I returned last night to the swing scene after more than three months’ absence (I’m not counting the lovely evening I had at the Supper Club with the Squirrel Nut Zippers and the cute Canadian grad student). The venue was St. Jean Baptiste’s Church at 76th and Lexington, not a bad scene all told. The Delegates were playing. They’ve grown more confident since the last time I saw them at Windows on the World, though they still tend towards the slow stuff. My shoes had somehow lost the patina of grit I worked up dancing at Central Park over the summer, so I was wobbling through turns like a floor-mounted punching bag, but a few of the leaders didn’t treat the swingout like I was a slingshot, so I survived. I had a very long conversation with a very nice vegetarian uptown native who seemed to be an interesting person as well as a good leader, a rare combination! except of course among Pasadena Ballroom-trained Caltech students. ;)
Also of note was a prim, pale, balding man who at first seemed to be another average Joe with a few Sandra Cameron lessons in his recent past… He eventually moved on to a more imaginative routine, and proved to be so slick and so precise that I knew he was from out of town. When he spoke up he had an accent. I eventually inferred that he was from Sweden, where they Lindy like maniacs and hold some of the best competitions in the world. He told me that in Sweden, swing has been a fad since the 1970s. It probably was the impetus for the rebirth of swing in California six years ago.
That’s a little embarassing. So much for the staying power of the American cultural attention, right? Can you think of any craze which has lasted over a year here? Sure, music and clothes get revived, but not without being forgotten, shunned, or regarded with heated embarassment for a decade. Swing, too, is fading. Clubs close because swingers don’t drink alcohol. Among the younger set only the die hards keep coming back, and besides them there are only the old batchelors looking for a cheap grind. I miss the days when I’d visit a small town and find eager, sweaty high school boys in fedoras scheming to get fake IDs just so they could drive hours to a joint where they could practice their aerials and drink water.
This time I am not going to blame it entirely on MTV. I pin the rap for the destruction of swing, at least in New York, on the Sandra Cameron Dance Studio and its cadre of painstakingly trained yuppie drones. You can tell when you’re at a dance lousy with Sandra Cameronites. At first you have the pleasant impression that you’ve found a cache of really good dancers. Then you sit out a dance, Lady Day sings out a stop-and-go scat, and a thrill goes up your spine as you watch every couple on the floor pull into alignment and do the exact same pose on the swingout. This is not a pleasant sensation like listening a toddler sing to herself. It’s the oh-good, I’m-not-going-to-get-mugged-here kind of feeling you get when you wander into a gated community.
Swing, for me, is about big, messy exuberance which must be intuited, not taught. If Sandra Cameron students are going to be the last ones on the floor I’ll start haunting tango halls instead. I will join the starved old women in their stiletto heels and gypsy skirts and never look back.
* * * * *
I was going to write more tonight, because I had an interesting week last week, but I wiped out that last bit accidentally the first time around and had to rewrite it completely. No more composing in Blogger for me! eesh. And now it’s time for bed. further bulletins as events warrant.
Post a Comment