A Social Dance?

A weekend at Ceroc Southport reminds me that modern jive is a social dance...but only sometimes.

This account of a Ceroc dance weekend will be my last as the waves of positivity and utter claptrap overwhelm me elsewhere in reviews on the internet and in social media.

There were some very good bits to this weekender. I enjoyed it a great deal.

Many of the songs in many of the sets in the Boudoir were very good, too few of the dancers did them justice, because there's the problem and here's my take on it.

The trend toward slower, simplified music drags dancers down to a place where dancing is merely moving on the beat.  Some songs subsist on a diet lacking harmonic complexity, syncopation, melodic line over a dozen or so bars or intricate instrumentation.  This low calorie music is not the realm of the 20th Century minimalist composers like Adams and Reich, but a series of predictable notes which sound right even in the wrong order (pace Morecambe and Wise).  Swingers Hour providers a consistent reminder about how much slow pap is played nowadays.

The Blues Room might do that too but with so many of the dancers doing stantard speed Ceroc in there you wouldn't know - they seem blissfully aware that everyone else is dancing a quarter of the speed.  For this I blame the much quoted "dance like no one is watching" which taken in corollary by some as "don't watch whilst you are dancing".  

Throughout the weekend there are missed opportunities to dance to complex rhythms and counter melodies, to rise and fall in the dance with harmony changes, to slow down as the much descends to it's home key (or thereabouts) or savour a moment of stillness on a pedal note.  As the tunes get blander and slow the qualities the modestly equipped dancer can employ become fewer and fewer.  One might as well dance to the hum of the silent vending machines.

The story as I understand it was that when this dance was invented it attracted all ages and the music played was much faster - I've covered this before.  As the average age of a Ceroc weekender participant is on the rise - youngsters are priced out, and I suspect, not interested in an activity that really won't get their pulses racing.  However the appetite is for slower music but not too slow.  This is odd in a way.  Those who saw Tim Sant's great Motown set on Sunday afternoon viewed a fantastic display of energetic Northern Soul dancing to music of amazing complexity and variety.  These were older people, mostly, happy in that idiom but with contemporaries unwilling to go as far in Ceroc dancing - which is sad.  I doubt such a thing will be possible in fifty years time with Ceroc dancers and the chart music of today.

To make matters worse some DJs think cover versions are the way forward: I doubt they have much choice given the complaints they get.  They should be bolder.  Don't compromise by simply riding on the backs of giants and by artists who are doing the same and not doing a very good job of it.  I think an oddity for me is that given the average age of those there (as opposed to the age of those DJing) why is so little 60's, 70s, 80s and 90s music played? My advice as I depart from this tussle, is if you have chosen a cover version in MUST be better than the original (it won't be).  Slower doesn't equal better, acoustic guitar versions don't come out better and NOTHING is better if the brass section is lost.

Behaviour on the floor was questionable and one only wonders who is going to get hurt first, the dancer or the practitioner of one of the following great ideas:-

a) walking from the bar across the dance floor with a pint in each hand
b) sneaking across the dance floor cos one can see a door open on the other side of it
c) photography by means of standing in amongst the dancers at Swinger Hour
and
d) the flash photography in the Blues room

On this latter, the flash is dangerous for two reasons.  Firstly, it's a darkly lit room and a flash in the retina doesn't fade quickly like it would in a better lit room, collisions can then occur.  It's also dangerous because if one's other half finds out one is dancing at Southport and not walking Pen y Fan with the guys from the fire station, from an innocently posted FB pic, there could literally be litigation and/or trouble.  It's intrusive on a lovely dance.

There was great weather - whether this made for "the best Ceroc weekender ever" or words to that effect, as some reviews put it I don't know.  It certainly meant people got drunk in the sun and didn't stay out late - which means spacious floors at 3am - which I'm all for.

There was much that was marvellously tidy about the chalet I was in.  New utensils, nearly new pans and an air of cleanliness about airs.  Unlike some we had no old and used underwear behind the doors.

What was also deeply disturbing was the selfishness, stupidity and downright nastiness of those who react at a weekender like the normal rules don't apply:

Parking in disabled spots

Parking in fire lanes

Parking across access paths

Late and loud parties

Drops done without request

Dubious touching excused by drunkness

Neck drops without warning

And

Putting bags on seats

All this shit needs reporting: I would urge everyone to be vigilant.

So that's my last post after ten years of this stuff you'll no doubt be wondering where to go next for something of equal eloquence.  May I suggest you follow the dancers in Facebook's every popular "Dancers Forum" Group were wisdom spouts like lava from Vesuvius.