Snobbery on the scene

[pygmalion]

Oh heck! I know I'm opening a big, slithery can of worms, here, but it's been mentioned twice already today. Snobbery on the swing scene.

Do you think that there really is elitism on the swing scene, or is it just a misconception? If there is snobbery, does it involve the music or the dances or both? Where did it come from? Is it justified? What effect, if any, do you think it has on newbies or outsiders (or do swing dancers not care? LOL) Have you experienced it? Thoughts, anyone? :wink: 8)

[pygmalion]

Oh yeah, and a couple more questions, while I'm asking. Is it different in the different dance "worlds" lindy hop versus WCS versus shag, for example. Is it different in different countries?


Just curious. 8)

[Sagitta]

Okay. I'll say this and let the wrath of people fall on my poor shoulders!! Lindy hoppers tend to be snobbish. While I have not danced much outside my area I know a lot of people who do, and that is the general consensus. This consensus also includes lindy hoppers who do other dances and are good at those other dance as well.

[pygmalion]

I had a feeling people might not want to reply to this one. Understood. Let's declare this thread a rant- and flame- free zone, okay? Violators will be punishable by pygmalion's scorching sarcastic wit (to date, never witnessed on DF, but deadly, trust me. LOL)

Now, you have dispensation to say what you really think. :wink: :D

[Flat Shoes]

Lindy Hop is best! It's a simple truth. And therein lies the problem, simply being truthful about it will appear to others to be snobbery! The alternative would be to be dishonestly modest, and nobody want to be dishonest. :roll:

Ok, seriosly. I have not idea what you're talking about. :evil: Let's just dance and have fun, will'ya? :D

(Btw: Bal really is the best anyway)

[jon]

There are a lot of people with passionately held - and not infrequently, due to youth or immaturity or general cantankerousness (will label myself in that category), arrogantly held - opinions about the dance forms they participate in, no matter what those forms are.

"Snobbery" is usually used to mean "won't dance with me" with a subtext of "because they think they're better than I am". In reality there are a lot of reasons for not dancing with someone and that particular reason may or may not be the case, but it's easiest to assume the worst about someone who turns down a dance.

[pygmalion]

You may be cantankerous, jon, but you try to be fair and accurate. You're a good guy to have around, IMHO. (And no, complimenting people is NOT in the moderator job description. I only say it if I mean it. 8) )

That said, the reason I don't do lindy hop today is because of snobbery in the scene. The teachers I hooked up with are very nice. But OMG! The attitudes of some lindy hoppers (mostly young and arrogant ones) is really distasteful to me.

I've spent much of my career fighting bigotry in one organization or another. To find it in the dance world turns my stomach. And I've found it in the lindy world. Now, the West Coast Swing people here are cool, totally laid back, and very welcoming (and older. I wonder if that's a coincidence. :? ) I haven't done a bop dance yet, but I'll check in with a report when I do. The lindy folks, some of them, made me want to either punch somebody in the nose or launch into a long and boring diatribe about the evils of prejudice. :shock: So I figured it was better for me to remove myself from that particular scene.

[jdavidb]

I still haven't gone out to see what the lindy hop scene is like around here yet. I keep procrastinating on buying the shoes that they allow on those floors. I do lindy hop in Italian supercross boots heheheh, so of course I have an ego. Just kiddin

[jon]

The one set of boppers I encountered, in Birmingham, were totally cool to this random ballroom/ECS (at the time) dancer who happened to be driving through their town. But people are people and most dance scenes are small enough that a handful of people can set a tone.

Personally I'd probably try and do more Lindy dancing, but the age difference is enough to make me feel somewhat out of place. Not a property of anyone being snobby, just a property of my feeling middle-aged.

(Now, I could digress into my discovery that a substantial portion of the people in my square dance club actually were racist enough to not welcome black club members - and this in a very liberal portion of the not-so-deep South in the 1990s! Extreme ickiness, and a significant part of why I stopped square dancing. There's distressingly little mixing in most dance scenes even without that sort of prehistoric garbage.)

