What does dancing look like? It's a big question, but it's one that listeners have asked us many times, so we're gonna take a crack at it. The precision and perfection of Ballet, the wild spectacle of Swing, the strutting of Disco, and the mad skills of Hip Hop; we leave it all on the dance floor describing the look, the vibe, the movement, and even the fashions of well-known dance styles.
What does dancing look like? It's a big question, but it's one that listeners have asked us many times, so we're gonna take a crack at it. The precision and perfection of Ballet, the wild spectacle of Swing, the strutting of Disco, and the mad skills of Hip Hop; we leave it all on the dance floor describing the look, the vibe, the movement, and even the fashions of well-known dance styles.
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashtag in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec:This week, we're going to talk about something that we have had several requests for, and that is dancing, which is a hugely broad category. But we had a specific request from Molly and she said something that I completely resonated with, she said, when you're blind people say, dance, it's easy, just move with the music, and they act like it's an innate thing, like we all learn to walk. And, you know, dancing is just like that. But it isn't. And I think sighted people or high partial people you see dancing all of your life. And it's easy to underestimate how important that part of learning dance is. The fact that you've seen it so many times. And so when people say, Oh, just it's easy, just move to the music, and they act like you're having a problem, because you're just too uptight, you just need to relax, and then things will go beautifully. And it's actually not true. And so I appreciated Molly's insights on art, because it's summed up exactly how I feel about dance. And so dance is a huge, broad category, we sort of broke it down into a few, a few different ways to talk about it. But I think, JJ, when we spoke before we started recording, you said that you were actually surprised at what what the challenge was to start describing what was it like for you when you started to do your research.
JJ Hunt:Totally. Well, you know, when we got that the most recent email from Molly and we, we both were like, yes, this is a great idea. This is fantastic. I love it. It's so visual. This is gonna be great. And I sat down to do my research, I sat down at my laptop and then went,"How do I do this?!" It's really a challenging idea. So first of all, as you said, it's really, really broad, right? Dance. There are so many different styles. And then within each style of dance, there are subcategories and different steps. And it's, it was a bit of a trip. Yeah. So I mean, what I ended up doing was was breaking down dance into a couple of big broad categories ballet, swing, hip hop, disco. I tried to get some big broad categories, maybe instead of describing specific dance steps, which would take us all day, if we were just going to try and describe one dance step after another, it would take us all day, and I don't know if it would ever actually get to what we're talking about which was, which is the look of dance of a specific kind of dance, the look and the feel, and the vibe, and how the body moves while dancing to this kind of music or that. So that's what I spent my time doing is researching the overall look. And I got to say, it's been a pretty fun week watching YouTube videos of people dancing. It is, it is fun, it is joyful. It's really nice, especially as a guy who doesn't dance very much himself to like, indulge and other people dancing. It's been a it's been a fun week, I gotta say.
Christine Malec:So let's go back to the sort of the more classical kind of dance which is ballet. What can you tell us about the overall look of that?
JJ Hunt:Okay, so ballet is, of course, very formal. Rigid would be too strong a word to describe the overall movement and the overall feel, because there's fluidity and there's grace in the movement. But I would say exacting. Ballet is all about being exact and precise. And I'm talking specifically about classical ballet. classical ballet is a series of positions and movements. And when you're watching ballet, what you're seeing is dancers perform those precise movements in a very precise order. So my understanding is that ballet choreography is very set. It's very unambiguous, right? It's like an orchestral score. You could have two ballet companies dance the same choreography, and in theory, it should be near identical. And so the art form is about achieving a kind of perfection. And that's not just my intellectual explanation of ballet, that's consistent with how I interpret the visuals as well. So I'm not a ballet aficionado, I'm but I have seen a bit of ballet here and there. Performers, they present themselves quite regally. So you're standing tall, chin is up, back is straight. Women are often on point, meaning they're walking on pointed toes.
Christine Malec:Now, I've heard that, "on your toes". But colloquially to me being on your toes actually means you're on the ball of your foot is that what this means in ballet, or are you literally on the tips of your toes?
JJ Hunt:So the pointe shoes are like slippers, but they have a very hard, cupped toe. So you really are up on a point. But within the shoe, the shoe has almost like a little platform in it. So I don't know how bent your foot is within that shoe. But certainly the look of it is that you are up on on the tip of your pointed toes. And it extends the whole body and of course affects your movements, right. So sometimes there's a little tippy toe kind of movement that goes with that. But not always. Sometimes that's just how you walk - on point. Or you move across the stage gracefully on point and you kick with your foot still pointed with that same extended foot. Yeah, on point really does look like you are standing on the on the points of your toes.
Christine Malec:At there's been a lot said about the body types, particularly of women in ballet, that the the the requirements are exacting to the extent that ballerinas are unfortunately known for eating disorders. So when you looked at videos, did you see that there was a particular body type associated with it?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the idea that the movement in ballet is about perfection, is also reflected in the body type. So not only are you trying to achieve perfection in the performance of each position and movement, you're doing so with your body as well. And that's for men and women and that that version of perfection is very lean, and outrageously toned and muscular like almost absurdly so. The muscles on a ballet dancer, man or women, are incredible. And they are shown off. They are presented to the audience in costumes that are often unitards or leotards or ballet tights, which are extremely form fitting like much more so than even tights that you would wear, you know, like yoga pants style tights. These are very, very form fitting, and they show off every tiny little bit of musculature in a dancer's body in their legs in the back. It's incredible to see these bodies at a version of perfection, right? There would be a lot of people who would talk about the health of those bodies. But they seem to be so precise, every little tiny muscle in the leg, every tendon is taught. It's essential to all dance to highlight the body right? What you're watching when you're watching dance is a body perform the dance. But I would say in ballet, it's essential. Watching the body is essential. You're watching the body, not just the performance, if that makes sense.
Christine Malec:So talk swing what's that look like?
JJ Hunt:Swing is fun. So again, another broad category: swing. Swing dancing developed alongside swing jazz in the 1920s through the 1940s. Swing is big, it's bold. It's joyful and free. It's euphoric and lively. We're talking things like the Lindy Hop, the Charleston, jitterbug, Boogie Woogie. And swing is usually a partner dance. I saw the term eight count circular swing out, which is interesting. I think here's something in from descri tion point of view. So the eig t count of the dance of the of he music. The circular swing o t, so this is danced in usuall in pairs, and the couple comes together and then spreads apa t, comes together spreads apart. And while they're do ng that, as a pair, they're mo ing in a more or less circular pattern. So that's the circu ar swing-out. So you're comi g apart, then coming back toge her.
Christine Malec:Are you attatched? Are you holing hands?
JJ Hunt:Sometimes you're holding hands as you're spun out. So often it's that the lead is kind of a little bit more anchored. And then the partner is kind of spun out like a yo yo. And sometimes your hands are actually connected the whole time. And sometimes they're not. Sometimes you're pulled back either literally; your arm is tugged, and you kind of roll or spin back towards your partner at the middle. And the whole time when you're swing dancing, you're kind of bent forward at the waist a little bit, your knees are a little bit bent, there's a bounce in your step, this is like a ready for anything kind of posture, right? As opposed to ballet, which is straight up and very regal. This is like, "Alright, here we go, I'm ready for anything", you know? I'm kind of bouncing it down a little bit. And so this, this movement of out and in, out and in while you're slowly moving around is kind of that's the basic movement, and then you add spins and dips and acrobatics, then it gets really wild.
Christine Malec:Do you mean dips like where the lead sort of sweeps the person literally off their feet and make some kind of horizontal?
JJ Hunt:Yes, and there are like lots of different ways to do this. So one, if you're kind of, if you're very close together, I've seen dips, where the partner will lean back. So just for the sake of argument, let's call it man and woman. So the woman will drop back into the male partner, and the male partner will lower their body down toward the ground, so that you can almost become parallel to the ground as if you're gonna then lean in and give them a kiss. And then they bounce back up again. But there are dips that can take on all kinds of configurations. So I've seen some dips where the one partner will fall backwards, and the lead will kind of grab or cradle the back of their head like a pillow and lower them to the ground. So it's not leaning against a body, it's just one person falling backwards, with their head cradled in someone's hand. And then they're held like in a table position. So their belly up, their knees bent, so that their their torso is like flat, two feet off the ground. And then they kind of start to wiggle, wiggling and shaking and moving about until their partner lifts the back of their head and pushes them back to their feet again. It's wild, it's improvisational. These dips, these leaps, these hoists are huge. They're big, broad movements. And it's incredibly acrobatic, really acrobatic.
Christine Malec:If you didn't hear the music, and you were just watching the dance that the swing dancing, would you know what the rhythm of the music is?
JJ Hunt:Great question. God, you're good at this.
Christine Malec:Ha ha!
JJ Hunt:Okay. So yes, you would definitely be able to, you would be able to follow the because of this in and out and because of the shuffling of the feet, there's a lot of swinging of hips back and forth. And there's a lot of kicks to, to the music. So you could follow the rhythm, you could follow the beat. But it's interesting you mentioned this because I was watching some salsa dancing. And the basic steps of salsa are actually quite similar to the basic steps of swing, this in and out this kind of yo yoing of the partner back to the lead. The slow turn, the slow circular turn that the couple does, is very similar with salsa and swing, but the rhythm is different. The style is different, the aesthetics, the vibe, totally different, right? So in swing you're playful, wild and boisterous. With salsa it's sultry, like the music. So instead of flipping a partner with a big grin like you would do in swing, in salsa, you're going to grind hips with bedroom eyes, right?
Christine Malec:Tee hee!
JJ Hunt:Instead of flashing jazz hands like you genuinely do in swing dancing you're going to shimmy your shoulders, right? It's sexier. And instead of being bent forward, ready to be wild and boisterous, you're a little bit taller, you're feeling kind of sexy as a salsa dancer. So the dancing movement is the same in both of those but if you shut the music off, you will still know that it's different just based on the style of movement, the facial expressions and the and the vibe that the dancers are giving off. Yeah.
Christine Malec:What about the the wardrobe? Is there a wardrobe for swing dancing?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, so with swing dancing men are wearing baggy pants, and women are usually wearing skirts, quite often wearing skirts. So as you get flung about pant legs or flapping skirts or flying up, it just adds to the kind of wild untamed look of it. In swing dance, you'll have maybe someone, when they pull their partner back in... The lead pulls their partner back in, maybe they're gonna bend forward, and the partner will roll over their back scissor kicking in the air as they go. So like the legs are open and then shut and open and shut, and their skirt's all the way up. It's really wild and big and the fashions kind of go with that. Big puffy pants, like a suit pants for men and dresses and skirts for women.
Christine Malec:So long skirts or...?
JJ Hunt:No, they'd be above the knee skirts. But pleated, flowing. Not tight. Whereas in salsa, maybe the women are going to have tight skirts and tight clothes and the men same same. You're showing off your body in a different way. Not showing it off because like my skirt might fly up and it's gonna be wild! But like look at the slit in my really tight skirt. Can see the length of my leg?
Christine Malec:Yeah, yeah.
JJ Hunt:It's a different aesthetic to go with it.
Christine Malec:Let's talk about some more modern forms, I guess. Should we go to disco?
JJ Hunt:Sure! I mean, who doesn't want to disco right? Let's go.
Christine Malec:Uh, well...
JJ Hunt:Ha ha ha! You know, it's funny I was when I started to do my research on this. I thought when I got to the point, okay, now I'm going to dive into disco. My idea of disco is that it's big. It's huge. It's, you know, like flashy. And the lights in the in the clothes. I had this idea in my head. And th s is closest to my age, I was orn in the 70s. So I had this
Christine Malec:Oooh. otion of disco being big, but having come straight off o swing, I realized how s all disco actually is.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, kind of interesting. So it really helps to keep the music in mind. Disco is all about the driving beat. It's a four four time signature, and they call it a four on the floor drum style. So you hit the drum bass on all four beats, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that driving beat really informs the movement in the dance. So with disco, all of your moves, all of your gestures, your small kicks, your hip thrusts, everything lands on that beat, boom, boom, boom. There's a lot of improv in disco. I mean, there are a set of dance moves you can do, but it's not like ballet or anything like that. And it's nowhere near as athletic or vibrant as swing dancing. It's a little arrogant. Strutting is the word I would use. Strutting. And it's kind of in keeping, of course, with the style and the aesthetics. You've got that throbbing beat, you've got the disco lights, the disco ball, pulsing lights, big hair, big collars. Maybe the women are wearing sequins and plunging necklines. So the atmosphere, the club, the lights, the fashion, and you're kind of presenting yourself, you're strutting. It's almost more important than the dance moves themselves. It's a lot of posturing. Interesting. I wasn't I kind of wasn't expecting that. But when I went back and looked at the footage, it's like no, no, no, I think that makes sense.
Christine Malec:Oh, so when you see dancing, and you go Yeah, that's disco. Is it the aesthetic or the movements that tell you that?
JJ Hunt:If someone is wearing disco clothes, 1970s clothes, they don't even have to be dancing. You're like, Oh, yeah, you look like disco dancer. Right like it's so clear.
Christine Malec:So break that down.
JJ Hunt:So you're talking really wide collars, and they tend to be open. Everything's just big right? So hairstyles hair would be grown long and then brushed into place or gelled into place...
Christine Malec:Big hair for men as well?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, for men definitely. And then the women; huge hair, moving into feathered and long. Everything's big and bold. Kind of hippie, like, I mean, hips, not like not hippies, but hips. A lot of outfits that are going to show off women's hips. So tight pants, high waisted. There's a lot of shifting of your hips back and forth, shifting of the hips back and forth. So if you are watching someone disco dance and they're not wearing 1970s disco clothes or just in whatever we would be wearing - street clothes - the Disco moves are still clear. They're iconic because of movies and TV. Like Saturday Night Fever. We know that finger pointed up at the sky, and then down to the floor in the opposite direction. Up at the sky, down at the floor, up the sky, down to the floor, with the hips shifting back and forth. That is like all you have to do and someone can say, a sighted movie goer would know that that's Saturday Night Fever. That's all you have to do.
Christine Malec:Oh, really? Oh I love that.
JJ Hunt:Totally. It's totally iconic. Some of the disco moves are very... there's a cheesiness to it. There's a strutting cheesy swagger to disco that is kind of funny now. But it makes it really clear. I will bust out a single disco dance move just as a punch line.
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha!
JJ Hunt:It's kind of like how you would use an emoji. You bust out a single disco move. You know, bite the lower lip and do a little gunslinger, whatever, just to like get a laugh. They're very clear.
Christine Malec:Can you give us a few more of those classic iconic moves?
JJ Hunt:Oh god. Okay, so the gunslinger, which is one of my favorites. So knees bent, feet spread a little bit, and you kind of dip down like you're a gunslinger about to go into battle, right. So imagine you've got a holster on and you turn your fingers into into guns. And you kind of do a bit of a squat. And then it goes right hand, left hand, right hand, left hand, and you've got your finger guns. And so you go right hand to the back pocket, left hand to the back pocket, and then you bring your right hand in between your legs, and then your left hand in between your legs, and then back and forth, and back and forth. So it's as if you're holstering weapons at the back, and then holstering weapons between your legs, and then holstering at the back, and holstering between your legs. And there's this kind of shimmy of the shoulders. Again, you got to get that beat that Dun, dun, dun, dun. It's so cheesy. It's such fantastic cheese. I love it.
Christine Malec:When you watch it being done, is it self conscious? Kind of ironic cheese? Or are they full on? Do they really mean it?
JJ Hunt:No, that's the thing. You look at footage from the 1970s of like disco dancing, either in clubs or in movies. People are having a great time. It's fun. But it's serious! They are seriously feeling "I am hot!", there's no irony in disco that I can pick up on.
Christine Malec:Ok, ok.
JJ Hunt:Now I wasn't dico dancing [in the 70's]. I was like, five.
Christine Malec:Yeah, yeah.
JJ Hunt:Someone who was actually disco dancing might say"No, no, no, no, we knew." But that doesn't come across so much in in the footage that I'm seeing now.
Christine Malec:So let's talk hip hop. This is something I have absolutely no idea about the look of.
JJ Hunt:So hip hop. Okay. Just as a just lets us get get this out there. There's there's nothing less cool than trying to talk about and describe cool things. So this might be me at my least cool and I have set a very high bar for that. Ha! So here we go. [Narrator voice] Hip Hop. Hip Hop is a broad term for street dancing that... Yeah, it has evolved from like 1970s dance crews, and then the Ha! Soul Train era in the 80s. So hip hop encompasses breakdancing or breaking, popping, locking, very heavy on the improv. And the thing about hip hop is it it pulls from anywhere and everywhere. So you will actually see some like classic ballet moves that get twisted into hip hop, you'll definitely see some swing that gets pulled into hip hop, disco, definitely all of these things get pulled in. And it's again very hard. It's very it's heavy on the beat, right movements, gestures, poses, they always land on the beat. Now this might be a bit of a funny observation, but I did notice as I was, of course, going through footage watching people dance in various hip hop styles in videos. Hip Hop dancing is done to camera. It kind of breaks the fourth wall. So hip hop starts in the era of the music video, right the home video camera, and its people filming each other on the street Dancing in the Street, and then it evolves through the era of cameras everywhere all the time. And I couldn't help but notice that in YouTube videos, hip hop dancers are staring at the audience. If you're watching swing dancers, they're dancing with each other. There's a performative element to it, but they're looking at each other. Ballet dancers aren't staring at the audience. That's not, that's not the contact point. With hip hop, certainly in videos, you are always watching the audience. And your gestures, your movements, your poses are aggressive. So not just like disco, which is strutting. This is aggressive. "I am doing this for you, I'm doing this at you. I am sometimes challenging you." Right? That's the vibe of hip hop. It's to camera, it's to audience. Totally different starting point than any of the other dance dance styles that I looked at.
Christine Malec:How do you know what's hip hop when you watch it.
JJ Hunt:So the gestures, the moves, the poses that are really aggressive, the spins and flips. So this is a very acrobatic dance style, so you'll get a lot of spins, spinning on a head or spinning on one shoulder, maybe windmill kicks while you're spinning on your back, maybe on one hand with a bent wrist, like flips with these kicks, the scissor kicks, big skills that are on display, there's something about, I mean, this might be a funny comparison, but it reminds me a little bit of like skateboarders or skateboarding.
Christine Malec:Oh!
JJ Hunt:These dancers have to... there's an element of tricks in the dancing. I mean, as with any dance, you have to perform a move over and over, you have to practice it over and over to get so that you can land it. But with hip hop, some of the skills that are on display are really extraordinary. Like something like popping, in breakdancing popping and locking. So if you do the wave with your arm, or you're popping it, when you popping it, you can make your body move in such a way that you appear to be moving in slow motion, or in stop action. Or maybe you can look like you're moving in reverse. You isolate the different joints and the different muscles to the point where you can, look like you are defying gravity. You are isolating the movement of each muscle and limb. It's it the novelty factor of that. It is wild. And then you add that to an understanding of rhythm and movement to the beat. And you incorporate these skills, these tricks in the middle of a dance performance. And yeah, that's kind of hip hop. And again, the attitude. The attitude is the thing that that would really... You know, all of that I suppose could be said of other dance forms. Maybe some swing perhaps, maybe disco. But it's to camera, it's to you, and it's done with attitude. It's done with an aggressive, in your face kind of feel. Yeah.
Christine Malec:Okay, so how about like modern electronic sort of club dancing.
JJ Hunt:EDM. The base move is the running man. The running man is actually a hip hop dance move where you're running on the spot to the beat. But in EDM, you're shuffling your feet, so it looks like you're kind of gliding. So instead of like lifting up your knee and putting your foot down and lifting up your knee and putting your foot down, you're lifting up your front leg, and then putting your foot down and the other leg that's on the floor slides back. And you do that over and over again. So one knee up and the other leg slides and then they switch. And then the foot that's on the ground now slides back. There's a gliding quality to this. It's not unlike the moonwalk. So the with the moonwalk, Michael Jackson's famous moonwalk, he would pull his feet back and then and then go up onto the toe. So one foot goes back, slides back on the floor, and then it goes up onto the toe and then the next foot slides back up onto the toe and repeat over and over. And there was a gliding quality to that moonwalk. And then he could moonwalk, kind of slide, from side to side. That's the base for a lot of EDM is this gliding on the floor. So you mix the gliding action which is really trippy, it again has this quality of being a trick to it, you add that to the heavy stomping on the beat. If you're cutting shapes in EDM, you are stomping your legs in different positions, kind of kicking to the sides and kicking to the front, all while sliding your other foot. There is an otherworldly quality of mad skills. There's like some craziness going on, which works well if you're listening to music that is all about like the drone. With EDM, you've got the beat and you've got the droning quality to the music, and you are quite possibly high. So all of this works really together. Lots of foot movement, lots of ankle movement, sometimes the EDM clothing, maybe you're wearing glowing treads on the on the soles of your shoes. So as you stomp and slide, stomp and slide and kick and slide, you've got these lights that are going off. And then you can incorporate other kinds of dancing and add it to the basic shuffle. So you can add some popping or some breakdancing, you can add some of those aggressive hip hop, kind of chest thrusting movements. You can also add jazz or swing like the Charleston, which is a swing dance. It is a really great EDM add on. So instead of just shuffling back and forth, you can do this Charleston, step back, step in, step out, step in and you can kind of do that, while you're dancing to EDM. It's wild, man, it's so trippy.
Christine Malec:I'm having a feeling that I get when I listen to descriptions of visual art. And to be honest, it's a bit of a lost feeling. Because you've used about 59 terms that we would spend all day trying to define and I still have the sense that the essence is... eluding me still. So genre aside, what makes a good dancer.
JJ Hunt:I think fluidity. I think being... you talked earlier about this idea of of being free, and feeling the music. Any dancer in any one of these styles, no matter how well they have practiced and memorized the steps... If you can memorize the steps of the Charleston, for example, you might intellectually know how to do it. But if you can't let your body move, if you can't open up your hips, and be unafraid to look ridiculous, and kind of move past that it will only ever look robotic. It will look like an intellectual pursuit, not a physical one. And there's something about watching other people who can dance, and I'm certainly not one of them. I'm not a dancer, I can't I don't get over myself enough to dance openly and freely. But when someone is, it's kind of magnetic.
Christine Malec:There's a total paradox here. So there's this grab bag of words like rhythm, which I associate with a certain thing, and then fluidity, which seems totally different. And then technique, and then openness, and then spontaneity and genuineness. These all don't meld. It's very complicated. And I still feel -and I hope that I hope our listeners don't feel this way - but I still feel that the essence eludes me. And I'm not sure why that is. I'm okay to dance, I don't have too much pride. I'll just go crazy and jump around and stuff. But I still feel like there's an essence that will always elude me because it's such a whole body thing. And to watch it, yeah, it's a very sighted thing. I don't know, maybe that's me.
JJ Hunt:I'm not sure what this is. I'm not sure if this is what Molly was looking for! But it's what we got!
Christine Malec:Now I'm self conscious about having said all of these like limiting things and making dance into a performative thing. And that's the last thing that should be said about dance because really dance is just about the experience of the dancer. And so I hope that anyone who's listening as you know doesn't feel more more daunted, as opposed to freed by by this conversation, because it's meant to be instructive. But the truth about dancing really is that it's just about how it makes you feel. So whatever you do, you kn w, if you want to be in the pr vacy of your own living ro m with the curtains closed, d n't don't be inhibited about dan ing! Because when you do it, y u know what feels right. So I hope that listeners take this as instructive and not no discouraging because d ncing actually really is qui e fun and everyone should do it ometimes even if it's just alon in your living room. We love making this podcast. If you love hearing it, perhaps you'll consider supporting its creation and development by becoming a patron. We've set up a Patreon page to help cover the costs of putting the show together. You can contribute as a listener or as a sponsor to help ensure that accessible and entertaining journalism continues to reach our community. Visit patreon.com slash talk description to me that's pa t ar e o n.com slash talk description to me have feedback or suggestions of what you'd like to hear about here's how to get in touch with us. Our email address is talk description to me@gmail.com. Our Facebook page is called talk description to me. Our website is talk description to me.com and you can follow us on Twitter at talk description.