Learning to teach Lindy

My usual advice to would-be hosts and hostesses is not to teach your guests how to dance yourself. “Delegate” is my watchword. “Delegate, delegate, delegate.” Ideally you do nothing on the day of your event but welcome your guests, ensure that they have a good time, bid them goodbye, and pay the bills.

However, we shouldn’t let the best be the enemy of the good, to quote Voltaire who, though wicked, accidentally converted my mother to Catholicism. Sometimes the host or hostess cannot find a dance teacher and so has to rely on himself or herself as well as his or her keenest friends and acquaintances available that day.

This month I am in this teacherless situation. Thus, instead of hiring professionals for my upcoming Waltzing Party, I have recruited our best waltzer to review our waltz, one of our keenest Lindy Hoppers to teach the 6-Count with me, and our most experienced ceilidh caller to bang Hamilton House into us for once and for all. She was quite enthusiastic, I’m happy to say.

“This time I’m going to use tape,” she declared. Presumably she means as guidelines on the floor and not to tie up the dancers.

But as far as the Lindy Hop is concerned, I could only quote Freddie Standen of Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion, who said that “although he could do the thing, he was dashed if he could explain it.” Therefore, I made an appointment with our Lindy Lead to plan our lesson in person and studied the videos I took of, or received from, two sets of our former teachers. The Lindy Lead himself found a different set of lessons on YouTube, so I reviewed them at his kitchen table this morning as he ate brunch. Then, fuelled by Polish cheesecake and coffee, I made notes, danced with the LL around his kitchen, and made more notes.

One thing I have noticed from learning how to teach is that Lindy Hop teachers don’t always tell us the actual names of the moves. When the LL and I were working out what the Pass By looked like, we discovered we just do it automatically after the Tuck Turn. Meanwhile, we hadn’t known that the 6-Count Tuck Turn was called that.

By the way, I think I have learned the basic steps (however named or unnamed) of the 6-Count Lindy Hop from real, live teachers at least 5 times in my life: once in the 1990s, a second time circa 2012, the third time last year, the fourth time this spring, and the fifth time in September. Therefore, I have more confidence in teaching that than I do the English Waltz, which I learned from a live teacher only twice: once in the 1990s and then from our resident Austrian.

I wonder if Egils Smagris ever visits Scotland.

UPDATE: That is a painting of Anna Pavlova. She is not actually dancing the Lindy Hop.