Swing Dancing: Jedi Jack and Jill...

[thorfinn]

I don't normally do linkspam here, but this is worth posting. :-)

One of my regular swing dancing venues held a Jedi Jack and Jill swing dancing competition last night, starring a number of the local teachers. For those not in the know, a Jack and Jill competition is where you line up and have randomly selected partners... Then you have to swing dance to whatever music is played, making the whole dance up as you go. A true test of the madness that is swing dancing, essentially.

Jedi Jack and Jill, well, all competitors are blindfolded, then away you go...

Video of the final two songs with the final two couples are here:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibvxxzyc-bY
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=704YXuaVKpw

I'm occasionally in shot clapping like a mad thing in the background, sometimes hidden by another audient, but if you can tear your eyes away from the potential death action to spot me, I'll be impressed. :-)

Comments

[inspiral_rose]

That is completely fucking INSANE and AWESOME and MIND-BLOWING and I love it.

Wow.

Talk about being in touch with each others' cues. I love how often one of the couples actually lets go hands and manages to find each other again!

[thorfinn]

Yeah, now you know why I <3 swing dancing so much. Pure kinaesthetic communication at the core of it. I usually keep my eyes open (it does help a lot), but can certainly dance blind, including letting go and catching again. :-) I'm not anywhere near as skilled as the peeps in the video, though!

[lnr]

Brilliant! Who won? I was rather impressed by the jumps/lifts of the couple with the man in red sleeves and the woman all in black.

[thorfinn]

Yeah, they won. :-)

[foxfirefey]

Ooooh. I'm learning to swing dance, but I would be so scared of crashing into people if I was blindfolded!

[thorfinn]

Oh, they were pretty scared of crashing into people too. :-) Plenty of crowd noise helped...

[jeshyr]

Wow, truly awesome!!

I'm wondering how much knowledge these people had of each other - if they're all the local teachers they probably have danced together at least a few times and would know each other's typical styles and abilities, yes?

Either way, it was amazing. And I managed to spot you once but was mostly riveted to the action :)

[thorfinn]

As discussed in person - yeah, they were all pretty familiar with each other's dancing, that is for sure...

But, they could equally well have been partnered up with, say, a bunch of equally skilled dancers from another swing dancing scene, and done just as well.

The skill is in the clarity and consistency of the physical communication that's going on, and that's not so much dependent on the individual, but more about the physics and mechanics of how human bodies work and the general principles of the partner dance. :-)

Eyes open helps a lot, obviously, but the thing with swing is that the core of the dance is all about the bodies in motion.

[jeshyr]

... so swing dancing is a lot like Tai Chi? Why am I not surprised, knowing you :)

[thorfinn]

Heh, it is, except where it's not. :-)

The core skills are similar, but the application is completely upside down, essentially.

[jeshyr]

Yeah, I didn't mean the application so much but the bits at the utter middle of it.