Unworkshop

So a couple of months ago Rob came up with the idea of an unworkshop. I took up the challenge of organising it, and we had the trial run on some willing guinea pigs yesterday (or last week if you’re reading this on Facebook and it’s still failing horribly). It was a pretty epic success, and something we all really want to repeat.

The basic idea was to have an evening when we could get a group of dancers together to work on different concepts and try out different ideas. We hired out the upstairs room of the Union Tavern (home of Club Christine’s and the first night of Soul Sessions), and set about recruiting people. Six people turned up on the night, which was slightly fewer than we’d been hoping for, but turned out to be a great number to start off with. The two main themes of the evening were musicality and steals.

Musicality
We started off talking about what musicality meant to us, then set about first of all dancing to the same track several times over. This gave us the chance to really get to know a song, so we had a better idea of what was coming up and some time to come up with ideas. We then tried dancing to several different versions of the same song (Love Me or Leave Me) to get a feel for just how much can change. We also tried dancing to both relatively plain songs (Sunny Side of the Street) and those with lots to play with (Sixteen Tons).

The main thing most people seemed to get from this was the difference between lead and follow musicality. The leads have the opportunity to make larger changes in terms of what moves you do, whereas the follows provide the polish through things like variations and (one I hadn’t thought about) hand flourishes (one Sarah and Zara came up for the trills in the music). Swivels and switches or Suzi Qs are also pretty useful because, as well as choosing between between them as a way to express musicality, they’re also all open to variation (whether you do switches quickly and smoothly, or down and with a ‘bit of back pocket’).

One point I found really interesting, and hadn’t thought about before, was the potential for musicality in plainer songs. If a song is relatively simple, I’m more likely to use it as a chance to work on technique and keep things quite plain, but a few people saw them as an opportunity to play with flourishes without being forced to hit certain beats or breaks in the music. Taken the other way, songs with more variations and things going on can be seen either as having plenty to play with (my general view), or as limiting you to keeping to their own rhythms and breaks.

Steals
We practiced these in a pretty obvious fashion; we had one couple dancing, and different people kept jumping in (maybe every few bars). Most people pointed out that there are some pretty obvious points to jump in: when there is no or very little connection between the dancers, or when they are at some distance from each other. My favourite steals from this were ones for the follows, but the leads probably had their own opinions. It’s pretty easy to just step into the inside of a swingout at open position, although you do run the risk (as I discovered) of getting your fingers trapped in the middle, and the lead can’t always let go of just one follow. Possibly my favourite was one where, if the follow is doing lots of swivels, you grab their hips from behind and use her own motion to spin them out. For pure determination, Sarah’s choice of just grabbing the lead’s hips and dragging them away from the follow probably wins. We also tried the option of adding yourself onto side-by-side Charleston, although this often turned into can-can attempts, and trying to pass dancers between different Charleston chains.

We then tried a few different hijacks, where the follow changes a single move, but stays following for the rest of the dance. The one that I remember most is where, once a lead has set up a tuck turn, the follow goes rigid, and resists so much that the lead has to spin.

The final thing we tried was a few lead-follow swaps (same two people dancing, but changing who’s leading). The easiest way to do this seemed to be in a right arm to right arm connection, and the follow simply adding in a little more force. For swing outs we came up with two alternatives. The first one was for the follow, when coming in from open position, to duck under the lead’s right arm, turn, and lead the now-follow in. This is fun, but can be a little ungraceful if the lead isn’t much taller than the follow. The other one was for the follow, again coming in from a swing out, to put their arm under the lead’s instead of over, then push the now-follow onto the now-leads left arm, ending up in closed position.

The evening ended with a fair amount of social dancing, with all steals etc. perfectly welcome. I’d made up a playlist of songs I thought had a lot to play with, of varying tempos, which I’ll post at the bottom.

Organisation
Truth be told, it wasn’t difficult at all to organise, although I didn’t like putting the money down for the room before knowing how much of it I’d get back. In the future I’d like to get more people there; I think we could work with maybe 12 comfortably. We kept it as a private event on Facebook this time (hence why this may be the first you’re hearing of it) so we could have some control over numbers and what level they were, but I’d probably do it as an open event next time, although still keeping an eye on numbers. In terms of level, I think that it would work for pretty much anyone above beginner level. The most important thing is to have people who are open to working on concepts rather than moves, are happy to contribute ideas and are willing to try things out which may not work.

In terms of structure, I’d be tempted to try and have a little more structure, as we strayed off topic a few times. On the other hand, adding more structure may prevent people from adding in their own ideas and stop them from being creative (for instance, we may have lost the awesome Charleston arse-nudges). This is probably something everyone who was there needs to give their opinion on this.

Another thing I’d like to try next time is getting people more involved first, by discussing what we want to work on beforehand. This would probably be done on Facebook, or using Rob’s idea of a wiki. I already have ideas for thing to work on next time, but I don’t want to be the one to suggest things each time.
Unworkshop will *definitely* be happening again; I’m thinking about the same time next month. If you were there, then please let me know what you think. If you want to come next time let me know!

Playlist
• Gangbusters – the Cats and the Fiddle
• C Jam Blues – Lincoln Centre Jazz
• Blip Blip – Bill Doggett
• Twenty-Four Robbers – Fats Waller
• Do Your Duty – Blue Room Boys
• Walk ‘Em – Buddy Johnson
• Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho – Sidney Bechet
• Lavender Coffin – Lionel Hampton
• A-Tisket A-Tasket – Too Dumb to Die
• Back Bay Shuffle – Artie Shaw
• Splanky – Count Basie
• Honeysuckle Rose – Ella Fitzgerald
• One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer – Amos Milburn
• Hit the Road Jack! – Ray Charles
• Sixteen Tons – ‘Tennessee’ Ernie Ford
• Death Came a Knockin’ – Ruthie Foster
• Wade in the Water – Eva Cassidy