[Sagitta]

With generalizations it is true that there always will be exceptions. For instance, the AT group in my area has the friendliest dance scene. The typical milonga codes are broken, with followers asking leaders for dancing sometimes etc... However, realistically I know that this does not occur in most other places. I'm just happy it does in my area. :D (See how a swing thread can have AT introduced into it. :P )

[pygmalion]

Personally I'd probably try and do more Lindy dancing, but the age difference is enough to make me feel somewhat out of place. Not a property of anyone being snobby, just a property of my feeling middle-aged.

(Now, I could digress into my discovery that a substantial portion of the people in my square dance club actually were racist enough to not welcome black club members - and this in a very liberal portion of the not-so-deep South in the 1990s! Extreme ickiness, and a significant part of why I stopped square dancing. There's distressingly little mixing in most dance scenes even without that sort of prehistoric garbage.)

Thank goodness, I've never experienced anything I'd call racial prejudice in the dance world. Then I really WOULD punch someone in the nose. LOL.

The Lindy hop thing I've seen reminds me more of religion than race. People who've discovered lindy seem to feel they've found "the light," so to speak. I can't blame them for that, really. They have found the root of all swing. Lindy is where it all started. 8)

The snobbery piece is pretty typical human behavior, I think. Good old in group/out group dynamics. You see it in lots of organizations and communities, including some dance communities. Add the relative youth and arrogance of some lindy dancers, and you have a perfect recipe for what we outsiders see as lindy hop snobbiness. It's to be expected, I guess. :?

[jdavidb]

Ballet people are the worst. The ones I was involved with last year at Georgia Ballet weren't just snobs, they were downright discriminating (age & gender), and that includes the school director. I'm not talking about classes, ranks, promotions, roles in shows & internal school/company stuff like that. I'm talking about the school director running sort of a campaign to convince my classmates that they shouldn't communicate with me outside of class. It was an attempt at segregation, and there was no justification for it.

I have a long history of clean, casual, out in the open, up & up communication with dancers of all ages online, in class, at shows, anywhere else I might run across them. I'm a safe adult, but the Georgia Ballet school director opted to give me the same treatment an Internet pedophile would get instead, so the stories went berzerk. I even had two teachers from that school email me after I quit implying that I had been saying inappropriate things to their minor students online. That never happened (or else I sure wouldn't mention it here). That's just how mixed up stuff got thanks to that hack of a school director.

It was bigger than just the school director and a couple of teachers. It started as a clique of girls age 16 to 19. I confronted them twice for publicly slandering other company dancers and students. So you know, the cliquish, catty conduct wasn't just in my direction. They were out here bashing their colleagues & classmates for the whole world wide web to see. They didn't like it when I caught 'em even though I was nice about things. So, that's the seed that started it all. No much else worth mentioning except that I've never seen such an abundance of mental problems all concentrated in one place as it was at Georgia Ballet.

[pygmalion]

Yikes. I've read some horror stories about the ballet world on another board. Sorry that happened to you. :(

[jdavidb]

I think the social, ballroom & club types of dancers have it right. They do dance stuff only to the degree that it positively affects their lives (for the most part). We get practically all the opportunity we want to use what we learn. Those ballet pre-professionals and company people are destroying themselves from the inside out by being in classes way too much. Homeschoolers who get enrolled in too much dance class seem to be not doing too well also.

[pygmalion]

I've concluded that ballet is a totally different world. It's one of the few dance disciplines where you can have a dance career and be washed up at age twenty. Or you can devote your life to excellent dancing and never make the cut. Those kinds of pressures would tend to distort people's views a bit, I think.

[Sagitta]

Ballet is a tough world Pygmalion. I know someone who works at "World Tone Muisc" in NYC, and he had to stop at age 16 because of leg surgery took away his flexibility! :? Don't remember too many details though...

[jdavidb]

Yeah it's a lot different. Each person is basically secluded in ballet class no matter how many people are in the class. Ballet students tend to go in the direction of wanting less & less numbers in their classes. Ballroom & swing classes are interactive & sociable. The more the merrier! It's better for ya.

[pygmalion]

I think it's better for ya, too. 8)

Back to swing for just a minute. When I thought about posting this topic, I googled "swing dance elitism" or something like that. I got a couple of hits on articles that said that the elitism some of us see today actually has its roots in the BeBop era, when jazz music and swing music became the focus of in-depth intellectual study. Before that, according to a couple authors, swing and jazz were strictly grass roots -- of the people, by the people and for the people. I have no idea whether those authors were right, but that theory makes sense to me. :?

