I've recently had several independent conversations about what I think fusion is, or what I think of fusion, etc.  There's a big muckety-muck of a debate raging on forums (ok, all debates rage into muckety-mucks on forums), so I decided to do this here, where instead of jumping into a philosophical mosh pit, I can simply make a statement about what I think.  No beehive-poking intended.  (I'm going to focus on tango-into-blues influences here, since that's the easiest place for me to draw examples, and I suspect that's the easiest thing for most of you to relate to).


First off, what is fusion?  
I think fusion can have a couple of meanings.  The first meaning is essentially just crosstraining- for instance, at Buenos Aires Blues this year, the idea was that people would work on blues skills, and tango skills, and walk away stronger dancers.  I think the same can be said for a lot of cross-over events.  My thoughts on this?  I think it's fantastic.  There's a biological term for this: hybrid vigor.  One purebred dog may be susceptible to some recessive deleterious genes, while another purebred of another breed may be susceptible to other recessive deleterious genes.  However, when you cross them, the first generation offspring, possessing one copy of each gene, will not show either of the weaknesses of the purebreds.  The metaphor would get weird after that, so I'll stop there.  Likewise, a purebred beg/int blues student may have a really great embrace, but have pretty weak balance (generally, I don't see blues students start drilling balance hard-core until pretty late in the game).  They go to a tango workshop, and the 2nd thing of the day is balance and rotation.  The student walks away with a better understanding of the importance of balance, hopefully practices, and splits weight less often.  Everyone wins.  


The second thing that happens under the name of fusion is basically move-stealing.  Students go to a fusion/crossover/different-dance workshop, and find things to add to their primary dance.  The most common example here is ochos, although other elements like parallel systems, volcadas, and calecitas have also been seen from time to time.  It's pretty much a guarantee that if a blues scene has any tango influence, it also has ochos.  More on my personal feelings on this further down the page.


The third thing that happens under fusion is the mixing of many dances.  I have strong feelings about this, both encouraging and cautionary.  There is a lot of music out there that tells me to move.  And some of doesn't say, "move like  a _____ dancer;" it just says move.  So I'm perfectly fine with taking the elements that I have in my mind/body, and combining them in a way that I think makes sense to that song.  Am I creating a new dance?  Sure.  A dance that will be well-formed, and get passed from dancer to dancer?  Nope.  I'm just dancing, in the moment, in a way that feels good.  Maybe you've heard a jaded old dancer like me snicker about playing a non-blues song at a blues event (Sweat, Fire, songs like that), and thought, "but that song makes me want to dance!"  Sure- but that doesn't make them blues songs, and what most of us crusty old-timers have found is that they don't make us want to dance in a blues way.  So next time you hear it played, dance if you want- just don't label it blues, and I've got no issues.


For those of you who were at DIY last weekend, and heard my "What IS (and isn't) Blues" lecture, you already know the punchline.  But I'll fill the rest of you in.  Defining a dance is not about defining the steps of the dance.  You can watch Rumba, Foxtrot, Tango, and Blues, and define each of them simply by watching them walk down a line.  Defining a dance is entirely about the way the dance is done- the place where the dance spends most of its time on continuums like rotation/liner, expansive/contracted, relaxed/engaged, etc.  Which means that to me, there are very few elements that you can't steal, and make legitimate.  The key, of course, is making it legitimate.  One of my favorite blues couples has a video on youtube (I'm not posting it, because I don't want to throw them under the forum-troll bus), where they do 3 historically tango moves in a row, but the sequence is unquestionably blues- they're blues dancers, do a blues dance, with moves that started off as tango.  


So here I've said that you can take elements, mix them up, and make new compounds- here we have the ultimate dance lab.  So I'm a fusionist, right?  Well, I think the key to successful fusion is this: keep your reagent stock clean.  In order to pull elements into blues (or any dance) successfully, you must be able to define your home dance.  You need to know that your base is blues.  You need to know what makes that dance what it is- the history, the music, the traditional moves, and most importantly, the elements that define it.  What I'm not ok with is the idea that everything is legitimate.  Ok, that's not true- all dance is legitimate on its own.  But not all dancing is legitimate blues dancing.  And that's not my call to make- it's a combination of a personal decision for you, and a collective decision by the blues community as a whole.  So in this sense, I'm a purist.  


