I have been out swinging the past two nights, as has much of New York — it is Dawn Hampton’s birthday, and there’s been four days of swing at various venues around the city. Everyone goes, because everyone knows Dawn. She’s one of these fixtures (that word is wrong — you’ve never seen a woman of her years with more style) like Frankie Manning who’s partly responsible for the vitality of the local scene.
But the vitality of the local scene… Well, I made it out to Irving Plaza tonight, but just barely. I used to think I could dance every night of the week, but somehow the 92nd St. Y last night seemed like enough.
You take lessons for years; you get the right shoes; you learn how to handle yourself in relationships, get into a few, fall out of a few; you come to realize your body is actually appealing to the opposite sex for the same reasons that your pre-pubescent female classmates mocked you — all this, and still there’s an overwhelming anxiety about not being liked when you first hit the dance floor. I held this romantic notion when I started dancing that guys would ask me, once I knew how. Every night was a re-enactment of junior-high dances, sweaty palms and all. At the same time I fumed about the continuing inflexibility of gender roles in social dance.
In the end it works out that you ask a few guys, and once other ones see you’re not a klutz, they’ll ask you. For the first set, though, I stood on the sidelines waiting, feeling more paranoid with every guy who passed me and didn’t say anything. I always wonder if just in the way I stand, in the slouch I forget to correct or the way I hold my arms, I am sending off some vibe that tells them I am a loner or a tomboy or a harridan. I fiddled with the hem of my dress, feeling conspicuous. In my enthusiasm to be out dancing again I’d forgotten yet again that showing up in vintage drag in New York is frowned upon. Conspicuous also because I was wearing makeup, for a change. The gooeyness of it, its tendency to melt and run all over the place, kept all my sensation focused on my face.
Once I start dancing, mercifully, I forget all this. Adrenaline is my only liquor. It does its job.
Still, I feel the swing scene’s grasp on me loosening a little. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve fallen prey to the charms of Dance Dance Revolution, or whether I feel alienated after being away so long. Getting ready for Irving Plaza, I found myself asking, Why dance? I came up with a couple of answers:
The scene. This ain’t any reason to keep dancing. Pop culture has turned its spotlight elsewhere and the influx of fresh blood has dried up. Old men are still lurking out there waiting to cop a feel; young folks are largely tax accountants, or something equally soul-crushing. (ok, so I do keep managing to meet physicists and engineers and programmers and mathematicians — and the occasional cartoonist — and I do like them fine.) There’s still a paucity of female leaders and male followers. Conversation tends to revolve around dancing. All in all it just don’t nourish the soul.
The music. Yes, and no. I can last through night after night of wheezy Sinatra covers, more than I can say for pop or rock or even punk. But New Yorkers favor slow songs, and I’m going to go someplace where people get jiggier (California here I come, where Balboa’s number one) if that Lindy twist fails to lift my skirt above my knees one more time. There’s a tendency to re-polish old chestnuts, and little exploration of anything new or funky. I count the night I saw the Squirrel Nut Zippers play the Supper Club as one of the best nights in the history of local swing, and fondly remember my Seattle evening with Hot Town Jubilee. I’m a sucker for hot jazz and gut-bucket blues, I guess. I wish there was a scene around it, but I don’t hear anyone else complaining after hearing Stompin’ At The Savoy for the fifty millionth time.
Looking cool. I want so badly to look cool. The swing scene has passed its second American peak, so all cool is relative: the “look” is no longer universally cool, and it certainly isn’t practical (where are your zoot suits now, gentlemen?) All I want now is for my Tacky Annie to stop looking like shit, and to have a better repertoire of shines. I want to cultivate a look of effortlessness.
Meeting a potential mate. A few months ago a friend and I started drifting into each other’s gravitational pulls. One of the reasons he ultimately cited for not committing to a relationship was that he didn’t know how to dance. “You need someone who knows how, and I don’t,” he apologized. Because I meet so few people I’m emotionally and intellectually drawn to on the floor, I hadn’t been counting on it, but I’m starting to think he’s right. It would frustrate me to be involved with someone who didn’t understand the physical partnership of it. Sex feels so uncomplicated by comparison. Dancing with other people would always leave me curious if I had a steady nondancing partner, because in the end, it’s all about…
Pressing yourself up against a complete stranger. The more repressive sects of Christianity were on to something when they preached that dance provokes unclean thoughts. Isn’t it fun, though? When I dance ballroom or tango I end up closing my eyes and devoting all my attention to sensing the weight and velocity of my partner. I swear the other day I could hear this one guy’s skeleton moving. It’s such a profound relief to be so close to someone after days of nothing but electronic contact with other humans. Such a great excuse to get intimate with someone you’ll never see again; it almost substitutes for the kind of questions that the bounds of small talk maddeningly dictate you must never ask a stranger (“So tell me — how do you see your parents’ relationship reflected in your own interaction with other people?” or “Do you think there’s a universal right or wrong?”) Almost.
Cultivating a potential dance partner. What I really want, what I’ve been looking for from the beginning, is a reason to dance every day. The movies made it look so fun to work up a paso doble or foxtrot routine. I want someone to practice with. A whole troupe to work with, maybe. There’s a handful of them in town, but they’re hard to get into. Having a good dance partner would mean more to me right now than having yet another boyfriend.
Getting airborne. Ah, the bottom line. Tonight a particularly smiley gentleman tossed me into the apex of every swingout and reminded me of this. It’s why we choose to Lindy instead of foxtrot. It’s why we suffer sweat and exhaustion. It’s the cheapest way to fly.
For me this is a question like Hamlet’s; perhaps more focused. To move, or not to move? Whether ’tis nobler in the body to enjoy each dance for the maddening closeness, or to partner with one person whose very balance you anticipate, and in their arms to know them. heh.
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