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Full Impact Dance Nostalgia

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Shai is an artist in crunch mode, so I was a lone bachelor at the Dance Underground last night.  Lindy Hop is my Performance-Art-Sport relaxation.  Simple basics with a tentative newcomer, or stanzas of movement with a confident pro, are a joy after a long separation. 

 

Back in the day, dancing five to six nights a week, I would fall into a dance rut.  Along with other drones of dance I would shuffle into a room with Steven Mitchell to learn two things: I was far from as good as I thought, and yes there is an another horizon to explore. 

 

Steven's workshops are cathartic.  He tears you down and remakes you.  You would fall to a depth of dispair during the middle of the workshop.  Can I dance at all?  But by the end you were a toddler Timothy Leary jumped up on sugar, paragliding to the summit of a Caucasus mountain ecstatic to Warren Miller your way toward an all night Blues party.  One workshop would reveal a path to movement sharper than Dorothy Parker.  Another would take your black and white view of connection, and not just add color, but transform it to a full motion Baz Luhrmann extravaganza in three dimensions with sea spray and strobe lights.

 

The secret was not teaching you something you didn't know.  It was doing the most basic parts of what you know, differently and better.  The despair felt midway was for a loss of grace.  A stroll was now a stumble. Steven wants you to stroll differently.  By the end you didn't just forgive Steven for making you clumsy.  You adored him for teaching you to float.

 

Best of all: It would take months of effort before you actually got any of it right.

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