December intensive with instructors Dan Newsome & Kelly Porter!

A day vintage blues. This is NOT to be missed! Check out Dan and Kelly performing at the Downhome Blues Festival

Just $38 members, $50 non-members for a whole day of classes! Phinney Ridge Community Center 6532 Phinney Ave N, Seattle, WA

Class descriptions:

T’aint Whatcha’ Do

It’s cliché, perhaps, but really it’s the way you do things that will set you apart. In this class we want to show you that for each dance, move and gesture you know, you actually know 10. This is what makes the basics so beautiful, they are limitless space for you to insert your own way of doing them. You have more tricks than you know . . . come learn.

Breaking Away

A whole class on how to dance apart . . . together. A major part of dancing done to blues in the jazz era was knowing how to solo with a partner, that is, how to break completely away from actual ‘lead-follow’ and improvise visual lead-follow, call and response, and complementary solo movement. This class will also cover good ways for both leads and follows to initiate and return from a break away from their partner.

Savoy Ballrooming

A beautiful, loose and very blue dance that was popular in the Savoy Ballroom and other Harlem night spots. Unlike the grittier dances found at road-houses and rent-parties, this was how people danced to bluer music in the opulent jazz ballrooms. Historically called just “ballroomin’” by dancers because it was basically a black take on white ballroom dancing, it offers wonderful musical tools and is full of running spins, drags, lunges and lifts. Meet the soulful side of the ballad.

Slow Drag

Simply the most fundamental, oldest, and most widely performed partnered ‘blues dance’ of the 20th century. The kind of close-quarters dancing one would have done in a juke joint or a small dancehall when it was late, crowded, and there was some slow grimy music playing. It comes from the black jooks, dancehalls, rent shakes and brothels of New Orleans and the deep south, and it looks about how it sounds— slow, and dragging, flourished by a few “congo” hip movements. This was (and, to a degree still is) the social dance of choice for slow blues and close dancing. Blues musician Bukka White had this to say about dancing the slow drag in the 1920’s: “Slow Drag, s'kinda like Two Step, but you never breaking her loose, just drag her all the time . . . just hold to one. I likes that Draggin' if I'm drinkin.' You just hold her tight; you don't have to break her loose . . . I like that. I’m going to tell it like it is, it’s nice.”