6 June 2013 Anneli Fogt 8485 Garden St. Alta Loma, CA 91701 (909) 831-7022 aafogt@csupomona.

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Bluesin in Los Angeles The lights are low and the distinct bluesy sounds of saxophones and trumpets fill the room. The music pulses with a beat so impossible to resist that you pull the person nearest to you out to the dance floor and begin dancing. The beat quickly embeds itself in your steps and you and your partner sync up to join the couples on the floor in the swaying, isolating and alluring dance that is Blues. Blues can be formally defined as: An American vernacular dance that started around the 1890s with the genesis of blues [and] travelled through the country with the music, says Tim ONeill, 30-year-old Los Angeles resident and co-founder of Pasadena Blues dancing venue: Do Something Blue. Its based primarily in a grounded posture, a pulsing rhythm, an isolated body movement and a defined and exaggerated lag between partners. However, Blues is more commonly defined in a less formal way. In fact, many dancers would say Blues has no definition: it is simply about the connection between your partner, the music and the ground. Blues is...an emotion that you bring to your dancing, states www.blues-dance.com. Blues dance...enables intense individuality in expressing the music, emphasizing that the music, not the dancer, leads the dance; the dancer is simply the interpreter. Blues dance demonstrates the -MOREBluesin

6/6/2013 Page 2 passion of the entire range of human emotions - from sadness to joy - not just sensuality. If you don't have a visceral reaction to the music, your partner, and the environment, then you are missing the true beauty of Blues dance. The history of Blues dancing is deeply tied to African roots. Blues music was born out of the American South in the late 1800s and early 1900s. According to Do Something Blues website, the creation of Blues music began with the ending of slavery after the Civil War. As slaves, black music revolved around chants, call-and-response, and work calls... With the end of slavery and the discovery of the individual, Black music was free to explore, and Blues was born. Do Something Blues website states that George W. Johnson created the first Blues recording, Laughing Song in 1895 and, that by 1920, Blues was in its heyday. Ironically, this heyday of Blues music corresponds with the heyday of the All-American swing dancing era. Flappers and the Charleston were the signs of the times and their high-energy and lightening fast footwork offered the perfect contrast to the soulful and emotion-filled slower Blues music that was coming out of the time period. As swing dancers danced into the morning hours and lost energy, the music genres would change and the deep, low and slow Blues beats would replace the frantic trumpets of swing and rockabilly. This trend continues today, with swing dancers discovering Blues through swing venues. In fact, the two major Blues venues in Los Angeles: Do Something Blue and Blues -MOREBluesin 6/6/2013 Page 3

Liberation Front were both founded by former swing dancers. Well, like a lot of the Blues dancers around...the country, I got into it because I was originally into swing dancing, says Jamie Leake, 37-year-old Culver City resident and founder of Sherman Oaks Blues venue: Blues Liberation Front. It began kind of at this thing where the swing dancers would be dancing all night long, and by the end of the evening theyd suddenly switch tempos. At first, people just...considered it...slower dancing. And eventually, it started to develop into its own dance style. Tracy James, founder of Do Something Blue in Pasadena, was also a swing dancer who started the venue because there was no Blues scene in L. A. I moved out to L.A. in October of 2005 and I had started dancing when I was in college in Georgia, says James. I got into Lindy [swing dancing] and then, through Lindy, the Blues dance scene. And when I came out here, there obviously was Lindy available, but no Blues opportunities in L.A. Before 2006, Blues was virtually unknown in the L.A. area. According to James, there was one bar in Pomona called Yesteryears, where she and her group of friends would attend Speakeasy Blues. According to a September 2000 article in Southland Blues Magazine, the bar still exists, and Blues music is played every Wednesday night, however, the dancing has fallen by the wayside and the bar serves as more of a concert hall than a dance studio. When James came to L.A. from Georgia she knew she had to create a Blues scene. She -MOREBluesin 6/6/2013 Page 4

began in September 2006 with workshops at a Fred Astaire Dance Studio on Lake Avenue in Pasadena. The venue, Do Something Blue, became official in January 2007 and has now become one of L.A.s most popular Blues dance venues, holding Blues dances every last Friday of the month. I started Do Something Blue and there were maybe 30 people there throughout the whole first dance, says James. I did it kind of selfishly just because there was nowhere else to regularly dance and there was a strong group of people behind me and willing to help get it going. So, yeah it honestly just kind of started because we needed somewhere to dance in L.A. and, as I continued to do it, I realized that we were attracting a style. People who were here, it inspired them to travel, bringing people in from around the country, realizing, Hey, this isnt just an L.A. thing, there are other opportunities to go dance. With the success of James Do Something Blue, another Blues dancing venue sprung up in Sherman Oaks. In 2011, Leake created Blues Liberation Front, a less traditional Blues venue that focuses on the flexible nature of Blues dancing. Unlike most Latin, American and even African dances, there is no basic step in Blues. There is only a pulse to the beat. Since only a beat is needed, Blues can be danced to any song that has a baseline. Hence, the growing popularity of what is called turquoise and fusion Blues dancing: the incorporation of unconventional music and Blues dancing. Its just a fun style of music, says Leake. Theres multiple parts of it...theres like the... -MORE-

