Approach

We believe that blues cannot be taught like many other dances – mostly by providing figures and repeating them. Blues dancing is an expression of music and feelings which are unique to each individual. Since the core of blues is interpretation of music, blues is more about thinking rhythms and instruments, than steps. Every blues dance is different, just like the melodies are. Rhythm and melody, not only in your legs, but in your whole body, always create a unique story.

The result of solo or partnered dancing is a riddle – just like results of the dices thrown.
In our approach we try to cover all the diverse areas of blues: from blues as a dialogue with both leader and follower interchanging in leading, through clear and harmonic energy flow, musicality, interpretation, relaxation, working with breath, isolations, the history and types of blues, up to fancy moves. We try to encourage participants of our classes to explore new techniques and moves as if nobody was watching them and to play with the music and make fun of oneself while dancing, just as it’s founding fathers and inventors did.

Our goal is to encourage individual development and creativity instead of emulation of other dancers. Some examples of the topics of our classes are: tension and release, types of blues (including separate classes for different styles like e.g. blues roots and calypso), continuing the movement, speeding up and slowing down, conversation including call and response, putting rhythmical variations into moves and many more. Our warm-ups include African dance, isolations, relaxation exercises, ballet or jazz posture preparation, walking and balance shifting or simple solo blues moves. Our class is often built of a warm-up, some preparatory exercises (solo or in couples), some technique to work on and exercises to develop it, to finish with exercises applying it into our dance.

During the private lessons we like to work on specific topics or be given some time to diagnose issues important for the students. We try to attend socials prior to classes to dance with students and discuss their requests concerning the curriculum.

For all of our students we have choreographed a short routine to cover basic blues moves in a simple manner and for them to have a Blues Sham for social dancing, just as lindy hoppers have their Shim Sham. Please feel free to watch, learn and spread it, if you like it. Here is our recording from “I blues Warsaw” where we show this short routine. Should you like to record one in your home town as well, send us your recording. We’ll be happy to see our little choreo roam around the globe and make people of the world blues community happy! 🙂

Feel free to contact us at konradandagnieszka@gmail.com