[swinginstyle]

Well, I know all about elitism and snobbery. Sadly enough, it seems to only appear in the lindy scene. Westies seem like to everything, though they may not dance at higher tempos. ECS'ers love their neo-swing and have difficulty dancing to slower tempos. Lindy hoppers had their exclusive cliques (rarely ever mingling), their attitude toward "proper" swing music, and frequently badmouthed westies and ECS'ers. Frankly, I don't gave a care about such close-minded lindy hoppers. I'll take the openminded swing dancers, whatever they may dance to, any time.

Right now, I hang out with a group of very openminded lindy hoppers/swing dancers. We have our opinions about music and dancing, but we're open to any swing dancers. This has made us successful within our own scene, compared to the lack of success that our closeminded "brethren" have found.

Frankly, I hate elitism, having battled it for several years and continue to do so. People need to learn to be accepting of others' differences, insteading bashing them.

[pygmalion]

I'm glad you mentioned your group of friends, which has some open-minded lindy hoppers in it. That's cool. I'm sure there are lots more around, too. It's just the few bad folks that we hear about more often. Human nature, I guess.

[swinginstyle]

Or just read enough discussion boards and the wonderful opinions on them. Snobbery and elitism will only drive people away, so why do people persist with those attitudes?

[Spitfire]

Well, I know all about elitism and snobbery. Sadly enough, it seems to only appear in the lindy scene. Westies seem like to everything, though they may not dance at higher tempos. ECS'ers love their neo-swing and have difficulty dancing to slower tempos. Lindy hoppers had their exclusive cliques (rarely ever mingling), their attitude toward "proper" swing music, and frequently badmouthed westies and ECS'ers. Frankly, I don't gave a care about such close-minded lindy hoppers. I'll take the openminded swing dancers, whatever they may dance to, any time.

Amen to that!

For all their badmouthing about ECS and WCS, ECS is what they teach at their classes just prior to the dances; at least that's what is done here. True, they may be using it as a means to progress to Lindy, but as long as they teach it they are still promoting it, right?

These attitudes could be why Lindy has lost momentum here; WCS on the other hand is just the opposite.

[huey]

I went on a combined Lindy Hop and 'Jive' dance holiday recently. We divided basically into two groups, specialising in either Lindy Hop or Jive. Separate classes and dances. I enjoyed being in the Lindy group. But I found that perhaps I had the best fun just dancing in nightclubs when both groups went together and danced to general pop music.

I do believe Lindy is much harder than other styles such as jive. Perhaps the fact that people have to spend a lot of time on their relatively tough Lindy dancing makes them think they are 'better' than others.

[etchuck]

I went on a combined Lindy Hop and 'Jive' dance holiday recently. ...

That would be interesting. Considering for me both dances are performed to about the same speed (lindy slightly slower perhaps?) but the characters of each dance are totally different. I have a lot of difficulty converting from one to the other because jive is more vertical and lindy is lower to the ground and circular. Granted, I've taken a small number of jive lessons (2) compared to lindy (12 weeks).

That said, I play "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" a lot. It's one of my favorite swing pieces that most youngsters can relate to. You can also dance jive to it, and lindy is not impossible. I get "those faces" from the pure lindy folks about it at times, but still...

[dancin/dj]

You may be cantankerous, jon, but you try to be fair and accurate. You're a good guy to have around, IMHO. (And no, complimenting people is NOT in the moderator job description. I only say it if I mean it. 8) )

That said, the reason I don't do lindy hop today is because of snobbery in the scene. The teachers I hooked up with are very nice. But OMG! The attitudes of some lindy hoppers (mostly young and arrogant ones) is really distasteful to me.