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traditional blues, and then theres...Blues Liberation Front which experiments. We play a solid amount of...regular blues and everything but then you go up and try and experiment with other styles of music that you can blues dance to...well also...discover stuff that is turquoise. So, we play things that...can be considered to be Blues-danceable, but itll be all sorts of different genres. Well have some bluegrass...some hip-hop...well have soul sometimes, well have some electronic... As long as its something that...is blues-danceable, well play it...because Blues itself is...so multi-faceted... I mean theres just all sorts of different styles of Blues itself and you can dance all of them. The different styles and categories of Blues can be overwhelming for beginning dancers. Whether youre a traditionalist and love the down home, mellow beats of classic blues found at Pasadenas Do Something Blue, or a revolutionary that embraces turquoise and wants to dance to anything and everything at Blues Liberation Front, you can learn to dance at both venues. The Blues scene is always looking for more people to discover the dance and those expert dancers are always looking to hone the skills brought upon them by an infinite repertoire of moves and tricks. Theres multiple reasons [why people Blues dance]: first, its a really, really fun dance and I think that, for people that come from different dance styles, its a very easy dance to do, that they usually pick up, says Leake. The way that I would sort of put it is, its a very easy -MORE-

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style to be introduced to and its a really difficult style to master, and once you see people who actually know what theyre doing, youll see the difference. Do Something Blue offers lessons one hour before their monthly dance on the last Friday of every month. Lessons start at 9 p.m., dancing begins at 10 p.m. There is an $8 cover charge for the night, but, if its your birthday month, you get in free. Blues Liberation Front holds dances the second Friday of every month from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. in Sherman Oaks. Like the other venues, there is an $8 cover charge. However, if you get there early, between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and have the secret password from their Facebook page, you get in for $5. Blues Liberation Front does not offer lessons as part of the nights dance, but they work closely with a venue called Study Hall Blues. LindyGroove is another venue in Pasadena that offers Blues dancing. LindyGroove is a swing dancing venue that features, and specializes in, Lindy Hop swing dancing. However, due to Blues recent reappearance and its popularity with swing dancers, LindyGroove features a Blues Room every Thursday from 10 p.m. to midnight. There is an $8 cover charge and while youre getting bluesy, you can try your hand at some Lindy Hop in the main room. They also offer free admission for you and 10 friends if its your birthday. Study Hall Blues is a venue that offers lessons on the third Sunday of each month in Sherman Oaks. The lessons are taught by different instructors every week. Intermediate lessons -MORE-

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begin at 8 p.m. and the beginner lessons are at 9 p.m. From 10 p.m. to midnight is a lab session where beginners and experts can mingle and receive feedback. The Study Hall Blues website reads, Study Hall Blues is the only venue in Los Angeles that is dedicated to the study of blues dancing. We're here not only to help improve the skills of your dancing but to show you the joy in blues dancing and the warmth of its community. Everyone is welcome and $10 gets you one or both lessons and the two-hour lab session. Students can get in for $6 with I.D. For local students looking for a deal, they can also check out another local scene that has taken the Claremont Colleges by storm. Underground Blues is a group made up of students who attend the five Claremont Colleges: Pomona College, Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College and Claremont McKenna College. During the school year, from August to May, they meet every Saturday at 9 p.m. for lessons and 11 p.m. for dancing at a different location within the five colleges. The location is revealed via their Facebook group: Underground Blues. Dancing locations range from the steps of the Pomona College Library to the common room of Scripps dormitories and everywhere in between. But, the best part of this Blues group? Its 100 percent free, making it a perfect place for broke college students looking for a Saturday night out. According to Robyn Schwartz, a 2011 Scripps College alumna who witnessed the birth of Underground Blues, Underground Blues began in the fall of 2009. Two students, Aaron Brown and Elisa Chavez, who had -MOREBluesin 6/6/2013 Page 8

discovered Blues dancing while traveling outside of school found each other and decided to spread the word and begin teaching. [Aaron and Elisa] discovered Blues and they were talking to each other and they found out that they both know about this thing called Blues dancing and [they] should get it started in Claremont, says Schwartz. So, it started from there with basic lessons and dancing and it was very, very small and then through word of mouth and kind of getting people aware of what Blues is, its grown tremendously. Blues dancing venues create a relaxed and safe environment to hang out and enjoy the company of others. Instead of heading out to the crazy, deafening and drunken atmosphere of your favorite bar or club and waking up with no memory of the night, check out one of these venues. Not only will you remember the night in all of its pulsing, base-heavy splendor, but you will have conquered dancing with a partner and definitely met new people and made new friends. Not to mention, you got some exercise too. ###