C &W Can't resist...
Charlotte Skeeters
>>Did all you "couples dancers" who are looking down your nose at the line
dancing
>>world know that UCWDC has started including..!!OH NO..LINE DANCING!!, in
their
>>competition format??
> And have you seen the skill level of those competitors? I observed a line dance
> competition at a UCDWC event, hoping to be impressed by the best. It was
> pitiful.
> Even the winners had poor posture, bad turn technique, lousy footwork, no
> awareness of the audience. Until I see some level of dance skill, I will have
> to continue to look down my nose at line dancing.
Yes Charlie, I've also seen the skill level of those UCWDC LD comps. That is
EXACTLY MY POINT..if UCWDC took them seriously, the skilled, serious LD
competitiors would show up.
If you are really interested in seeing a highly skilled LD comp. you've got
to go where they are. Example: Sacramento, this weekend, a couples,
teams, line event; San Francisco Bay area, Golden Gate Classic, line, solo
teams, duo, partner/pair, choreography...strictly line dance event, Aug.;
Pismo Beach Western Days, couples, team, line, Sept.; Jackson Hole, WY.
couples, line Sept., just to name a few. All listed in CDL.
Sorry, your not going to find them at any UCWDC function. Maybe someday....
Charlotte Skeeters
San Francisco Bay area
skee...@scs.philips.com
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Jon Leech
wars (which I suspect will continue only as long as they have to compete for
space on the same dance floor), I have a question for folks to hypothecate
on:
How and why did line dancing emerge as a popular activity in the C&W
dance world but not, thus far, in swing or ballroom? Please take as an axiom
that the occasional Jitterbug Stroll or Shim Sham do not count as a "popular
activity" in the sense I'm asking the question.
Jon
__@/
Henry Neeman
>... How and why did line dancing emerge as a popular activity in the
>C&W dance world but not, thus far, in swing or ballroom? ...
Because there just aren't that many radio stations playing quickstep
music?
Consider: suppose you like a lot of the C&W music that you hear on the
many C&W radio stations in your area. So, you go to bars where you can
hear more C&W music. In these bars, people are dancing. You want to
dance too -- the music really grabs you -- but you don't have the
experience or inclination for partner dancing. What do you do?
Now consider the ballroom case. How many radio stations in your town
have an all ballroom format?
I think it's really an issue of whether something is in the mainstream.
The previous line dancing genre was disco, which at the time was hugely
popular as music, not just for dancing.
Neither ballroom music nor swing dance music have been anywhere near
that popular for decades, if ever. In fact, I can't remember the last
time I heard a paso doble on the radio (8-).
Henry Neeman
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
hne...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Jon Leech
Icono Clast <icono...@lcabin.com> wrote:
>JL}How and why did line dancing emerge as a popular activity in the
> }C&W dance world but not, thus far, in swing or ballroom?
>can be seen doing the same as they've always done in your local road
>house or Cowboy bar. They claim they're dancing for the fun of it but
>the fact is they're still dancing to bring rain for their crops and
>success in bringing down animals for food.
Does this include running over small animals with their 4x4s on the way
home after the dance? (What can I say - I'm in the South, where squashed
squirrels are a way of life.)
> Those couples who secretly danced together millennia ago now do
>so in public. They can be seen in the ballrooms of major hotels.
>
>So, y'see Jon, nothing's changed. I hope your question's been
>answered.
Well, not completely. This doesn't address why the majority of
LD's seem to be female...
Jon
__@/
Ken Navarre
On 13 Jul 1995, Jon Leech asked:
> How and why did line dancing emerge as a popular activity in the C&W
> dance world but not, thus far, in swing or ballroom? Please take as an axiom
> that the occasional Jitterbug Stroll or Shim Sham do not count as a "popular
> activity" in the sense I'm asking the question.
Interesting question. Off the top of my (balding) head, I'll bet it has
to do with the venues where CW *was* danced during it's accellerated growth
phase following films like URBAN COWBOY. While there was some line
dancing prior to that the real explosion occurred after that film became
a how-to guide for folks who liked CW music. Remember that this also
followed the downslide for the disco dance scene that was also popular
for line dancing.
Another aspect that now seems strange is why didn't the disco line dances
make the transition to the swing world??? Hustle made the transition well
but the line dances didn't. CW made its home in the honkey tonks where
solo dancing wasn't frowned upon (until the past 8 or so years). Maybe it
was due to the attitude of the patrons of the CW world.