I've spent much of my career fighting bigotry in one organization or another. To find it in the dance world turns my stomach. And I've found it in the lindy world. Now, the West Coast Swing people here are cool, totally laid back, and very welcoming (and older. I wonder if that's a coincidence. :? ) I haven't done a bop dance yet, but I'll check in with a report when I do. The lindy folks, some of them, made me want to either punch somebody in the nose or launch into a long and boring diatribe about the evils of prejudice. :shock: So I figured it was better for me to remove myself from that particular scene.pygmailon you go girl,your my kinda gal-i always hated the snobbery in the music world(playing in and out of bands for 30 years-im 47,anyway 7 years ago i got into the dance world-and sorry to say i see a lot of the same crap- i see snobbery in hustle- salsa and west coast here in philly, new jersey and new york-with teachers and dancers, but also on the other side of the coin a lot of really nice folk in all these dances :P ,however i does effect people who are not as talented in dance-or people who just want to have fun,so they turn people away-trust me i know a lot of dancers up and down the east coast and we (talk) my info is straight up correct, and i have the benifit of doing all three dances i just mention really good ,in addition to ballroom-and it turns my stomach to see how nasty and clickess some are-and they hurt the dance world from growing in leaps and bounds :(

[swinginstyle]

For all their badmouthing about ECS and WCS, ECS is what they teach at their classes just prior to the dances; at least that's what is done here. True, they may be using it as a means to progress to Lindy, but as long as they teach it they are still promoting it, right?

These attitudes could be why Lindy has lost momentum here; WCS on the other hand is just the opposite.

Nearly everyone that I know learned ECS before lindy, yet a lot of people are perfectly willing to badmouth ECS. I think this is ridiculous. I am thankful for what I have learned and who I learned it from. I may not enjoy ECS that much nowadays, but it has it's place in the dance. To me, when lindy starts getting faster, the dance starts looking like ECS. Albeit, the technique, connection, musicality is much better, along with the dance looking more dynamic.

[etchuck]

Part of the reason (I guess) in many cases of elitism or snobbishness is the attitude of the instructors or their students in thinking their training and technique is "better" than "your" instructors/instruction. So they get accustomed to dancing with their fellow students from their studios, and the cliquishness begins.

[Spitfire]

I believe that people who feel that they have to badmouth other dances and dancers are those who basically feel insecure and uncomfortable with themselves.

If I'm someone who concentrates on one specific dance, WCS, Lindy, Salsa, ect. and am enjoying myself why should I care what the dance world "outside the box" does? :?

[Sagitta]

Right on Spitfire. And along those lines how would you like to be treated coming to a stange place, and not getting any dances, and those that you get being treated like a stinky rag!?!! I always make a point of welcoming a stranger or two at my regular dance places with a dance. Here the criteria is not how cute/hot they look, or whether they can dance my style, or if they have leant to dance yet, but only that they must be showing a little interest in wanting to dance. :) And these little adventures always turn out to be rather enjoyable. I look forward to them. :D

[Spitfire]

Right on Spitfire. And along those lines how would you like to be treated coming to a stange place, and not getting any dances, and those that you get being treated like a stinky rag!?!! I always make a point of welcoming a stranger or two at my regular dance places with a dance. Here the criteria is not how cute/hot they look, or whether they can dance my style, or if they have leant to dance yet, but only that they must be showing a little interest in wanting to dance. :) And these little adventures always turn out to be rather enjoyable. I look forward to them. :D

Yep, I've often mentioned to people that our dance world is unique in it's social atmosphere in that attractiveness does not in itself sell one's self; not in the long run anyway. This is done either by one's ability to dance or willingness to learn. :) (Except maybe for those more snobish environments)

The WCS club here used to be notorious for snobishness, but many of those folks have left. There still is some among the remaining "old guard", but all in all it's much friendlier now. 8)

[etchuck]

Good point. I know I always like to show up at a strange place of dancing, watching other people, and then going for it myself. Hopefully my dancing will turn a couple of people's heads to say, "hey, he ain't that bad."

Certainly I like breaking down preconceptions, but I will admit it takes quite a lot of courage to do that. Showing up for a Tito Nieves concert (before he really really hit it big) in Cleveland by myself was certainly an interesting experience.

[DancingMommy]

That said, the reason I don't do lindy hop today is because of snobbery in the scene. The teachers I hooked up with are very nice. But OMG! The attitudes of some lindy hoppers (mostly young and arrogant ones) is really distasteful to me.

The lindy folks, some of them, made me want to either punch somebody in the nose or launch into a long and boring diatribe about the evils of prejudice. :shock: So I figured it was better for me to remove myself from that particular scene.

