“Loud does not equal good, folks. And consistency is not a virtue if it is consistently bad.”
This is so true for both music and dance! The same applies to excessive styling and embellishments. It’s no longer musical if every beat and note is stylized or loud. Intentional, dynamic changes and stylings allow the music to speak for itself and be an equal partner in the performance.
If no note is ever left to sound on its own or a dance basic left as simply the basic footwork, you have to wonder, what’s wrong with your basics? Is there something wrong in your basic technique that you’re trying to hide by adding so many stylings?
Just some food for thought.
— Lauren Smith (2017)
“So far as Louis Armstrong playing in his later years…he’s come under a lot of false criticism (from) those that really don’t understand what he was playing… They want him to play with the same type of *velocity*. See, a lot of times we confuse velocity with technique. Velocity is just the ability to play fast, or jump octaves or something. The highest level of technique is Nuance.
You really are a master of technique…when you don’t have to play a pile of stuff; all of that stuff is implied in what you play.” — Wynton Marsalis
I feel that this is applicable, with the obvious adjustments for form, to swing dancing as well…
— Peter Flahiff (2017)
Peter and Lauren 