It is 2023 April. There are big and small dance events popping up, and people are showing up. No masks. Covid feels like distant past already. Good.
There were a couple of events I went for West Coast Swing (WCS) socials this past April.
One was Tulsa - Auclair Workshop Weekend (4/22). "WCS Workshop Weekend with Matt, Julie, Lily and TRose", organized by Jeanne DeGeyter in Tulsa.
Matt Auclair and his family (Julie, Lily) are based in St Louis. Matt was a child star of WCS of sort, many times US open champion and holding a long career. He is a social dance genius and can always pull off fun-to-watch dances in Jack and Jills. The party attracted good WCS dancers in the area.
Another was Oklahoma Dance Rush (4/26-27). This is a Ballroom and Country Western (and some WCS) event and is "a fully sanctioned UCWDC Country Dance World Championship qualifying event."
This annual event in OKC has been run by Lee and Marcy Herpe, and Mike Shoemake and Beth Emerson. Including the Covid break, it has been quite a while to see them.
WCS has nice and long energy flow that slows and quickens. It is a "swing" dance, after all. The smooth and stretchy energy flow, created with two dancers' bodies, is visible in nicely danced WCS.
You match the energy flow with the music. That is the core of musical interpretation in WCS.
As the energy flow is visualized outwardly and is a large size, WCS is interesting to watch even from a distance. Both of the dancers have to know what they are doing to visualize the flow, though. You may have to experience how fast or slow champion dancers are moving to create the proper flow.
In contrast, you have to go up close to see Kizomba and its nice hip wiggling. A reason they rarely make good stage shows (Good video? yes).
"Modern WCS" became popular in WCS circuit since mid 2010's. It uses more contact points thus allows more variety or modifications in the energy flow and different body configurations.
In addition to hands/fingers, wrists, abdomen, abdominal flanks and shoulders of classical WCS contact points, nape of neck, upper back, upper arm, elbows, legs (thighs) are fair game with modern WCS. The follow can use monkeying energy flow using the lead's arm, if she wants. Styles do evolve.
If you see different dances from the standpoint of visualized energy flow, quite interesting differences among dances emerge.
For example, in social Argentine Tango in close embrace, each dancer holds his/her energy in each body mostly. The flow is visible when it is spilled as embellishments with legs (boleos etc), or when shown as traveling/walking as freight motions or as rotational moves/pivoting.
In contrast to social AT, stage Tango dance needs to expand the energy flow outward to be visible to the audience 30+ feet away. Open embrace, larger motions, dynamic use of legs, counterbalancing, etc, are all stage vocabulary.
Unique to AT is quick body position switch from pivot-based moves. Quick rotational position changes of AT dancers can mesmerize viewers.
WCS and stage salsa have front side and back side for show dances. They don't want to block the view of her movements with his rear. For AT, the "don't-block-the-show-moves rule" is somewhat relaxed. Or, AT tends to be shown in the center of a circle or square. Front side may be hard to determine. They may have to dance all sides as front.
Guess enough essay writing for today. I had good WCS dances in the parties. Thank you partners and lucky me.
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