EPT(I'm posting this because I'm proud of it and want to show it off, but also because it's a great style of dance that I feel people should be aware of. I'm also happy to answer other questions about solo charleston and swing dancing in general.)
Normally, I reserve this blog for academic stuff, when I can be bothered to think of and write any. I don't go out of the way to break free of the stereotype of the PhD student as cloistered nerd, at least on here. But everyone needs an outlet. Most if not all of us here share Starcraft as one, and in some small but significant ways, the story of my first dance competition ties back to that. One of my other outlets is dancing. I enjoy dancing in general, and it's a fun, high-energy activity that I recommend for anyone. (You should have seen how uncoordinated I was when I started swing dancing in May 2009.)
I dance swing, though I'm loath to call myself a swing dancer in the same way that I'm loath to call myself a goth these days. There are people who take it way too seriously and that one thing subsumes their entire identity. I butt heads with dancing purists and I don't want to lump myself in with them. And the idea of dancing as a competition baffles me a bit, too - dancing is performance, dancing is expression, and while you can judge and rank these things, why would you want to? That said, on a practical level, dancers measure themselves against other dancers all the time, copy eachothers' moves, and strive to improve anyway, so what's so out of place about structuring that around a competition, and having a particular goal with a particular timeframe?
But I was resolved to enter this year's Australian Jitterbug Championships months ahead of the event, even if the idea seemed jarring. I wanted to have a concrete goal and something particular about my dancing to improve, and this competition gave me the goal and motivation. The AJC is a mid-sized competition (98 competitors this year) whose prestige varies from year-to-year. In the past, it's been criticized as being a Melbourne circlejerk rather than a truly national competition, and last year there was a furor when international dance teachers were allowed to enter, and won, the rookies event, but this year it was well organized and had good national representation. It had 12 events, ranging from choreographed showcase routines, to lindy hop (mostly this), blues, balboa, jack & jills (in which partnerships are determined randomly), beginner and intermediate events et cetera. I only signed up for one of the twelve, the Solo Charleston competition.
Here's a link to a video of an international Solo Charleston competition that I studied a lot in my training for and leadup to the event, to give you an idea of what that looks like if you haven't seen it performed already:
This dance is fast, is fun, is expressive, and in my opinion, gives dancers the most room to put their personal mark on the dance. You can do that with partnered dancing too, but the dynamics of lead/follow dancing make it really difficult to do that unless the follow is familiar with what the lead is trying to do or the choreography is prepared in advance.
A few things about me and Solo Charleston, before I close with the video of the competition:
I've been going to swing dance classes for just shy of 2 1/2 years, and social dancing for just under 2. In all that time, I have never done a Solo Charleston class, or even seen one offered. It seems to be the sort of dance that you have to teach yourself, or learn independently. You can adapt all sorts of partnered charleston moves into solo dancing, which is how I got started, but that only gets you so far.
In the same way that it's tricky to learn, it's tricky to practice and to prepare for a competition. I'm critical of myself, but not a great judge of dance technique, so practicing alone wasn't an option. What I did was recruit a friend, breakdancer, and fellow TL.net poster (sluggaslamoo) to help me out. We worked on footwork variations that drew on breakdancing toprock, as well as a bit of floorwork that I planned to bust out as a closer. A lot of his comments about general technique were applicable, and where they weren't or where some breaking footwork jarred with the swing stuff, we worked together to adapt it into something that made sense to both of us. We watched videos of other competitions and broke down what made the winners of those competitions successful. We set incremental goals and drilled toward being able to do individual steps with good technique, then to put them together in different combinations so that when the competition rolled around, I could mix and match however I felt like it.
To make a Starcraft analogy, this would be the equivalent of drilling your play by playing games where you focus primarily on always building workers and not getting supply blocked. Then you internalize that and move on to making sure your money stays low, and then you've internalized that and you study replays and add strategy.
And in the same way that that kind of drilling helped my Starcraft, it helped my dancing immensely. To my knowledge, I was the least experienced, scrubbiest dancer going in the Solo Charleston competition. (Just about everyone else was a teacher or an active or former professional troupe dancer) but by the end of it, the work went in and the result came out.
See for yoruself, I'm #71.
I didn't place, but I wasn't out of place in this really strong field either. And when the next competition rolls around, I'll have more control over my nerves, more knowledge, and more ideas and more practice. Damn right, I'm entering.
