by Jacquelyn Thayer
Originally published November 15, 2012.
For one late Friday night a month, the Loop’s Enso Karate Dojo studio — all white walls and mirrors — is transformed into a dusky dance hall. Strings of lights embrace supporting columns while vintage blues music wails from the stereos set up at a DJ’s table tucked off to the side. The polished floor that earlier hosted martial arts students is now filled with dance couples of varying levels of proficiency, the crowd small but growing with the night, offering a cross-section of an unusual little Chicago community: unabashed hipsters, geeks in retro-chic, middle-aged dance lovers, young parents and a toddler son. This is CodeBLUE, a once-a-month gathering of blues and Lindy dancers from across the Chicago region.
One of the evening’s organizers, Jame Corrar, summarizes the spirit of its participants. “The thing about the scene is you get such a mix of intelligent, fun, open-minded people,” she says. “It’s just a great community for people to be a part of.”
It is also, comparatively speaking, a significant community. “Mostly unlike any other city I’ve been to, the blues scene in Chicago is pretty hardcore,” notes event volunteer and competitive blues dancer Braden Nesin. “Like BluesSHOUT! this year, which was in Minneapolis, had 50 or 60 Chicagoans, and more Chicagoans than any other city. CUBE [Chicago Underground Blues Experience] is a yearly event that we have here now that’s only a few years old and is now one of the biggest blues events in the U.S. We had people from London come in last year.”
It’s an impressive level of visibility for a scene – and dance style – that remains little-known outside its own base, a subset of the swing dance community that itself has waned in popular attention since a peak in the early 2000s. Blues dance, like swing, has old-fashioned roots, calling back to a style of movement and music most popular in a mid-twentieth century urban context. Unlike swing, it relies less on tricks and upbeat bounce than on connection and what’s known in dance terminology as pulse, a steady shared move to the rhythmic line.
As demonstrated by the attendees at CodeBLUE, the community it attracts is eclectic. “Chicago has a combination of the Lindy Hop population that kind of circulates in the blues scene, a little bit of tango crossover, a huge college student population,” says instructor Ruby Red. “On one end we have college kids, and on the other hand we have lots of 30- and 40-plus and definitely some old-timers as well. There are plenty of senior citizens who show up to dance at our venue who come from tango, West Coast Swing.”
Sara Cherny, instructor and a co-founder of the national BluesSHOUT! dance weekend, has been involved in the Midwest swing and blues scenes since 2001. “Chicago was huge then as a scene for blues dancing, and they had a particular style that was common here that everybody kind of considered to be a groove, like Lindy groove – a kind of swing dance style that blended really well into blues movement.” But as its original leaders moved away or otherwise departed the scene, the local blues community dwindled, though occasional dance parties continued. Aiming to revitalize the movement, in 2005 Cherny joined forces with others, including San Francisco transplant Red, to re-establish interest through pre-party practice sessions.
Ruby Red and Justin Riley, 2010
From practice sessions came weekly lessons and workshops, and in 2006 came CUBE, a social dance weekend held in conjunction with the longstanding Chicago Blues Festival. With interest continuing to build, Cherny founded Big City Blues, an offshoot of Chicago’s Big City Swing school, earlier this year. And as ability has grown, so has opportunity for social dance on a larger scale: the city’s biggest event, the monthly Bluetopia, co-founded by Red, celebrated its fourth anniversary in September. CodeBLUE, uniting the blues and Lindy swing communities, has convened since 2010.
But the artistically-inclined community is not immune to its own kind of controversy. By its nature blues dance is closely associated with blues music in all its variety. Nesin considers Chicago’s strong live blues music scene a key component of the dance’s success locally. Cherny is keen to explore the deeper historical roots of blues dance, tracing the musical genre to its origin in field music. Red advocates for venues to play a variety of blues subgenres, such as the more obscure and stripped-down Piedmont blues. “It’s absolutely essential if you want traditional blues to be expressed, if you want to maintain the awareness of different genres of dance as they relate to different genres of music,” says Red.
Not all participants, however, take so traditional a view. “There are people on our scene who love dancing to other kinds of music – they love dancing to soul, they love dancing to pop, they love dancing hip-hop,” says Red. “Last month at Bluetopia, the DJ, as a joke, put on a little mix of club tunes, and a big circle formed, and there was a jam, and everyone went crazy.” The differences may pose a challenge to the still-developing dance scene. “When people play non-blues songs that have blues elements and call it blues dancing, that creates lots of strife,” she continues. “It also makes room for new kinds of movement, and the dance evolves, but it’s not the same as the blues that you would dance to over blues music.”
For Cherny, however, the dance itself is the ultimate aim. “There’s always fights about what is blues and what’s not blues – I’m kind of a purist in that department – but I really feel like people are connecting with each other and learning a different way to communicate.”
What fosters the blues dance scene’s appeal is not only its creative outlet, but the particular social bonds the style creates. Participants “tend to be people who are social and enjoy moving, but are also looking for opportunities to meet other people that don’t necessarily involve going to a bar,” says Cherny. Nesin takes a slightly different view. “It’s a lot of fun, it’s always a party. It’s a drinking scene with a dancing problem,” he laughs.
Ultimate Dance Contest – Blues at CodeBLUE, October 2012
For CodeBLUE regular Matt Adams, it’s offered a surprising benefit. “For me it was something I found out I was good at that I didn’t expect to be,” he says. “I was socially awkward in high school, then I go out dancing and then I’m like ‘Oh, I’m a social butterfly!’” It’s an experience Red recognizes well. “People care intensely about dancing and dancing well, but it’s also a community that is way more welcoming and supportive than any other social scene I’ve been a part of,” she says. “Just in terms of being able to walk into a new city and jump on Facebook or a bulletin board and say ‘Hey, where can I go dancing and meet other dancers?’ And people will come out and say ‘Oh hey, you’re a dancer from Vermont? Nice to meet you. Yeah, here, come over and hang out with us.’ It’s incredibly welcoming, it’s full of lots of people who are socially awkward who are figuring out how to be socially ‘inawkward’ together. It’s a really wonderful thing, it’s an incredible tool to cross all kinds of social boundaries.’”
For now, the scene in Chicago, while growing, remains cozy enough to foster those community ties. “It’s not growing so rapidly that it is becoming commercial, which is kind of not ‘blues-y,’” laughs Cherny, “and it’s not growing so rapidly that you can’t still know people.” Red also acknowledges the scene’s growth, but tempers her optimism with a wariness for the semi-obscurity that helps foster blues dance’s local appeal.
“Do I want it to keep growing and expanding? Absolutely,” she says. “But I’m pretty realistic that I think we’re on a peak right now, and anything that’s created to fill the needs that are there will also partially dilute the scene. So, if suddenly we have weekly events, we dilute the intensity of Bluetopia, we dilute the intensity of house parties, because then it would just be like, ‘Oh, we could just go dancing any old time.’”
Whatever the immediate future holds for blues dance in Chicago, its current participants are a dedicated and enthusiastic crew. The setting at CodeBLUE is loud; to talk is to shout over the music and applause, the impromptu lessons taking place in a corner. But noise is little hindrance to the bond a blues dance can foster. “I feel like blues dancing is more about sharing a conversation,” says Cherny. “I like being able to have a conversation with my dance partners. Not that it’s always some deep, intimate dance. You know, sometimes it’s just fun. But it’s nice to connect.”
