Why are WCS dancers so limited?

[Jon Brett]

A lot of Cerocers try West Coast Swing classes. Recently the numers are increasing.

Admitedly I only met WCS about 5 or 6 years ago, but even in that short time it's changed. Nowadays, WCS dancers seem to need a modern, slow R&B tune. These tunes are often not Cerocable, leaving me with a dilemma.

Is this because most of the WCS teachers use these tunes giving people the impression that WCS can't be danced to anything else? or is that WCS can't be danced to anything else or is it just that the our UK WCS dancers are limited and can't dance to anything else?

Cerocers will dance to anything as long as it's not too slow but they want fast records too. This implies that Ceroc is the most versatile form of dance.

Finally, a lot of dancers who take up WCS leave their Ceroc behind, reducing the number of tracks they can dance to and can make them seem a cliquey (sp?) bunch.

What are your thoughts?

[ChrisA]

Nowadays, WCS dancers seem to need a modern, slow R&B tune. These tunes are often not Cerocable, leaving me with a dilemma.

I think the key is slow, not R&B.

Though watching some of the WCS comp videos it seems that the good WCS dancers can dance to faster music. Whereas as a WCS beginner, I would struggle dancing WCS to what would normally be in the average Ceroc bpm range.

Similarly, it seems, anecdotally at least, that to dance MJ well to slow music is harder than in the 125-140 range. Whether this is because it's intrinsically harder to dance slowly, or because slower music tends to be more interpretable and people find that hard, I'm not sure.

So maybe when the jivers and coasters get better, they'll all meet in the middle, and be able to dance to a more similar speed range.

I don't think many people at Hipsters struggle with slow music, though, do they? Now that the Lindy lot are a bit thinner on the ground :whistle:

So I still think that at that particular venue, a 110-130 average would be better than 120-140+ average, since it comes closer to meeting the needs of the people that go for both WCS and jive.

It's nice to have something upbeat, even thumpy, occasionally, to give a little contrast. I've found that I only hate the thumpy stuff if it's lots of them in a row. Not that you play much thumpy, at Hipsters, these days JB, so a big thank you for that :cheers:

[Sheepman]

I think a fair amount may be down to the type and complexity of moves that are taught. I will happily do a wcs dance at around 140 bpm, but what I'm doing is then very basic and simple. (I was recently "challenged" to try wcs at 200 bpm, that didn't last very long!)
I find the moves take a long time to assimilate and practice, particularly if there is syncopated footwork, or something that is out of the ordinary, and it isn't good enough for the guy to be just doing the moves, the leading is essential if the follower is to stand a chance, I think that it just doesn't work in wcs if the follower is having to anticipate. After a lesson I often find myself saying "no, I can't try that move, the music is too fast." I might be able to build up to a reasonable speed with that move, but only after I've got it mastered.
There is also plenty of body styling that goes into the dance (well maybe not in my case! :tears: ) and this is more effective at the lower speeds.
For the lessons most of the music I play is in the 90 - 100 bpm range, maybe up to 110, but also down to 85 occasionally. The slower music is likely to be played in the intermediate lesson, rather than the beginners, because obviously the moves are more complex, and the intermediates should not be having a problem with picking up the rhythm. In order to practice many of the moves I need something around the 100 bpm mark, certainly no higher than 110. During the evening I will play tracks up to the mid 130s, but there won't be many around that speed.
But there are dozens of tracks in the 110 - to low 120s bpm range that should be fine for wcs and jive, just that the westies may need some slower stuff to get "warmed up."

And talking of warming up, I nearly always find myself west coasting for my first couple of dances in the evening, it can be far less stressful on arms and shoulders.

Greg

[Rhythm King]

WCS started pretty much as an off-shoot of Lindy and was originally danced to faster music. It is a modern change to slow things down, to allow more time for interpretation to the dancers.

I think the thing with learning it, is that there is a heck of a lot to take in and perform on the dance floor, ranging from the footwork, to the moves themselves and the very precise leading and following (tension, compression, leverage, elasticity and so forth) that our poor addled little brains, well my poor addled little brain, can't cope with it all yet, especially if the music speeds up. Watch the likes of Catriona and Lee :worthy: , or Paul and Sally :worthy: and they make it look so easy. Give us poor clodhoppers a little more time and hopefully we'll get there eventually.

