleston is a bit challenging for a start, right? I told the person to look into The Madison, Big Apple and Shim Sham first. Even though those are group dances, I guess they'd be good for someone who wants to swing, but has no partner. I was stumped because I don't know this solo stuff.

[jdavidb]

And Trankydoo looks great too, Sagitta. I'm on the search for a way to learn all of it.

[Flat Shoes]

Jazz, dance like music, has become much more than it once was. If you walk into a jazz class expecting to learn jazz steps as done in Lindy Hop, I think you'll be disappointed. Modern jazz dance has very little do to with this kind of dancing.

I see several jazz routines are mentioned. One of the simpler, a lot simpler than what Tranky Doo appears to be,which is not mentioned is Jitterbug Stroll. Even easier than Shim Sham.

[pygmalion]

How did I miss this thread before? Solo swing, as in swing basic steps, is one of the things I do when I'm out in a club dancing, but there are no leads to dance with. A lot of the music is swing, and a swing basic with some individual styling works really well as a club freestyle dance step. Try it, you'll like it. (what commercial was that from? Too long ago for me to remember. :oops: )

[jdavidb]

Are you talking about step step triplestep step step triplestep-ing?... and of course the 6 count one too. Yeah I do that all the time alone, but I also have an invisible partner with no one around to see how dumb I look. It would be a cool dance without the arms for the invisible partner :) I'll probably relay that idea to the guy. It's just hard to explain that without being able to just show them in person.

[pygmalion]

Yes. That works, arms or no, although I usually can't help adding arms. My girlfriends who can't dance kind of shuffle around, but I have something specific to do. It's really fun. :D 8)

[DWise1]

As I've posted in the thread about Dance Movies, there's a lot of solo swing (and maybe other dances too) in the credits at the end of the 1997 Jack Lemmon/Walther Matthau movie "Out To Sea". Might be some ideas to be had there.

[pygmalion]

Thanks. I'll check it out. 8)

[DWise1]

Thanks. I'll check it out. 8)
Saw it again the other night. Wasn't as great as I had remembered -- of course. But then I had seen it before I had started learning to dance -- saw the movie in 1997 or 98 and took very first dance lesson in Summer 2000.

[d nice]

Solo swing, as in swing basic steps, is one of the things I do when I'm out in a club dancing, but there are no leads to dance with. A lot of the music is swing, and a swing basic with some individual styling works really well as a club freestyle dance step.

Really? What club do you go to where a lot of the music is Swing?

[pygmalion]

My fave C&W bar around the corner from my house. Lots of swing. 8) :D

[pygmalion]

Oh yeah, and I forgot about this, because I don't go there often. There's a very nice restaurant (the Black Fin) which has a house band that does almost exclusively Motown from the late fifties to early seveties. Tons of swing. It's way pricey for dinner, but they do open the bar/dancefloor side in the evenings. Worth a look-see, if you're in the Orlando area and you want to dance swing (on a miniscule floor ... That's why I don't go there.)

[suek]

Solo swing, as in swing basic steps, is one of the things I do when I'm out in a club dancing, but there are no leads to dance with. A lot of the music is swing, and a swing basic with some individual styling works really well as a club freestyle dance step.Really? What club do you go to where a lot of the music is Swing?My fave C&W bar around the corner from my house. Lots of swing.You may have answered D's question; I'm still curious. What's being played at a C&W bar that's swung?

[pygmalion]

Unless I'm mistaken (correct me here, Vince) C&W swing is very common and has been around a long time. Here are a couple interesting links that give some history and artist/music recommendations. If I get a chance, next time I'm listening to the top hits countdown on CMT, I'll post a couple names of contemporary C&W swing songs.

http://www.roughstock.com/history/westernswing.html
http://www.slipcue.com/music/country/countrystyles/old/westernswing01.html
http://www.swingorama.com/music/ronsrecs.html#Recommendations%20by%20Category

[jdavidb]

yep lots of country has that offset 8th note too. A coffee shop owner I was talking to yesterday brought this up. I told him to have two step classes at his place to make more money. Most of his crowd is country. I'm thinking I should have recommended some other dance style.