Here comes TTTTTTROUBLE... :(
Then again, since swing and ballroom were popular when ladies were
*supposed* to be demure and sit and wait for an invitation to dance there
was no incentive for them to get out on the floor by themselves and
"strut their stuff". Can you imagine Donna Reed, Loretta Young, or mom
Cleaver doing the Tush Push????? Sure would have made a different 1950's
wouldn't it? Good 'ol Ward Cleaver would of had a heart attack!
I'll vote for the idea that CW dancing had its roots in a less inhibited
environment. The line dances became really popular following a period of
liberation for both sexes so people were more willing to get out on the
dance floor by themselves if no one asked them to dance. It became more
socially acceptable in CW than in the swing world. Plus, neophytes in the
CW world frequently are introduced by way of the line dance. Newcomers to
the swing world are still introduced thru group classes for the partner
dances. There weren't swing line dances so they didn't grow. There *were*
CW line dances and they just became more popular.
Drivel mode turned off...
---
Ken
Reis Evans
>
>On 13 Jul 1995, Jon Leech asked:
>followed the downslide for the disco dance scene that was also popular
>for line dancing.
>
>Another aspect that now seems strange is why didn't the disco line
dances make the transition to the swing world??? H
>
>
I seem to recall that the "Electric Slide" had it's
roots in a line dance that was done back then.
Any comments from the real historians?
Papa Bear Country Rock Cafe, Lake Forest, Ca. |:{)}
Icono Clast
IC>They claim they're dancing for the fun of it but the fact is
>they're still dancing to bring rain for their crops and success in
>bringing down animals for food.
JL} Does this include running over small animals with their 4x4s on the way
}home after the dance?
Yes! Whatever a 4x4s is.
IC> Those couples who secretly danced together millennia ago now do
>so in public. They can be seen in the ballrooms of major hotels.
IC>So, y'see Jon, nothing's changed. I hope your question's been
>answered.
JL} Well, not completely. This doesn't address why the majority of
}LD's seem to be female...
Dammit, Jon. I give you sound history and you try to confuse it with
facts?!?
SEXIST ALERT (women please stop reading here):
But it does address why so many of them are female. You see, Jon
(sheesh! I have to explain _every_thing!), those tiny/little embras
have, in virtually all cultures, depended upon us big/large machos to
provide them with food and shelter.
Many women believe that those small animal killers, being more
independent and capable of providing food and shelter than those of
us who see those small animals only in hairless packages in the
grocery store, are better candidates for implanting them with
offspring.
---
* SLMR 2.1a #346 * San Francisco, where NObody eats Rice-A-Roni!
Icono Clast
JL}How and why did line dancing emerge as a popular activity in the
}C&W dance world but not, thus far, in swing or ballroom?
Sit ye down rat cheer, young man, an I'lla tellya all about it:
Y'see, it goes back a long way, way back before women knew how to
read and write, so far back that it was even before men knew how to
read and write.
In those long ago times, times about which there are only
archaeological, not written, records, people played music and danced.
Mostly, however, it was men who played music and men who danced. They
did not dance together as couples but as individual parts of a group.
Most of the dances were choreographed and had very specific purposes
for being performed, the two most common, each danced to this very
day, have names like "Please rain, make the crops grow" and "Make us
skillful to bring home meat".
Through the millennia, those dances changed too little to
mention. But women, observing those dances and seeing that men were
having fun doing them (which men denied by saying "Hey! This is
serious business. It's Man stuff") wanted to participate.
Some men agreed to show their women how to do the dances.
Because the women had not learned them by participatory observation
from the time they could walk, they had to be touched and led into
the movements. This, of course, was found to be stimulating by each
of the participants and led to procreation.
When the pregnancies terminated with births, the women
insisted upon settling down to provide a stable home and told their
men to build them houses and to work together with other men to
create societies that became what we recognize as civilization.
The men who had not participated in procreation continued in
their dancing ways living on the fringes of the more civilized
societies with which they traded for their needs.
The settled men and their women, as the Centuries passed, created
great societies and civilizations excelling in many things. There
were the builders and organizers of North Africa and Southern Europe
now known as Egypt and Italy and similar societies in what we now
know as Central and South America. There were the mathematicians in
Arabia, the philosophers in the Near and Far easts, the artists in
Middle Europe, the inventors in China, the warriors in Northern
Europe, the playwrights in Greece and Britain, the sailors of
Polynesia, etc.
People who did those things participated in their societies
and created great works about which we all know. Yet all along, on
the fringes of those societies, there were the men who danced as
individuals within groups, dancing for rain for their crops, skill
for their hunts.
The descendants of each of those groups, the urban and the rural, are
with us today acting today much as they did so many millennia ago.
Each group needs the other to survive as each contributes to the
survival of their respective societies.
Today, because of the ease of getting around, moving from
place to place, contact between them is ever more frequent than it
was in the past.