Meanwhile I agree with Chris, that the speeds will converge as the standards improve and that the pure Lindy crowd are less in evidence. But it's nice to have a varied balance of different and challenging stuff, along with some of the classics, and that's what you tend to give us :clap: :clap: :clap:

R-K

[David Franklin]

Admitedly I only met WCS about 5 or 6 years ago, but even in that short time it's changed. Nowadays, WCS dancers seem to need a modern, slow R&B tune. These tunes are often not Cerocable, leaving me with a dilemma.Agreed with others that slow is probably the operative word. Don't forget that there are still very few WCS dancers past the beginner/improver stage in the UK.
Is {it} that WCS can't be danced to anything else or is it just that the our UK WCS dancers are limited and can't dance to anything else?WCS has a lot of Lindy roots, and if you look back 20 years, people were doing WCS routines @ 200+ bpm! It's definitely moved towards much slower music now, but Kyle and Sarah used a version of Johnny B Goode at >160bpm in 2002.
Cerocers will dance to anything as long as it's not too slow but they want fast records too. This implies that Ceroc is the most versatile form of dance.I've seen Lindy dancers do both well over 200 bpm and well under 100bpm; I can't think of any pure Cerocers who could come close to that range. (And I'm not biased - I don't actually like Lindy!).
Finally, a lot of dancers who take up WCS leave their Ceroc behind, reducing the number of tracks they can dance to and can make them seem a cliquey (sp?) bunch.I haven't really seen that; but I suspect a lot of them are trying to work on their WCS when they get a chance, rather than "leaving Ceroc behind". I do think it's surprisingly hard to "chop and change" between the two styles unless you're an expert, so people might tend to stick to WCS on a WCS class night.

Dave

[Andreas]

Similarly, it seems, anecdotally at least, that to dance MJ well to slow music is harder than in the 125-140 range. Whether this is because it's intrinsically harder to dance slowly, or because slower music tends to be more interpretable and people find that hard, I'm not sure.


I have had this discussion in the setup process of this years NZ Ceroc champs. It was exactly my point that it is so much harder to dance to slow music than to fast, yet the advanced section has slow music around 120bpm, which is the easiest speed of all. But unfortunately the person in charge was unable to comprehend the issue. Hence we will see continued focus on technique over music :tears:

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But to stick with the topic, WCS to slow music looks really impressive because it allows to use all the playfulness (?) in the world, particularly with footwork.

Having said that, you can always through footwork into your MJ ;)

[drathzel]

I am a recent newbie to WCS but i have encountered many different styles and speeds of tracks to swing too. I have never had a problem wc dancing at a ceroc venue and visa versa. Maybe you are just going to the wrong classes? :D

[bigdjiver]

I posted an MJ playlist on an American forum some time ago and asked which tracks would be suitable for WCS, the answer was pretty much all of them. The MJ venues I frequent have moved more towards Latin rhythms since then.

[Dance Demon]

I used to go to WCS lessons a couple of years ago with Graham fox & Dianne Isherwood, from Glasgow. They used to teach to a lot of the music from the "Swingin' The Blues" CDs.....tracks like Big & Hot, Roadrunner etc.....However at any WCS classes that I've attended recently, the music is considerably slower. It seems stuff like Fire, and R Kelly's Happy People are the sort of thing that WCSwingers are looking for now. Must admit, I think it looks really sexy when danced to the slower stuff, but I still like to see it danced to more up tempo stuff too. Re RnB, I don't like dancing to it( unless it's the real 50s RnB :wink: ), and a lot of MJers find it hard to dance to, but WCS does seem to lend itself to it quite well. If I was DJing a MJ night and people who were obvious WCSers were asking for RnB, I would be reluctant to play too much of it, as it would probably upset a lot of the punters, however if it was a WCS night, then I would oblige.

[Katie]

I do think it's surprisingly hard to "chop and change" between the two styles unless you're an expert, so people might tend to stick to WCS on a WCS class night.
Dave

For me personally, I love to "chop and change" between MJ/WCS- adds more variety to a dance night. Especially at the end of the night when i'm feeling tired I like to west coast to wind down. I am far from an expert but perhaps it is more difficult fo the men to chop and change because they have to do all the thinking. What I struggle with is when MJ and WCS is mixed in the same dance! Very challenging though!

[Brady]

WCS can be danced to a wide range of music and in fact the list for WCS is surely broader than that of modern jive. As DavidF said, if you watch the established dancers, they can dance to the full range of tempos. Modern jive is a basic dance with no set footwork and little body styling as part of the standard moves. WCS on the other hand has footwork and loads of body styling which take time to learn and perfect as Sheepy mentioned. Since WCS is reasonably new in the UK, one could only expect the WCS crowd to be asking for slower tracks (<120 bpm) until the standard goes up. I have been to many MJ nights and had plenty of great tracks to dance WCS to. At our WCS night in Edinburgh we play a variety of music including some commonly heard tunes from MJ. WCS is simply a new challenge for the proficient MJ dancers and as more of the MJ dancers move to WCS, music will need to be played for them to keep them coming to MJ nights. Who knows, if WCS continues on the rise, it has potential to take over the MJ scene (as is the case in the US where MJ can't survive) and then we'll have no choice but to play what the WCS crowd want!

