Hand Dance?

blinks said:

Hand dancing has been revived by the generation of African-Americans that originally learned the dance style as teenagers during the 1950s and '60s. These dancers learned the basics primarily from their parents' generation and adapted the choreography to suit the faster tempos of the Motown era.

The Washington style of hand dancing features a six-beat step that forms the foundation on which elaborate turns, arm gestures and various other movements are improvised. In the 1960s, some specialties and variations developed into regional styles that distinguished dancers from the four quadrants of the District:
by observing the way a certain step or turn was performed, dancers could identify who was from Southeast, Southwest, Northeast or Northwest Washington.

The regional distinctions have largely faded today, however, since the current revival is based upon social activities that take place in public locations such as clubs. These clubs draw dancers from throughout the metropolitan area, whereas the house parties, school socials and sock hops that dominated the social lives of teenage dancers in the 1950s and '60s attracted a more local crowd.

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blinks said:

You might be a Hand Dancer if...

You no longer buy clothes you can't dance in!

You know who went to what high school by the way they dance!

You can't pass a shoe store without checking to see if they have shoes you can dance in, even if you already have several pairs!

You routinely bring a change of clothes, water, and a towel or two for a night out!

You can't watch other forms of dance without trying to identify moves that could be turned into Hand Dance steps or turns!

You know how to do ALL the new line dances; not just the Booticall

Your non-dance friends keep hoping that you'll come to your senses so they can see you in person again!

You choose whether you'll date a person again on how well they can hand dance!

Your spouse wonders why you must have a suspended wood dance floor in your basement.

Your friends no longer bother to ask you what you're doing on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.nights.

You sweat through your dance partner's shirt.

You don't need a sweater at The Eclipse, Chateau or Trade Winds in January.

Your non-dancing friends (all two of them) start to refer to you as "obsessed"

Your dancing friends refer to you as "blessed"

You tell those two non-dancing friends NOT to come visit you any weekend a big hand dance event is on because you know they won't want to go and you'll either go and feel guilty, or miss it and MISS IT!!!

You drink more than your own weight in water every day.

You make people gasp when you dance.

You make people laugh when you dance.

You were simply too busy dancing to have that affair with the President.

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D.C. Swing
DC Hand Dancing? You could think of it as West Coast Swing except that there are no 8-count moves and the woman does not move in a slot. Instead she moves in a counterclockwise circle (a circular slot?) around the man who scarcely travels from the spot where he starts. Normally he does his footwork in one place slowly turning to stay facing the woman as she circles around him. Actually, the woman does sometimes move in a normal slot because a West Coast Swing Push Break is one of the basic steps. You do a lot of pushes. To move from doing pushes to a closed position, you do a figure that starts off like a whip right - after walk walk (1,2) the woman has made a half turn right and the man has his right arm on her back - but then on counts 4-6 she moves back to the end of the slot from where she started the figure, turning 1/2 left with the man following - an exception to his not travelling - to maintain the closed position. From there the woman could start circling left, doing a tuck or just about any pass left figure from West Coast Swing. Going around in a circle most of these figures can end in closed or open position with just slight adjustments.

Ok, that's what I got from the workshop taught by Bonnie Richardson, who teaches from her house in a Maryland suburbs of Washington. When I look at a tape of a demo given at the Virginia State Swing Championships in 1992, by Mike Ramey, I don't see much of this circling. Instead I see many variations of the push with a few pass-rights and a lot of smooth footwork that reminds me of Carolina Shag. Mike Ramey teaches at Teddy's, in the Ramada Inn in Fallls Church, Virginia Wednesday nights from 7:30 to 8:30.

D.C. Hand Dancing is a variant of WCS. While it maintains the basic 6 & 8 count patterns of WCS, it allows the man to break the slot and reestablish it in another direction to provide flexibility on a crouded dance floor. Also, it is a man's dance, in that the man is the one who does most of the playing vs the woman. The dance can be done anywhere WCS is done because it uses basically the same music (Blues/R&B).

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random unattributed Usenet source said:

D.C. Hand Dancing is a variant of WCS. While it maintains the basic 6 & 8 count patterns of WCS, it allows the man to break the slot and reestablish it in another direction to provide flexibility on a crouded dance floor.

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