I bet I know who you are talking about, muahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[DancingMommy]

open-minded lindy hoppers

You sure that isn't an oxymoron? :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[Spitfire]

There is going to be snobbishness in every dance scene somewhere.

Where I see it the least myself is in the ballroom studios.

[Sasashay]

I definitely have seen snobbishness in West Coast Swing dancers, but it seems to come from the younger dancers (mid 30's to mid 50's) :wink: , from a certain geographical area (in my area, Orange county), and from my observation, mostly dancers who compete, especially in Jack and Jills. Don't get me wrong, they truly are wonderful dancers. I don't know if there should be all that attitude, though :P :?: Otherwise, the West Coast Swing dancers I've met are wonderful and gracious people :D

[jon]

I definitely have seen snobbishness in West Coast Swing dancers, but it seems to come from the younger dancers (mid 30's to mid 50's) :wink: , from a certain geographical area (in my area, Orange county)

Judging by what's posted (and posted, and posted, and posted yet again) on rec.arts.dance, the LA WCS dancers are suffering the effects of a deeply stupid, lengthy war between two of their dance clubs, and their dance "community" has become factionalized. Some people down there seem to take this stuff way too seriously.

[pygmalion]

People are amazing, aren't they? If there's nothing real to fight over, they make something up. :?

[Doug]

As middle aged Lindy Hoppers, I won't try to defend the attitudes of some of my bretheren (and sisteren?). I do think that there is an "acceptance" threshold that one must pass to become a part of the scene, and that there are various ways past this threshold. But they all involve active participation in the scene. For our part, I feel that locally we are generally seen as "part of the scene" - we dance, teach, compete and sponser/put on events. Nationally we feel accepted, although not "part of the scene". And nationally we are fairly active participants in workshops and events, we compete
(Geezers Frozen in Time & Space - http://www.camphollywood.net/images/2003/sunday/03masters/pages/DSCF1919.htm ) and I DJ. But to really be "part of the scene" requires that you be 20-something with all the wierdness that characterizes a lot of 20-something interactions and relationships. And you can keep those. So in that regard, there are "thresholds of engagement" that anyone can at least partially pass.

So although there are barriers and annoying personallities, when all is said it is Just Dance. I don't really see a large component of attitude in the national Lindy scene beyond what one expects from dancers generally younger than one's own daughter!

[setsuna713]

Ok, I guess I have just a weird opinion about the whole thing. I dance Lindy, WCS, ECS, salsa, and ballroom (isn't it nice to be in college and have all of that energy). I guess what contributes a little bit to there not being so much snobbery in the scene i dance in is that one of the main teachers in the area teaches Lindy, WCS, ECS, and salsa (she started out as a WCS dancer). Since I learned all those things from her, and there are so many of her students around, a lot of people do a lot of different dances. Now I'm not going to say there's no snobbery in the lindy scene (there might actually more among people in the lindy scene than towards the outside :oops: ), but I don't think everyone in the lindy scene is a snob. Just my two cents...

[Sagitta]

Ok, I guess I have just a weird opinion about the whole thing. I dance Lindy, WCS, ECS, salsa, and ballroom (isn't it nice to be in college and have all of that energy). I guess what contributes a little bit to there not being so much snobbery in the scene i dance in is that one of the main teachers in the area teaches Lindy, WCS, ECS, and salsa (she started out as a WCS dancer). Since I learned all those things from her, and there are so many of her students around, a lot of people do a lot of different dances. Now I'm not going to say there's no snobbery in the lindy scene (there might actually more among people in the lindy scene than towards the outside :oops: ), but I don't think everyone in the lindy scene is a snob. Just my two cents...

Ditto!! Not painting everyone with the same black brush, ever!!

[SDsalsaguy]

Sure... which is why I think we're talking about "scenes" vs. salsa dancers, or Lindy dancers, etc., as if they were all the same.

[setsuna713]

I hope no one thought that I thought that people were meaning anything other than the scence (i didn't think people were talking about the individual people). I just find that everything goes in all directions (I've had some Lindy people ask me how in the world I can stand the snobbery in the ballroom scene and vice versa). I think a lot of it is a person's individual perspective on different scenes.

[jon]

I think a lot of it is a person's individual perspective on different scenes.