[d nice]

Having a dotted or offset eigth note is not indicative of a song that swings. Most of Miller's songs contain such a note, but the number of songs of his that actually swing are less than a dozen (a lot closer to six to be honest).

It is the rhythmic propulsion set by cross or polyrhythms that creates swing. The pushing and pulling of time for the beat. If I set a metronome at 150 bpm and you play a song it will tend to tick on every beat. Now if the song has a dotted eigth at least one note every measure will not hit the tick. However if that note is not swung it will hit off of the tick in the same place every time (as much as humanly possible). A swung song will flow in and around the ticking some notes being late and then a chorus latter that same note being late... purposefully. That is swing. A rhythmic ebb and flow.

Western swing does not usually qualify as swing music (despite its name) just like most rock and roll does not, because the rhythm section is too consistant.

[DWise1]

Having a dotted or offset eigth note is not indicative of a song that swings. Most of Miller's songs contain such a note, but the number of songs of his that actually swing are less than a dozen (a lot closer to six to be honest).

It is the rhythmic propulsion set by cross or polyrhythms that creates swing. The pushing and pulling of time for the beat. If I set a metronome at 150 bpm and you play a song it will tend to tick on every beat. Now if the song has a dotted eigth at least one note every measure will not hit the tick. However if that note is not swung it will hit off of the tick in the same place every time (as much as humanly possible). A swung song will flow in and around the ticking some notes being late and then a chorus latter that same note being late... purposefully. That is swing. A rhythmic ebb and flow.

Western swing does not usually qualify as swing music (despite its name) just like most rock and roll does not, because the rhythm section is too consistant.
Could you please list some well-known swung and unswung songs that we could compare? (naming mainly Big Band standards should probably help to keep the list narrowed down to manageable size)

I just barely got to hearing and following the beat a couple years ago, so I'm not sure what the difference between swung and not-swung sounds like. It might help in training our ears if we had samples to listen to and compare.

Thanks.

[d nice]

Two songs immediatly come to mind...

Tuxedo Junction... Erskine Hawkins versus Glenn Miller. The first swings the second does not.

In the Mood... Duke Ellington versus Glenn Miller. Again the first swings the second does not.

Both versions of both songs use the dotted eigth note but but neither of Glann Millers versions swing.

[pygmalion]

Thanks for the examples, Damon. They help a lot. 8) Glenn Miller did have a very square style of interpreting music. Square meaning angular, not old-fashioned. :lol:

And I know I'm going to get trounced for saying this but what the hey, somebody has to. The majority of people dancing swing dances wouldn't know a dotted eighth note if it came up and bit them on the nose. Much less would they be able to hear the difference between swung and unswung. Maybe they should learn these things at some point, but most of them don't know and likely never will know. Chances are,sometimes they're dancing to music that is swung; sometimes, they're dancing to music that is unswung, but swing dances fit the music better than any other dances. Does that make doing swing dances any less valid? One really nice thing about swing "culture" is that it doesn't have a lot of the dumb restrictions that other dance genres, such as ballroom, often have. You can do what you want. That's what's cool about social dancing. 8)

[DWise1]

Two songs immediatly come to mind...

Tuxedo Junction... Erskine Hawkins versus Glenn Miller. The first swings the second does not.

In the Mood... Duke Ellington versus Glenn Miller. Again the first swings the second does not.

Both versions of both songs use the dotted eigth note but but neither of Glann Millers versions swing.
Did you have any linguistics training, or at least an intro class? In phonemics, in order to determine which sounds in a language distringuish meaning (AKA "phonemes") you match together words in that language that have different meanings and that differ in pronounciation only by that single sound (eg, "matter" and "batter"). These matchings are called "minimal pairs".

