As far as I know its still the Mecca for all Blues lovers .... where all the Blues instructors go to recharge their batteries and get new (old?) ideas. Diary permitting, I hope to be at the 2010 event
I just done a search on here to see if anyone was talking about Swinging the Blues 2010, - this thread is all I could find, - I was about to ask if it's any good / worth going to.. - but looks like I might not get much of a response...?
I've moved it to a new thread now - DavidY
Last edited by DavidY; 26th-November-2009 at 02:44 PM.
As far as I know its still the Mecca for all Blues lovers .... where all the Blues instructors go to recharge their batteries and get new (old?) ideas. Diary permitting, I hope to be at the 2010 event
Okay i'm sold - just booked my tickets... - £35 for a full day of classes and evening freestyle seems pretty reasonable
Oops. Just had a look at the page for it on the Ceroc site. I do not think that the link from Rocky's photo is going where they would want it to go....
(maybe they should have tried .co.uk instead of .com)
Last edited by straycat; 26th-November-2009 at 02:31 PM.
I do know what you mean. When I first saw some of the more extreme stuff, I was amazed by the technique and skill involved, and very much put off by the appearence of it. Now though - frighteningly enough - the more I do of it, the more I like it. The problem for me is that most of the MJ blues dance that I've seen in recent years has been very much move-based, whereas the 'pure' blues movement comes at things from a totally connection-based viewpoint.
Now it could be that time (and, perhaps, other factors) have put rose-tinted specs on my view of my first ever (N&N, circa 1998-ish) blues workshops, but I distantly remember blues being portrayed as more of a philosophy than a dance, with no real defined moves - rather as being more of a pure improvisational system. Most blues workshops I've seen in recent years on the MJ side - well - to me, more often than not, they have nothing of the qualities that (I believe) first drew me to the dance.
So have those initial teachings and philosophies, already adapted somewhat for the MJ market, been slowly turning further and further from blues, and more and more into standard MJ? Anyone?
I'm still not getting exactly what makes "blues" a dance in it's own right. A dance requires definition and there's no reason why that dance can't have one part of it's definition defined by the style of music. But you still need to define what you actually do to that music - so, what is it? What do you do? Blues music has a structure that can be fairly well defined by musicians which means you should be able to define how you and your partner move to that structured music. Anyone?
Anyone at all?
I don't think you're alone on that one. Which, I imagine, is why there are so many different definitions of blues dance, so many different types. Even the name is something of a misnomer, given the variety of music styles that are popular in blues dance. The closest I can get to my own take on it is to give the standard spiel about (generally) expressive dancing to slow, intense music, very deep and strong connection, and very grounded and centered movements. Some definitions will bring in the way you use the pulse of the music, and the way it drives the dance - certainly this is central to a lot of blues teaching.
On a slight side-note, I recently came across this article which might be of interest. Apologies if it's been linked to on here before.
There's an interesting thread about "What is the Blues?" on the Southern Jive Forum. Check it out here
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