American Vernacular, Gone Global

by Jacquelyn Thayer

Germany-based dancer Annette Kühnle. Photo by Andrew Miller, provided courtesy of Annette Kühnle.

From the deeply American cultural landscapes of the Jim Crow South and the Great Migration North emerged many of the vernacular dances informing the modern Lindy scene. But as blues, swing and others under a shared jazz umbrella saw their great surge over the last two decades, some of the most passionate converts could be found across the pond — beginning with one of the earliest revivals of the Lindy style anywhere in the world, at Sweden’s Herräng Dance Camp in the late 1980s.

But like the cultural exchange that led Atlantic-crossing ballroom dancers Vernon and Irene Castle to integrate elements of American jazz into their formalized style — popularizing the foxtrot, among other less enduring dances, both abroad and on U.S. soil — the Herräng campers drew their knowledge direct from an American source: master Lindy man Frankie Manning, so influential there a street would be renamed in his posthumous honor.

For most contemporary dancers, though, a European interest in blues proper — and its many flavors — was closely concurrent with its turn of the millennium upswing in North America, helped along significantly by the travels of American Lindy teachers. Long-time members of the Lindy scene sought new styles and a deeper connection to the dance’s historical roots, and an abbreviated timeline of the first blues-promoting festival and event debuts reveals like trends overseas:

But festivals, of course, seldom emerge from the ether. Instructors like Chicago-based Ruby Red began teaching blues overseas — in her case, in the UK — as early as 2007. “There was a blues organization there, but they were dead,” she said in a past interview with the author. “They weren’t doing anything. They were throwing a party maybe once every three months.”

For members of that then-small British scene, local tradition could initially blur the lines between styles as properly known. “There are two distinct scenes in the UK that call themselves blues dancing,” said dancer Aaron “Fluff” Saunders. The non-swing strand is linked with the jive-derived Ceroc, a style born in London in the early 1980s. At one Ceroc weekend event circa, by his best estimation, 2006, Saunders and partner Sue Hall had their first taste of any style known as blues. Though brief, it made an impact.

“Fast forward two to three years and I’m starting to teach what I’ve been told is blues dancing and about to teach my first workshop,” he said. “I got paranoid about the authenticity of the dance about two weeks before the workshop and sat down with another dance teacher colleague and asked him ‘What if it’s all lies? What if they made everything up?’” YouTube, and a spot of video research on American dancers including Lucky Skillen and Dustin Henwood and Ally Yancey of PortlandBluesDancers, proved the reassuring savior.


At Feelin’ Blues Israel 2012 — another demonstration of the dance’s international expansion — Saunders, with Naomi Choodnovskiy, is the fourth competitor in this event.

At the time, he noted, London’s proper blues scene was largely confined to Blues Revolution’s monthly social, the domain of those already enmeshed in the swing set. A summer workshop from dancers Dave Madison and Ursula Ledergerber — followed by Saunders’ own monthly social — marked the beginnings of its English expansion, fostered further by a short-lived but intense run of informal study at the now-departed Charlotte Street Blues Bar.

“Charlotte Street gave dancers who wanted to develop their blues dancing something to work on and built a small loyal following of dancers who would meet at the bar on non-class nights as they had live blues music most nights of the week,” said Saunders. A stronger local class scene, and more regular festivals, ensued.

In continental Europe, dancer and DJ Annette Kühnle, who’s also maintained a thorough calendar of European blues events, observed the movement progress along a similar timeline.

“I started dancing blues and organizing blues events in Heidelberg together with two friends in 2009,” she said. “We had been to a small blues workshop in Switzerland in the same year and got hooked on the dance right away. So we decided to put together a blues event with befriended teachers from the U.S. to get things started.”

In Kühnle’s backyard, the interest in blues was, you might say, contagious. “We had a very active scene for a few years and soon other, nearby cities started being curious about the blues,” she said. “They asked us scene leaders if we’d be willing to bring the blues to their cities, too, and that’s how I got started teaching blues.”

Appropriately, she prepared to teach by first refining her knowledge and comfort level as a traveling student — taking classes in the U.S.

Ruby Red, in 2012, took account of the spirit of those particular times after a teaching event in London. “One of the classes I taught was a class about teaching dance on your home scene,” she said. “I started taking questions from people in class and I realized they were the organizers from Amsterdam, Germany, Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland — organizers from all these other cities who were like ‘How do we do this? How do we get blues in our towns? How do we make it happen? How do we get people to get better? How do we help people understand that it’s not swing, and how do we keep people from thinking it’s a creepy dance?’ — you know, they wanted to solve all these problems that we’d been working on for years here in the city.”

In the years since, the European scene has found a more assured footing, with Eastern and Southern cities home to newer festivals and exchanges. Establishment has meant new lines of focus for teachers and dancers. While faithfulness to roots has borne fruit for the American dance scene, Kühnle noted an increasing inclination in the European scene towards another history — the music. “I’d say the trend definitely goes towards getting more comfortable dancing to all possible styles of blues music in all tempos and rhythms, whereas before, the emphasis was sometimes more on connection and partnership,” she said.

But a better emblem of the dance’s progression beyond its American seeds are the ways in which regional culture has offered its touch to a still non-codified genre. Kühnle recounted a conversation with a friend on the topic, in which the two noted, for example, a generalized preference for “larger, dramatic movements” among Southern European blues dancers. “My friend was wondering if this could be due to how the dancers are taught to perform emotion by their culture, which I thought was great food for thought,” she said. “Something that I have noticed about the Northern scenes is a certain preference for slow, hug-friendly blues.”

More influential than any distinctly European cultural inclination, though, might be the universal phenomenon of follow the leader.

“While it’s often said you can spot a London dancer a mile off, I couldn’t pinpoint why,” said Saunders. “Answers I got from people were things like ‘follows always put hip accentuations in their basic pulse because the main follow teacher in London does.’ In addition to a vertical rather than pendulum pulse, everyone defaults to an up pulse rather than down. And they’re all a bit move-monstery — the way the local teachers have been teaching has been a bit moves-heavy.”

Even something like a teacher’s willingness or ability to travel, noted Kühnle, can shape a style. “Some scenes might have never had a class in English because most of their dancers wouldn’t understand the language, which in return might shape the scene in terms of exposure to different styles and teachers,” she added.

Ultimately, even as the viral chain of learning grows, the American impact so key to blues’ initial blossoming may also limit its potential international idiosyncrasies.

“Once Sue and I got involved in the blues scene, we started putting on workshops with visiting American instructors every two months,” said Saunders. “We’d also facilitate sharing of these instructors with scenes in Bristol and Oxford, so we’ve put a lot of work into giving students easy affordable access to a wide range of high-level U.S. instructors. So it’s hard to have [many] unique traits when we’ve had exposure to so many big-name instructors.”

 
Follow Jacquelyn on Twitter at @jm_thayer