Participating in a cultural art form like Blues dancing, if it’s not your culture, comes with a bit of extra care and effort.
To help in our own explorations of how to participate respectfully, here are several resources where Black blues, lindy hop, and/or jazz dancers and scholars provide their perspectives, and a few other related resources:
- Let’s Talk about Lindy Hop and Blackness – blog series – Grey Armstrong:
- Collective Voices for Change talks (all of them are relevant!): https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/replays
- Understanding Social issues in the Jazz dance community: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-1a-the-message
- Countering Ethnocide: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-1b-barrett
- A conversation on African-American social dances: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-2a-defranz
- Culture and dance education training: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-2b-karida
- A workshop on empathy and bias awareness: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-2d-braintune
- Pedagogy, Culture, and Jazz: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-2c-dee
- Looking back on 1 year of work, and looking forward for a future of a culturally appreciative community: https://www.collectivevoicesforchange.org/part-2e-the-check-in
- What You’re Missing When you Say You “Saved the Dance” – Kenneth Shipp: https://www.facebook.com/commandershipp/videos/452136000135532/
- History of Jazz dance – Melanie George and LaTasha Barnes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu44Kf6xypc
- Appreciation vs Appropriation – Damon Stone: https://damonstone.dance/articles/appreciation-versus-appropriation/
- Swingin’ in Time: Dancers’ and musicians’ negotiation of time and space – LaTasha Barnes & Christi Jay Wells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMoSs5Zb7ZM&t
- Obsidian Tea blog – blues, cultural competency, etc – by Grey Armstrong: https://obsidiantea.com/ and https://www.patreon.com/Obsidiantea/
- How Do We Go Forward? How Do We Go Back? 2021 – Racism in Dance Communities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInR6r9eJL4
- Move Together: Dancing Towards an Inclusive Community and Global Social Justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WjOZGm3lTA
- Other recordings from this org: https://www.movetogetherdance.org/videos-1
- Freedom Movement Collective: https://www.instagram.com/freedomovement.co/
Other recommended reading: The Wake Up by Michelle Mijong Kim