The Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company

Congratulations on completing your first ballroom class at Claremont! On Wednesday we learned the basics of blues dancing to provide you with some fundamentals, and I wanted to provide some videos to give you a better idea of what blues dancing looks like. Here are a few:

Mirabai is a wonderful follow from Argentina who travels all of the world blues dancing. Mihai is primarily a blues instructor based out the bay area, and he also does a fair bit of Argentine and Argentine/Blues fusion. I don't actually know that much about Stryder, but his styling is very influenced by West Coast Swing.

Styder sent me the following email, and my response is following it:

Hello, this is Stryder. Just wanted to clarify some information on your "Blues Dance Review" article. Mihai is actually dancing primarily Tango, with a smattering of Blues thrown in, but not much. Fusion isn't actually being done, he's switching back and forth between his blues and tango. His intent was to demonstrate more Tango than Blues. What I danced was more akin to Blues and what it would look like. And I can understand where you see the WC influence, but while I am trained and studied in American Smooth and Rhythm, I primarily dance Lindy Hop and Blues. I West Coast more for the hell of it, and truth be told, fake it. :-D I've worked briefly with Jesse Dickson, but never with any intensity.

Stryder

As far as Mihai's demo goes, I agree that most of the choreography comes from Argentine, but his rhythmic interpretation, posture, and styling are not based in argentine style. You could attribute a number of these to blues exposure, or social dance in general, but I definitely think that there are some significant blues influences in his performance.

In regards to my comment about your dancing, I perhaps mistakenly made the assumption that the lindy/ballroom training was taken for granted (being a ballroom/lindy dancer myself). I made the comment about West Coast out of the way you take some of your steps and lead some of your body movements with your elbows, both stylings that have become the paradigm for modern WCS dancing especially with leads such as Benji and Pete Green.

I believe the lead in this video is Sean, a dj from DC who now is based out of LA (he DJed the last set at Friday night blues on Friday). A very subtle and introverted style.

That's all for now folks; tomorrow we start cha cha!