The Dance Scene in my Head

For me, dancing has been a true source of joy.  For three minutes at a time I get to be someone other than the shy fat girl. For three minutes at a time I get to be beautiful, awesome and joyful.  This is the experience that makes me recommend swing dancing to other people.  The joy of dancing is what makes me go out dancing even when I am physically or emotionally exhausted.  The local scene feels like home to me.  It saddens me to find out that this too is part of my personal privilege.

The privilege of being young, female, christian, relatively hetero-conformative and neurotypical.

That last point is the current impetus of this blog post.  Although, the pair of young men that used to come out and dance primarily with each other?  I haven't seen them in awhile either.  Apparently, if one repeatedly demands that their right to not have a seizure at a dance be respected it gets you banned from the dance.  Because after a year or two, it is still too hard to enforce a ban on flash photography that might kill a dancer.

At first, this revelation made me angry but that reaction is quickly giving way to sadness.  Not just because for the foreseeable future, I won't be able to dance with my friend but because this means that the dance community isn't what I thought it was.  Or maybe it just isn't what I wanted it to be.

The Dance Scene in my Head is:

• Welcoming to Everyone 
• A Safe Place for Creative Expression
• Accepting
• Fun
• Enthusiastic
• Eager to Learn from Each Other
• Willing to Teach
• Sharing the Joy of Dance

This is what I want to see from the local dance scene.  It isn't there now and I don't see it moving that direction either.  That makes me sad and disappointed. To know that the things that make dance special to me aren't being offered to everyone is a terrible thing.  I know it will make me more hesitant to recommend going dancing.  And that makes me sad too.

Uninspired: Technique versus Style

I'm beginning to wonder if my lack of inspiration isn't coming from the dance itself but rather how I do the dance.  I've spent three years working on technique and how to make the dance comfortable both as a lead and as a follow.  This makes for a technically decent swing out but it lacks some of the style and flair of the dancers that draw my eye on the dance floor.

The dancers that I tend to watch are the one that are not just doing the steps of lindy hop but are also dancing.  These are the dancers having the most fun: their swing outs rarely look the same twice in a row and there is a true sense of interplay and communication between the dancers and the music.  My favorite partners to dance with are the leads that inspire that sense of creative play and give me the space to dance.

Obviously that gives me two options: 1) Dance more with those leads and 2) learn to recreate that feeling myself independent of who my partner is.  Clearly, option 2 is the ideal choice but that seems to be easier said than done.

Goals that I am setting for myself for the next few weeks:

1. Dance to live music more often
2. Only sit out one song at a time
• Dance with everyone: Leads, Follows and Beginners
• Resting drinking water, and listening to the music are fine but sitting out all night is not
3. Practice solo dancing both on the dance floor and at home

Uninspired: Excuses

This January marks the third anniversary of when I started going out swing dancing socially.  I seem to have found myself in a bit of a slump.  I no longer feel inspired when I go out dancing.  I often leave the house all excited and geared up to dance every song.  Then I get to the dance and ... I sit.  I dance a few songs and then I sit and watch.  I often find myself critiquing the music selection, but when a song I enjoy comes on I only look around for a partner half-heartedly and then go on sitting and watching.

Where has my inspiration gone?

I've traded pure enthusiasm for excuses:

• The music sucks
• There isn't anyone I want to ask to dance
• I'm feeling too shy to ask anyone to dance
• I'm not feeling inspired
• The floor is too crowded
• The floor is too sticky
• I love watching so-and-so dance

I sometimes wonder if I am growing burned out or tired of lindy hop, but then I realize how much I still crave swinging out.

How do I get my inspiration to dance back?  Is this something that means I should take a break and step away from Lindy Hop and dancing for awhile? Should I try another style of dance for a while?  Or should I just push through and keep swinging out?

This is probably going to end up as a series of blog posts as I examine where this lack of inspiration is coming from and how I personally deal with being an uninspired dancer.