About
Bobby White, Author
Bobby is an international swing dance instructor and also has a sordid past in newspaper, magazine, and fiction writing. He has won championships of many different sorts and teaches Balboa, Lindy Hop, Solo Jazz, and a little Collegiate Shag with his partner Kate across the world. He gives talks on both historical and personal adventures in jitterbug history. If you would like to hire Bobby and Kate for their swing dancing services, please visit www.bobbykate.com. He is honored to be a part of the Frankie Manning Foundation.
He also has a new-ish blog about men’s fashion called Fine & Dandy.
Chelsea Lee, Editor
Chelsea is a professional editor and swing dance enthusiast living in Washington, DC. With her partner David Lee she travels to dance weekends throughout the U.S. and Canada, teaches dance, and has won several championships in Balboa and Collegiate Shag. When she is not fixing grammar or dancing, Chelsea enjoys cultivating her personal sense of style and making post-it-note vocabulary lists of new words inside of whatever book she is reading. She is proud to be a part of Swungover.
[Author's Note: If an entry seems free of grammar and spelling mistakes, you can be assured Chelsea Lee has edited it. (And often I go back and add things that are misspelled and punctuated badly. But, despite it all, Chelsea has accepted the job of continually building a castle on the sand. And I'm extremely thankful for it.) Sometimes, however, I go rogue. So if a post is full of mistakes, I guarantee Chelsea hasn't seen it.]
Copyright Information
All material on this blog is copyright 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively by Robert White. Though links and pingbacks to this website are welcome, you must have authorized permission before republishing any of this material in any form.
Basically, I appreciate greatly when you like something enough to send people to my site or link to an article. But please do not republish things without asking first.
Hello
My name is Guenbin Lim of Korean swing dancer.
I’m poor at English so sometime express wrong.
I hope your understanding.
I watch clip your performance with kate at ABW2009.
It was fantastic!
I have a faver ask of you. I can’t find song title of your performance. Let me know please.
Have a nice day~
Thanks! The song was “Clarinet Marmalade” by Benny Goodman.
Love your blog Bobby! I added it to my blog’s Lindy Hop link list – http://myswingarchives.blogspot.com. I will be sending my visitors over to your blog very often I think – there’s amazing stuff in here…well done you!
As someone who books bands for a dancing night here in Vegas, I often get asked for feedback from the musicians. They want to play better for the dancers, but are puzzled as to how. I give them the best advice I can, always starting with a varying tempo throughout their set. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. I wonder if that’s an issue you would like to discuss in a post. A guide from a dancer to a musician who is playing a dancing gig.
Certainly it’s worth an entire post; and one easy enough for me to put together, so I’ll add that to the list.
Please note that I ask that question to every band leader I’ve interviewed. Check out their responses; Glenn Crytzer, Jonathan Stout, Paul Cosentino. Josh Collazo talks briefly at the end of my video interview with him about Gene Krupa and how he kept a beat during his solos so that dancers could dance to him.
In addition to what those guys say, my advice (spoiler to the upcoming article) is:
(1) 3 minute and under songs, tempos vary but flow from one into the other without too far of a jump. So, no bipolar tempos changes throughout the night.
(2) Rhythm section has to know how to swing. REALLY swing, and be solid. The Rhythm section can’t be the weakest part of the band.
(3) If the soloists can improvise in a *somewhat* predictable manner, it’s fantastic. By predictable I mean that they use repetition, clear phrasing, and create a narrative with their solo that a dancer can follow along to. A person who solos in a more modern style with unpredictable tangents and ryhthms can be very sophisitcated, but if the dancer can’t follow along, the dancer won’t be able to “process it” and dance with it.
That’s the difference between dancers and listeners: a listener follows the music with their ears, a dancer follows it with their feet. A good swing musician will look for the response to their music in how the dancers are responding to it with their dancing.
This is not saying a soloist can’t switch it up and throw down a challenge. But they can still keep the dancers in mind when they do so. For instance, if a soloist throws out a wild and tricky rhythm, we love it if they repeat that rhythm a few more times in the course of their solo to give the dancers a chance to look for it and express it in their dancing.
(4) if it’s a django style band, it’s best if they have an instrument that can resonate notes longer than a pluck — so, if they have a clarinet or violin — so that dancers don’t have a long night of interpreting the short plucks of picking guitars. Beautiful, but melodically repetitive (in my opinion) for three sets of dancing.
Hi Bobby,
I was wondering if it would be possible for you to post a link to your mainpage about a music video we are creating?
The bands who we are doing this for are called The Speakeasy Three (all girl three part haronies) and The Swing Ninjas (3-5 part multi instrument band)
We are shooting this on a shoe string but it hasn’t stopped us getting some
incredible equipment (such as Arri Motion picture cameras and Cinema
lenses. We’ve set up a kickstarter page to help us with the last push for funds (about £600) to help us with actering and other expenses like travel etc. We are enlisting the help of the local (Brighton, UK) lindyhopper community and swing/jive dancers to comprise the dancefloor routines.
They will be a mix of professionals and amateurs. We are hoping our campaign will do well but we need as much help as possible to achieve our goal.
here’s the page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/344516429/the-speakeasy-three-are-doing-a-music-video
Thanks for your time.
Hi Swungover,
We love your site! We enjoyed it so much, in fact, that we’ve decided to feature it in our upcoming article, “It Don’t Mean a Thing: The Web’s Best Swing Dancing Resources.” As the title implies, the article is a list of the best swing dancing resources available on the web for individuals looking to learn to dance from home. Here is a preview of what your listing will look like:
“At first glance, Swungover might seem a bit daunting. Author Bobby White is nothing if not ambitious – with a history of newspaper, magazine, and fiction writing, he’s finely crafted an in-depth and tireless look at the world of swing dancing. If you’re looking to learn some new steps, check out his Breakin’ it Down series, in which classic swing dancing clips are broken down step-by-step so even the clumsiest of beginners can shake their shoes.”
If you have any questions or input that you think may improve your listing, please feel free to email me anytime at christian@bestdatingsites.com.
Thanks,
Christian
Writer, BestDatingSites.com
Great, thanks!