schweblog

On balmy summer evenings in New Mexico, there’s not much to do. If you’re in the mood for city-life but not in the mood to drink heavily while listening to the top 50 blaring, you can always drop by a local coffee shop for some decent local music. It’s a gamble, though–sometimes you stumble upon real musical gems and other times you get a bitter lesbian screaming about oppression and excessively using the word “cunt.”

The real deal is in the swing scene. The local coordinators of most swing events in the Albuquerque area have been switching around venues while the regular one undergoes renovation. This last Friday night the weekly dance was held at a larger gymnasium-turned-dance studio and I was accompanied by my good friend and long-time dance partner, Heather.

Immediately upon shelling out your $3 and walking in, you hear the highs and the lows of your very traditional big band swing. After smiling at the regulars–guys and dolls ranging in age from 12 to 65–you find yourself a good spot and get to dancing. Ideally, you’re not around any “big steppers” or poor leaders: the former are just a general hazard to your toes, feet, and ankles, while the latter are just a pain to dance around, as they usually end up guiding their partner directly into you or force you to disrupt the step slightly to avoid collisions.

They play traditional swing, along with the occasional modern beat (the Squirrel Nut Zippers is a favorite), some classical Frank Sinatra, and 1950s-era “bubblegum” music. It’s a pretty good balance of fast and slow, even though the order could be rethought sometimes.

This is where it’s at. It makes you feel young and alive and ready to burst into life. There are a hundred other bodies out on the floor, all of you unbearably hot, dancing and dripping with sweat and keeping time with the beat. You are together and dancing under the same roof, to the same music, and you can just feel the chemistry of the crowd. It’s the feeling that precedes the peaceful exhaustion of connecting out there, on the dance floor, with your partner and several other people out there. If an orgy was ever embodied in some quasi-innocent action, it would be swing dancing–not club dancing. These are real people with real music doing something that they enjoy and appreciating every last drop of it. Besides, it looks so damn good.

And there are very few smells that are better than a girl’s hair mingled with her sweat, as strange as that sounds.

Filed under: general by Jesse