[David Franklin]

For me personally, I love to "chop and change" between MJ/WCS- adds more variety to a dance night. Especially at the end of the night when i'm feeling tired I like to west coast to wind down. I am far from an expert but perhaps it is more difficult fo the men to chop and change because they have to do all the thinking. What I struggle with is when MJ and WCS is mixed in the same dance! Very challenging though!I'm brave enough to admit that if I've been dancing MJ, and try to WCS to MJ-ish music, I struggle just to keep the timing straight. If I've just danced with a very 'bouncy' MJ dancer, getting the smooth motion back can take a bit as well. Clearly I need to work a lot more on my WCS... :tears: (And with SNS on Tuesdays, I'm not getting any practice in, either).

Dave

[bigdjiver]

WCS can be danced to a wide range of music and in fact the list for WCS is surely broader than that of modern jive. Please give us some examples of tracks that are OK for WCS, but not for MJ.


Who knows, if WCS continues on the rise, it has potential to take over the MJ scene (as is the case in the US where MJ can't survive) and then we'll have no choice but to play what the WCS crowd want!I suspect that MJ has not worked in the States because it has not been done properly, and in the right places. I keep warning against changing the successful formula, and, from what I can gather, that is what the Americans have done. WCS, Lindy and Salsa are all more dancers dances, whereas MJ is more a peoples dance. The power of MJ lies in its easy entry, and its sponge like capacity to absorb. Bits of all of those and other dances are being melded into MJ. I see them all rising in popularity, but MJ rising faster.

[David Franklin]

Please give us some examples of tracks that are OK for WCS, but not for MJ.The most obvious one that comes to mind is Chains (Tina Arena, 92bpm). Technically you could MJ to it, but I think you'd have to be very good for it not to look and feel like dancing in molasses. It's a very natural WCS even (or especially) for beginners, and Robert/Deborah won the US Open with a routine to it in 1999.

To be fair, I suspect there aren't many WCS dancers who'd be happy with a 155 bpm track, which is still comfortable for MJ.

[bigdjiver]

Please give us some examples of tracks that are OK for WCS, but not for MJ.
The most obvious one that comes to mind is Chains (Tina Arena, 92bpm)....Not a track I knew. Thanks to the wonders of the web search I know it now. Thanks for that.

My mouth is watering thinking of the choreography and the ladies that I would like to do a showcase routine to that track with. Alas, a dancers mind and a dancers body don't always come together. :tears:

I agree, not a Ceroc track. However:

Ceroc + some blues experience = Magic

(and I would call it MJ).

[Sheepman]

I am far from an expert but perhaps it is more difficult for the men to chop and change because they have to do all the thinking. What I struggle with is when MJ and WCS is mixed in the same dance! Very challenging though! Maybe you're not an expert westie (that makes 2 of us) but definitely expert on following, I can't say I've noticed you struggling when mixing wcs and MJ in the same dance! :worthy:
I think that after years of MJ, with little footwork to learn, there is just so much effort that goes into thinking about the wcs footwork, so leading often comes a poor second, and moves much further down the list.

One thing I have found recently, especially to certain tracks, that just have that wcs feel, (and they tend to be around the 120bpm mark) is that I will start with MJ, and say that I'm jiving to this track, but then I find myself automatically going into wcs without thinking. It has taken several years practicing wcs for me, before I could do this without consciosuly thinking about the basic footwork, I wonder how many more years before I can get past the beginner stage? :tears:

Greg

[Commis Chef]

Steve ? from the USA who taught WCS at Bognor recently was an excellent teacher but he killed the swing room 10 pm on the Saturday night by playing slow WCS music which was all much the same BPM and to my uneducated ear each track also sounded very similar. The very few proficient WCS dancers stayed for a while but there were only three or four couples.

Those of us who are newbies gave it a try for an occasional track but could not retreat to our comfort zone at all for 2 hours.

The rest of the MJ dancers decided to go to bed because they could not transfer their dancing to the music and the atmosphere IMHO felt flat. The following set was much more up tempo but no one had stayed to hear it.

I have seen inspiring WCS performed to jiveable faster tracks. There should be a range within any style surely?

[Zebra Woman]

Steve ? from the USA who taught WCS at Bognor recently was an excellent teacher but he killed the swing room 10 pm on the Saturday night by playing slow WCS music which was all much the same BPM and to my uneducated ear each track also sounded very similar. The very few proficient WCS dancers stayed for a while but there were only three or four couples.