Those men who have always danced as individuals within groups
can be seen doing the same as they've always done in your local road
house or Cowboy bar. They claim they're dancing for the fun of it but
the fact is they're still dancing to bring rain for their crops and
success in bringing down animals for food.
Those couples who secretly danced together millennia ago now do
so in public. They can be seen in the ballrooms of major hotels.
So, y'see Jon, nothing's changed. I hope your question's been
answered.
Here are the off-topic answers to two questions you've not asked:
===================================================
Date: 06-28-91 (01:50) From: ICONO CLAST To: RS
Subj: Bones of the Saints (!)
---------------------------------------------------
SK>Quebec's biggest cathedral is dedicated to Ste. Anne, grandmother
>of Jesus. (on his mother's side.....) To dedicate the cathedral in
>1964 (? I think), the Vatican gave them a Holy Relic: Ste. Anne's
>preserved forearm, which someone had brought back from one of the
>Crusades.
RS}Yow!! You'd think with all the churches they'd have run out of
}saints' bones a long time ago. To get (1) a forearm of (2) someone
}as old as Saint Anne is truly amazing. I do wonder how they could
}have authenticated a body part over 2,000 years old, especially
}when there is plenty of debate among scholars whether Jesus
}actually existed -- or is a composite of several people (let alone
}Mary and Ste. Anne).
RS}But, as they say, the church does amazing things.
Aw, c'mon, RS. I thought you knew your history better than that!
The Rosetta Stone made it possible to decipher heiroglyphics.
During the lifetimes of saintly persons, the Romans required all of
their detachable body parts to be tattoo'd. When the saints died, they
were sent to Egypt for embalming. During the process, many of their
bones were given identification, some in Latin, some in Greek, and
some in heiroglyphics (higher-ups had decided against using
Cuneiform). This primarily depended upon the graphological skills of
the embalmer(s). This practice is also the primary reason the Rosetta
Stone was created. Its content is more to facilitate the translations
than to relay any information.
Most people can neither see nor read the identification on
saintly body parts. However, applying the appropriate scientific
processes (known to Roman Catholic Big Manas for Centuries),
anatoglyphtheologists have been able to rather readily determine to
whom a bone, or body part, belonged.
The search continues for the penises of Jesus and Mohammad. But
the find of the millennium will be either of their foreskins. Further,
as I'm sure you realize, either of these finds will tend to erase any
doubt that the persons to whom they were formerly attached really
existed.
I'm really surprised, and disappointed, RS, that you didn't
know that.
===================================================
Date: 05-20-95 (02:24) From: ICONO CLAST To: RT
Subj: Insanity Sauce
---------------------------------------------------
RT}Who came up with the word "neologism?"
To directly answer your question: Everybody doesn't know.
However, I do know that there was a painter who lived in the
South of France a _very_ long time ago. He occasionally travelled to
Nerja as, I've heard, his work has been seen there, too.
The visual sense was usually adequate for his purposes. His
most famous paintings show the movements of some animals and how
people go about getting them for food (at a time when virtually
_every_one knew that much food was dead animals unlike today when so
much food comes in packages containing things of mysterious origin
described in their lables in multi-consanantic words).
Because he travelled so much, he was fluent in several
languages. But he often felt limited in the uses of the gestures and
words he commanded to communicate as he went from place to place.
His fluency in those several languages allowed him to recognize
words that were lacking, and would be useful, in another of his
languages. So he introduced "new" words into those languages.
Those who learned, and used, the words, attributed them to him
who taught them by adding the "ism" suffix to Mr. Neolog's name.
Charlotte Skeeters
> How and why did line dancing emerge as a popular activity in the C&W
> "popular activity" in the sense I'm asking the question.
**Let's not forget the Madison**
Line Dancing was around when I started CW dancing 12 yrs. ago but only as a
passing interest to most. I took the LD class only because I was there and
it almost always preceded the couples class.
Than along came "Achy Breaky"...regardless of the fact that it is a horrible
awkward dance, it exposed every breathing person to line dancing and it's
popularity survived for a more than a year. Other CW artist caught on
and thus began the "war of the LD song". I received (and still am receiving)
many CD's in the mail offering prizes to those who could choreograph a
line dance to their artist songs. I have gotten calls from Artist themselves
asking me to promote their CD's by using dances choreographed to their songs
in Line Dance Comps. that I am associated with. I don't see an end to it...
it's only getting more competitive & intense.
!I KNOW,WE CAN BLAME THE WHOLE LINE DANCE VS COUPLES DANCE ISSUE ON THE ARTISTS!
