So I have the urge, the need to create a solo piece. It has been on my mind for sometime, perhaps years, yet I did not want it to be just another charleston routine or blues routine. Watching choreographies from modern and contemporary artists, they often have a value, a meaning attached that I find all too often lacking from the choreographies of the lindy hop and jazz community.
We choreograph based around flash, style or atmosphere. We create a blues piece to be sexy, sensual or sultry. We create a lindy hop choreography to match the music, to evoke a sense of musicality that is built directly off of the rhythm and structure of the music behind it. To show our athleticism, our creativity, the one-upmanship of our peers.
But why don’t we create routines which evoke a particular emotion or injustice that strikes us; using the music as a source of inspiration to show that anger, discontent or joy. Is our dance limited in its maturity? I don’t believe it has to be. Perhaps the next step is for our pieces to mean more than just a historical recreation with modern influence; perhaps our step is for our works to be art which evokes some relationship with the world outside of jazz and lindy hop.