Yes I didn't like that American R&B at all and found it nearly impossible to dance to it. Steve had the prime slot on Fri, Sat and Sun so the room was killed each night at the peak time. Bob Gadget and the other DJ's were playing a mix of music that was inspiring and useable for both MJ Blues and WCS, but by the time they were on the room was nearly empty. I think there were many problems with that blues room lighting,floor surface,acoustics, not to mention the trip outdoors in wind and rain plus 2 flights of stairs to get to it!! Anyway , it wasn't a fair test of WCS music vs MJ music IMO.

At the slow end of the MJ music I think there are lots of tracks which are WCS-able. I am very much a beginner and I'm no DJ either but I'm happy to start a thread and list the MJ tracks which I would like to hear so that I can attempt to dance beginners WCS to...... :blush: .

Have to admit I even like dancing WCS to slow latin music :blush:, maybe I shouldn't but if there's no one up for a cha cha then I will. I don't like samey modern R&B very much although I am open to persuasion. I would just want slower music (110 -130bpm) not necessarily R&B at all.

IMO slower music isn't as unpopular as you might think with MJers, so long as it's broken up with some medium and fast. My friends who don't do WCS all prefer slower music.

I for one have enjoyed the music at Hipsters in the last month because there have been more slow tracks, especially this Tuesday. Thanks Jon. :clap:

That said, even with the slower music I seem to freestyle only one or two WCS dances per night which is terrible :really: , but I'm working on it.....I seem to find myself not with a WCS dancer when the WCSable tracks that I can manage are played.

ZW :flower:

[Katie]

It has taken several years practicing wcs for me, before I could do this without consciosuly thinking about the basic footwork, I wonder how many more years before I can get past the beginner stage? :tears:
Greg

Sheepy, you are far from being a beginner at WCS! You are lovely to dance with! :hug:
:rolleyes: I'll stop being luvvie now.

[Lindsay]

WCS, Lindy and Salsa are all more dancers dances, whereas MJ is more a peoples dance.
Which is why none of them should be seen as a threat to MJ scene but rather a nice digression for people who want a taste of something different. Was at Glasgow party last night, and a group of us were doing WCS to about 40% of CJs set... And we ceroc-ed to the rest (apart from the 10% hard rock :rolleyes: ). On Friday we had >200 of which approx. 50% were modern jive, 10% WCS, and the rest Lindy/Glasgow Jive/Ballroom. We all danced to different stuff, sometimes we danced to the same tracks, but there was a real mutual respect for each others' style. WCS is extremely versatile, but like most 'dancers dances' it cannot be danced to anything... isn't that its strength?

[Dance Demon]

WCS is extremely versatile, but like most 'dancers dances' it cannot be danced to anything... isn't that its strength?

Yes I think you are right lindsay. Really enjoyed the workshop taught by you and Brady yesterday. Some lovely moves that add a smooth sexy edge to dancing. I think the thing I notice as a DJ is that when there are WCS dancers at a venue, it broadens the range of music that i can play. I know in a previous post that I had said I would be reluctant to play RnB at a MJ night, but I have noticed recently that other DJs are playing RnB and the punters are dancing to it. However i now treat it like other genres of music, e.g. some people like swing, while others don't, the same applies to latin, but if you play a good mix that includes a bit of everything, then everyone will be happy some of the time, which is as much as a DJ can hope for.

[Dreadful Scathe]

crap dancers are limited no matter what style they do.



does that answer the question ? :)

[Lindsay]

Thanks DD - we really enjoyed the workshop, busier than expected and Brady & I managed to pack in as much as we could without going overboard. Received v nice feedback- thanks to all who came along! :D
Your music at night was excellent, nice blend as usual, something to please everyone- including the Lindy dancers from Newcastle and London that were up for the event. :flower:

[Lindsay]

crap dancers are limited no matter what style they do.

that's true



does that answer the question ? :)

what was the question?

[Dreadful Scathe]

what was the question?

The question this thread is about - Why are WCS dancers so limited?.

Maybe he meant "Why are WCS dancers so thick?" he didnt say what the limiting factor was. So, everyone...are WCS dancers 2 sandwiches and a 6 pack short of a picnic ? 3 bricks and a roof short of a house ?

we should be told :)

i might add at this point that ive never met a thick WCS dancer but have met plenty jivers of dubious intellect. Hmm i could be the founding member of that club :)

[David Bailey]

Hmm i could be the founding member of that club :)
JODI - it's got potential, if only we could think of a good E word we'd be sorted...

[El Salsero Gringo]

JODI - it's got potential, if only we could think of a good E word we'd be sorted...At least it would give you something constructive to worry about, now that you're not involved with the MJTL.

[David Bailey]

At least it would give you something constructive to worry about, now that you're not involved with the MJTL.
I know, it's a big void in my life... :tears: