What is Blues?  What’s a Blues Idiom, and how do we group them?  What makes Blues dance, *Blues* dance?  We’ll go over some of the history and the cultural and social contexts of Blues music and dance.

Building on the first class, we’ll look at the similarities and differences among Jukin’ and Ballroomin’ dances, and how these different dances/movements are part of the Jazz continuum.

In this class we will learn a number of basic steps to idiom dances, how they use the same fundamentals, but executed in a way that results in different dances even when danced to the same music.

In this class we will explore a number of idiom dances, learning how they build off the same fundamentals, but based on how they interact with the music results in different dances.

This class will teach numerous common Blues moves and movements which are in truth the basic steps for entire Blues idiom dances. You’ll get a chance to learn some new dances and have your mind expanded on familiar territory.

Ok, sure… you can do close embrace. But is your close embrace art yet? Could it be…. Better? What’s holding you back? Come geek out and make your close embrace something to behold - pun fully intended.

In this class we'll explore the various Blues dances that were created in Ballrooms from the Delta, Northeast, and Midwest, learning what makes them similar and different and how to put them in our bodies.

The Ballroom Blues dances are some of the most popular in our contemporary scenes but few dancers understand how to embrace the essential Black aesthetic of these Blues dances which prevents them from simply being interpretations of European Ballroom movement and moves. This class will focus on making your Ballroom Blues as Badass as the funkiest Juke Joint dances by focusing on broken lines, ephebism, hotness, coolness, and using multiple rhythms, centers, and pulse.

The Stride is a Blues Idiom dance with a super unique close-embrace connection that makes it unlike other close embrace Blues dances.  This is a really hard dance!  No prior experience with The Stride required, but you must be comfortable with dancing close embrace.

Most Blues Idiom dances use stretch/compression and momentum as tools for leading and following, so it’s no wonder that we love to spend time geeking out about it.  More importantly, it’s a set of skills that we think the Blues scene at large could stand to improve (Yes, this means you!).

This class is pretty much what the title implies: we’ve been teaching you, watching you, and dancing with you all weekend long, and we want to tailor a class to what y’all at Lake Effect Blues need.

African-American dances are characterized by many things, but two of the most important are improvisation and cooperation. These come to play in Blues through riffin', the ability to improvise not just on the music but on the steps and movement of your partner, and through inclusion, the ability to adapt your ideas and your movement so they include the ideas and movement of your partner. When executed at the highest level, ideas and moves are shared, suggested, and embraced so seamlessly that where an idea came from is not only not important, but impossible to discern.

In this discussion we will talk about what shaped the Blues, historically, culturally, musically, and geographically; where our contemporary scene came from; where we hope to see it go; and all of our roles in that future.