Thank you for providing us with minimal pairs of songs in which the difference in sound is whether they swing nor not. That's a lot more useful than what I had in mind in the first place.

[d nice]

Yeah, I knew you were just asking for songs in general, but since I had two specific examples that would cut through orchestration and energy level, to th emeat of it, how it is arranged and played, I figured it couldn't get any better.

[d nice]

And I know I'm going to get trounced for saying this but what the hey, somebody has to. The majority of people dancing swing dances wouldn't know a dotted eighth note if it came up and bit them on the nose. Much less would they be able to hear the difference between swung and unswung. Maybe they should learn these things at some point, but most of them don't know and likely never will know. Chances are,sometimes they're dancing to music that is swung; sometimes, they're dancing to music that is unswung, but swing dances fit the music better than any other dances. Does that make doing swing dances any less valid? One really nice thing about swing "culture" is that it doesn't have a lot of the dumb restrictions that other dance genres, such as ballroom, often have. You can do what you want. That's what's cool about social dancing. 8)

I would say that a significant amount of lindy hoppers do know when something is swung or not. Most know that trying to dance to non-swinging music makes the dance harder, and your connection with your partner suffers because the dance is not flwoing the way it should.

"swng dancing to non-swing music" does that make the dancing less valid? Dancing? No. does it bring into question whether it is or should be a swing dance? Yes.

A tangerine is orange in color, it is a citrus fruit, grows from trees, and has a skin with seeds inside the sectional "meat". That does not make it an orange though, it is a tangerine. Just because something uses the patterns and postures of a a swing dance, if it doesn't swing it isn't swing.

People will argue with that I'm sure, but that is the great thing about stuff like this we can go back and forth and still get out on the dance floor and have fun when its all over.

[pygmalion]

People will argue with that I'm sure, but that is the great thing about stuff like this we can go back and forth and still get out on the dance floor and have fun when its all over.

I won't argue a bit. That's my point exactly. Just enjoy the music and have a blast. Amen and amen. 8)

[Diavo]

You'll know if it's swung because if it is, I can't stand still! :wink:

Back to the original topic for a sec, solo swingin' is just as fun! Just dance your heart out, mix up your footsteps. I first got the idea from Swing Kids when the 2 guys danced side-by-side (which I did this weekend at Glen Echo).
It's the kind of thought where "if it feels good and no one's getting hurt -- go for it!"

--Diavo 8)

[pygmalion]

Okay. That's two references to Glen Echo. What gives? An exchange? Workshops? What happened? Did you have fun? Meet new dancers? Learn anything new you're just dying to share? Do tell. 8) :)

[DWise1]

Okay. That's two references to Glen Echo. What gives? An exchange? Workshops? What happened? Did you have fun? Meet new dancers? Learn anything new you're just dying to share? Do tell. 8) :)
The Spanish Ballroom, apparently.

Remember "Dizzy's Desiderata"? Item #16 reads:
"16. Nurture skill in several dances to provide you options on contra nights at Glen Echo."

Here's a link about contra at Glen Echo: http://fnd.folkdancer.com/what_is_contra_dancing.html

Where is Glen Echo? I just now found out on this page (http://www.fred.net/tds/dance.html): Glen Echo, Maryland (next to the Potomac, just inside the beltway of Washington DC)

And now we know the rest of the story.

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17. Nurture skill in several dances so you can go dancing and still avoid your ex.


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Will Google just for the hell of it.

[Diavo]

Oh, it was last Saturday (7.17.04), Royal Crown Revue was playing at Glen Echo! So an otherwise ordinary swing dance was made even better because of them! :D

I've been waiting to see RCR live since... well '98 when I first got into swing dancing. But they were never in Baltimore/DC...

So yes, I met plenty of new dancers, I met the band :D :D and had tons o' fun. 8)

Glen Echo's website is http://www.glenechopark.org/index.htm.

--Diavo 8)

[pygmalion]

Kewl! I was wondering. 8) :D