Swing Dancing and Global Connection: Dance Movement and Life Long Learning

I have written before about the power and significance of dance.

Last weekend I went to the Merimbula Jazz Festival

http://merimbulajazz.asitis.net.au/

Merimbula is a pretty town on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. I had a ball.

Half the music I heard and danced to was Traditional Jazz the balance was Swing. The attendees were mainly in their late 60s or early 70s. They belonged to the generation that led the Traditional Jazz Revival. They were in their late teens after Rock and Roll and before the Rhythm and Blues of the Beatles and Stones.

Few in that generation of Australian’s dance to that music as many do in the UK using Skip Jive or Collegiate Shag in the USA. Virtually none dance in the styles appropriate to Swing, i. e. Jitterbug, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing and Balboa. Nevertheless I managed to dance to my heart’s content from 11am till midnight five days in a row.

There were about half a dozen swing dancers at the festival. This was a pity given the volume and quality of the Swing music at the 5 available dance venues.

Swing was made new and big in the 30s and 40s by my father’s generation who are now in their 90s. Chick Webb, Benny Goodman, Glenn Millar, Artie Shaw, the Dorsey Brothers, etc played the music service men danced to in the last war. My dad a merchant seaman on the North Atlantic delighted in visiting New York and dancing to their music in the midst of war.

Some of this generation are still dancing. Frankie Manning now 91 was teaching in Sydney this year. Frankie first danced in the 20s in the Alhambra then the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem New York. Frankie with his partner Freda Washington are credited with the first air-step that forms the basis of modern jump jive.

Swing dancing is in the midst of a global revival. In Melbourne the average age is probably about 25. In the USA and the UK they tend to be a little older but not in Europe, Japan, China and Korea where they are nearly all very young.

This Swing dancing revival is truly Global. Dax one of the best US dancers lives and works in Osake, Japan’s great jazz city. Two great British dancers, Ryan Francois and his partner Jenny Thomas live dance and teach in the USA.

This represents a huge "meme" that stretches across the planet especially among the young. This generates connectivity and communication between humanity and the universe it occupies. This occurs at the deep subconscious level. This is not driven by the electromagentic forces that drive the sights, sounds, smells tastes and touch we more consciously respond to. Instead it is driven by the other major force in the universe of which we have awareness gravity.

75% of our brain’s activity is occupied with handling the balance and movement we need to survive. In this we are effectively interacting with the mass of our planet through the force of gravity. As children our brain grew fastest when we did this when learning to walk and move. As adults if we want to engage in life long learning new and unusual ways of moving are a most powerful stimulant. Dance can perform this function

When we dance we learn to communicate with each other using the force of gravity, the interaction between masses. This is not least that between our own bodies mass and that of the planet we live on. This is echoed by higher order interactions between the Earth and our Sun and between that and the stars in our Galaxy. It is good for one’s soul to dwell on this thought for through it in a real sense when we dance we truly do “Dance with the Stars”