So I'm a purist/fusionist lindy/balboa/blues/tango dancer.  Anyone else confused?


Much love and many swingouts/ochos/fishtails/sugar-pushes/wagon-wheels/up-holds/tuck-turns/volcadas/circles......
-m.

This weekend, those of you who are clever enough to be at GirlJam will get a peek at something very frightening for me- a bonified genuine original Mike-the-Girl choreography.  Sure, I've done choreography for big events before, but they've always been shared endeavors- which is to say that I had someone else to hind behind.  But for this choreography, I decided to bite off a pretty hefty bite.  I recruited 4 of my favorite lady performers from the region, picked  a song I that had wit and style, and committed.  While that part felt good, I've had to wrestle with a lot of nervousness along the way:

Source of Fear #1: My under-played, interesting, perfectly-tempoed song had apparently caught the ears of some very talented dancers.  At Lindy Focus, Juan and Kevin did a fantastic Strutting routine to the very same song.  WAIT!!  Don't go look it up!  If you haven't seen it yet, wait until after you've seen mine.  Look it up on Monday.  I can't follow that act!  I decided to stick with my guns (and song), though.  While following Kevin's choreographic interpretation of a song is pretty terrifying, I totally believe that this song is the right one to use for this choreography.  And these ladies are not only bewitchingly beautiful, they're also charismatic.  Which means watching them perform is delightful- to say nothing of their mad dancing skills.  So I have faith in the song, and faith in my performers, which means that I'll have to override any lack of faith in myself.

Source of Fear #2: My dancers don't live within a hundred miles- of me, or each other.   Representing the NE this weekend, we'll have Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, and Rochester.  This has made rehearsing a little tricky, to say the least.  We had one weekend when we were all in the same city, but since I'm a slow learner, I thought we'd be able to make a decent amount of rehearsal time.  Fortunately, we live in a time of cheap and easy... technology (you thought I was going to make a joke about your mom, didn't you?).  I used a google document to make a spreadsheet of the choreography itself.  Then, over the course of several afternoons, 37 additions to my playcount, and several shots of scotch (that's not actually true), I filmed each section of the choreography for each dancer.  Needless to say, I know everyone else's parts... 


Source of Fear #3: The real deal.  There's a great deal of vulnerability in art, and while this piece is not exactly a statement on the human condition (if you're happy and you know it clap your hands?), it's nevertheless a submitted, prepared piece.  If you guys don't agree with my kinesthetic opinion of this song, there's no blaming it on a conversational mishap- no siree.  This isn't raising your hand in class- this is submitting your thesis!  


The good news: Proportion.  Ok, this isn't a thesis.  It's more like a 10-page paper in a class with the "writing intensive" label on it.  If the choreography turns out to be boring, or weird, or generally unpleasant, it's just another weak choreography, and there will be others.  And, more importantly, it's a chance to watch 5 ladies doing silly things on a stage.  How bad can it possibly be?  And that's the real issue- that's what keeps me from turning into someone who lives in their mom's basement and never goes out for fear of embarrassing herself.  An embarrassment is simply a moment.  A more or less forgettable moment.  Chances of great success are slim, chances of moderate success are very high, chances of epic failure are practically none.  


So while there are some very real reasons for reservation, logic tells me that fear here should be totally overridden.  Maybe the choreography will be great, maybe not- either way, the world won't end.  


Who knows- maybe I'll start tackling other irrational fears next- pronouncing foreign words in front of knowledgeable people, singing when sober, starting a conversation with a stranger, or even asking a balboa rockstar to dance (yes, that's a fear of mine.  Someday I'll finish that blog post... ).  At the end of the day, fear has a useful biological function, but logic should decide whether the fear is justified.  So look out, stage, here I come!