I received a great article about the origin of LD'ing going all the way back
to the Stone Age, from Rick Bowen. It's pretty lengthy, probably not quite
appropriate for this news-group, but if you'd like a copy, just request it
by sending a private e-mail to me with your mailing address and I'll mail
you a copy.
skee...@scs.philips.com
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kai...@ultranet.com
Please send me a copy of this article.
> I received a great article about the origin of LD'ing going all the way
back
> to the Stone Age, from Rick Bowen. It's pretty lengthy, probably not quite
> appropriate for this news-group, but if you'd like a copy, just request it
> by sending a private e-mail to me with your mailing address and I'll mail
> you a copy.
Thanks,
Don
Ken Navarre
On 14 Jul 1995, Reis Evans wrote:
> I'm old enough to remember Disco dancing fairly well.
> I seem to recall that the "Electric Slide" had it's
> roots in a line dance that was done back then.
The Electric Slide *appears* to be variat of the Texas Freeze/Elvira Freeze.
I seem to recall that it has been attributed to coming from Phil Adams'
Swingtime Studio. Don't know who for sure to curse for *that* one... :)
---
Ken
mar...@ibm.net
> to the Stone Age, from Rick Bowen. It's pretty lengthy, probably not quite
> appropriate for this news-group, but if you'd like a copy, just request it
> by sending a private e-mail to me with your mailing address and I'll mail
> you a copy.
Charlotte,
The article you mention sounds fascinating. Could you please forward a copy?
BTW, you're practically an institution out here in East CC. We always appreciate
the professional quality of your line dance preps. I wish we were just a bit
closer so we could take regular classes in your area. We will make it a point to
visit a soon as our calendar gets clear, though. Thanks.
**************************************
Mike Armstrong, Consulting Sys. Eng.
Bank of America, Concord, CA
(BofA doesn't express my opinions,
and I don't express theirs. We both
prefer it that way.)
**************************************
Charles Koeppen
>I'm old enough to remember Disco dancing fairly well.
>I seem to recall that the "Electric Slide" had it's
>roots in a line dance that was done back then.
>
I definitely don't qualify as a real historian, but a professional
folk (including street and hip-hop) dancer, Lydia Vanaver, told me
that her group was very surprised when they went to a disco one night
and they were doing the Electric Slide as line dance. Apparently these
were "street steps" they had included in their repertiore some time
before its popularity as a line dance.
Charlie
Psychohist
community because there isn't any popular ballroom music.
I respectfully disagree. In fact, the most popular radio stations in most
major metropolitan areas specialize in ballroom music. They're called
'easy listening' stations.
True, not all this music is strict tempo, and only a minority is
approximately international tempo. But if you'll broaden your horizons a
bit, nearly all of it is danceable, most of it being foxtrot music.
My own subjective theory is that this type of music does not make people
want to get up and jump around as much. This leaves the floor clear for
ballroom dancers who are patient enough to learn dance technique and
lead/follow. The nondancing audience generally seems content to enjoy the
show, though they unfortunately do not run out to the nearest studio for
lessons.
Of course, it's possible that we're only seeing the beginning of the wave
in ballroom, and line dancing will have taken over in ten years
(horrors!).
Warren J. Dew
Profession: Psychohistorian
Avocation: Ballroom Dance
Judy R. Rice
To: cw-d...@world.std.com
Subject: Re: Line dancing in other dance contexts
Date: 14 Jul 1995 20:24:33 GMT
Reply-to: cw-d...@world.std.com
>
>On 13 Jul 1995, Jon Leech asked:
Remember that this also
>followed the downslide for the disco dance scene that was also popular
>for line dancing.
>
>Another aspect that now seems strange is why didn't the disco line
dances make the transition to the swing world??? H
>
>
I'm old enough to remember Disco dancing fairly well.
I seem to recall that the "Electric Slide" had it's
roots in a line dance that was done back then.
Any comments from the real historians?
Papa Bear Country Rock Cafe, Lake Forest, Ca. |:{)}
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email dancers...@world.std.com with SUBJECT: 'help cw-dance'.
By no means am I a "real historian" but would add comments about the
"Electric Slide" taken from July 1990 CDL.
Originated in clubs in communities in Washington D.C.
"At a Washington beach party last September, more that 200 bikini-clad teenagers &
adults were sliding in unison in the sand. In Baltimore, club owners
are sponsoring slide parties & slide nights. School children are
teaching their teachers to slide and the teachers are teaching their
students to slide."
"Yes, the Electric Slide is making its round-from club to
club-whether it be soul, beach music, rock, top 40, or C/W-they're
all sliding."
"The basic directional pattern is like the Freeze line dance."
.......excerpts from CDL July 1990. JRR