And, it's easy to forgive bad behavior in the dance communities we're part of while criticizing the same behavior in the communities we visit.

[pygmalion]

Yes. Been there, done that. My own personal clique is just friends out to have fun, to me. I bet, to outsiders, it seems pretty snobbish and exclusionary. :(

[SDsalsaguy]

No problems setsuna. And yes Jenn, I'm definately in the boat you describe. Some little asian grandma knows that I'll never turn down her requests to dance while other dnacers in my regular club won't even approach "my" table unless they're passing it on their way on/off the floor. Oh well... :?

[Spitfire]

I believe that some people observe the same groups of people sitting at the same spot every time and assume it's cliquish, but that doesn't mean that they are going to limit their dancing to or only be friendly with those in that "group". This has been the case at most every dance I've attended.

[huey]

Oh heck! I know I'm opening a big, slithery can of worms, here, but it's been mentioned twice already today. Snobbery on the swing scene.

Do you think that there really is elitism on the swing scene, or is it just a misconception? If there is snobbery, does it involve the music or the dances or both? Where did it come from? Is it justified? What effect, if any, do you think it has on newbies or outsiders (or do swing dancers not care? LOL) Have you experienced it? Thoughts, anyone? :wink: 8)

I was thinking about this just now.

There certainly is snobbery among some Lindy Hoppers in that they look down on people dancing 'Jive' or 'Ceroc' as we call it here.

But there's something else that concerns me. I wouldn't describe it as snobbery, but rather, exclusivity.

Several of the better dancers in London tend to hang out together at dances. Some of them wear t-shirts with slogans like 'Lindy Hop is better than anything else in the universe'. They refer to each other on message boards with comments like 'Anyone going to xyz tonight? xxxxxx will be there'. I am not part of this group, but do have other friends I sometimes sit with and always try to talk to if I see them at a dance. So you could say I have my own group.

I think that people will tend to sit with other people rather than sit on their own, so that is an understandable human trait. As for the t-shirts, I think that when people discover Lindy Hop they get very enthusiastic about it, and feel they want to tell people. I can get pretty carried away myself when I am enjoying dancing. I do think it's probably healthy to have some other interests as well as dancing.

I do also think that this group CAN appear cliquey in that they appear to be an exclusive club that it's hard to join. You know when you walk up to someone intending to ask them to dance, and they are sitting with a group of friends? It can be hard to approach an individual in a group and the perceived attitude of the group to outsiders is a big factor.

Individuals dance with other individuals, but the forming of groups is a human trait and will tend to happen. I suppose ultimately, I would like to be open to dance with other individuals, and for them to be open to dance with me, and I fear that when dancers identify too strongly with a group it becomes a barrier to openness.

I hope that makes sense :wink:

[Sagitta]

It does huey, and it takes courage to go and ask when that is the case. One approach of mine is to go to the group and inobtrusively tap or get the attention of the lady I want to dance with. The other brash way is stride up and simply look at the person whom you want to dance with and ask.

[Lulu]

Lindy hoppers tend to be snobbish.

I am new to this board and was searching around getting a feel for what is out there when I came upon this. Wow! What a statement.

I am a lindyhopper who has had a snobbish experience with the WC crowd. Here I was enrolled in my first WC class and trying to expand my knowledge of partner dancing when I was being looked at from down the nose from the westies who know that I'm a lindyhopper. That was of course until they danced with me and realized that I know a lot about connection. When they complimented me, I would just smile and say that in lindy you have to have great connection or the dance won't work.

Also, for those who think ballet dancers are snobs. Guess what? I've taken ballet since I was 4 and now I teach it.

I guess I'm a double snob.

For those who have had snobbish experiences with lindyhoppers and with ballet dancers. I'm sorry that you've had poor experiences, but don't judge all by the same cover.

[Sagitta]

Lindy hoppers tend to be snobbish.

I am new to this board and was searching around getting a feel for what is out there when I came upon this. Wow! What a statement.

For those who have had snobbish experiences with lindyhoppers and with ballet dancers. I'm sorry that you've had poor experiences, but don't judge all by the same cover.

Welcome to df Lulu!! My statement is merely a comment on the dance scenes, based on observation. It does not mean/imply that I apply this blanket statement to everyone who belongs to the lindy scene.