Swingcal Physics of Swing Lecture

Since I've already posted my SwingCal etiquette lecture, I figured I'd post my other most talked about SwingCal lecture (the others I've given were boring, so I'll spare you).

A little background, Will and I are both physicists, and so we both prefer to think in terms of physics. Our students will agree that we make a ton of physics analogies when we are teaching, as the Berkeley scene has a disproportionate amount of technical thinkers. I do want to say that, as any physics analogy, none of these models are perfect. Like a spherical cow or Indiana Jones moving at .8c, we don't mean all of these to be taken literally. I know that there has been a lot of talk of the role of the follower in the real swing blogosphere, so I'm not going to go into that. Most of the students in SwingCal had only been dancing a couple to a few months, so simplicity=good.

Yeahhh google docs template!

This first slide is about the usual depth of physics we go into when teaching a beginning lesson...

Here we get a little more complicated. Impulse people, impulse. Thinking ahead and being decisive is good. Say no to whiplash.

This slide was more analogy than anything, but you can't talk Newton's First and Second without mention of the third.

I know a lot of people use the potential/kinetic analogy a lot when talking about the swing out. Totally true.

I believe we also mentioned that when you artificially add energy (such as on 8) it feels uncomfortable and is more difficult to maintain because you are doing additional work on the system! Same if you are the kind of lead who stays in one place for the whole swingout. Think of all the work your follow is doing!

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Yes, we totally did. Also worth a mention that trying to put together a similar graph using Matlab proved extremely difficult to look nice.

Quote of the day for this would be "For those of you who are mathematically minded, sorry but this curve is not differentiable at the ends" -Gina

This is a reference to this video here starting at around 1:45 or so.

The animated GIF in the above slide can be found here

Look, a swingout is just like a binary star system! I think it's funny and also relevant sometimes people have more "dancing mass" (heaviness) than others, which forces the partner to move around them more.

Will had a really cool physics demo on his computer showing spring systems of different masses, but his computer wasn't working for this presentation.

We had a hard time thinking of how to end the presentation, so we decided to keep it short and to the point.

And finally, when we took questions..

Student: What happens when you are doing a swingout at relativistic speeds?

Gina: The beats get slower.

SwingCal Etiquette Lesson aka The Awful Things That Can Happen While You're Dancing!

For those who are unfamiliar with the Berkeley swing scene, the class that we teach, called SwingCal, includes weekly lectures along with dancing lessons and social dancing. One of these lectures, besides include swing history, swing venues, swing around the world, etc... is the infamous ETIQUETTE lesson. Back when I first started teaching, it was somehow decided that I should give the etiquette lesson because so many horrible things had happened to me while I was dancing. I've decided to post these because they are funny, especially to those who are there, and so that these memories will not be forgotten. For reference I presented these lectures after only dancing for about five months or so.

This one should be a no-brainer (no air steps without permission, peoples!) but the story that goes along with this slide is a pretty good one..

I was at a New Years Eve party where the dancing was mainly blues and there was plenty of booze. I was dancing with a friend of mine, who probably had been drinking, and he lifted me (without permission!) right into a chandelier. Yup. So there I was, on New Years Eve with my head in a chandelier. The worst part? one of my friends saw it and cracked up laughing before asking if I was ok.

Preeettty self explanatory.

Well, we've all seen this one. One of the major complaints I hear from lead friends about follows is that they get a little too close down there. We call it the magnacrotch... which leads me to my NEXT SLIDE...

This explanation is not for the faint of heart! Now, the SF blues scene is pretty notorious for being the most scandalous, liiike, ever (hence why I don't blues anymore at blues venues in SF, but that is another story) so some may not find this story surprising.

This one time I was at a blues house party, and this one lead, who will go unnamed, started rubbing his erect penis on my thigh. First of all I was like (in my mind), dude why aren't you piking, but then I was like DUDE I AM 18 AND YOU ARE OLD AND A FUCKING CREEP. This was, coincidentally, around the time that I stopped blues dancing. I wonder why.

So the way that this goes with the slide above is... sometimes people get "happy." I don't really care, as long as you don't try to make me know it.

The worst part about this is that I had only been dancing for a few months, and he had been dancing for years, so I didn't feel comfortable saying anything. To this day, I still regret not calling him out in front of everyone.

Yeeep, don't dance when you're sick. Not cool.

To quote an old math teacher of mine "I've often wondered how someone can be 'hot' and 'cool' at the same time, and I've finally figured it out; you can be 'hot' and 'cool' because you're 'sick'!"

But in the case of dancing, it is quite the opposite.

Oh man, oh man, I see this way too often and many follows think that its normal for a leads hand to be below the waistband of her low rise jeans. Not ok. In fact, if a follow is uncomfortable with wherever your hand is back there, it is wrong, PERIOD. Too many times when I was first starting out I'd say "oh I'd be more comfortable if your hand was a little higher" and the lead is like "oh thats where its supposed to be." Eff that.

Haha, oh Brian. This slide is for Brian (pictured above).

Self explanatory.

Ohh where to start. So the ABG reference is what we usually refer to as the accidental boob grab. One friend of mine has a particularly funny story involving his ABG experience during a sugar push (sooo awkward) but the image of this slide refers to something different. Back when I had only been dancing for... barely a month of solid dancing, I go to the 9:20 on my birthday which HAPPENS to be the dance just before SFLX so there are tons of people there. I'm dancing with this guy, and its going great but when the song ends, he dips me in a way that traps my arm, and he leans in so that my finger goes RIGHT INTO HIS NOSE. I KID YOU NOT. So I basically picked some guy's nose, against my will, at the end of a dance. Needless to say I apologized, and got the hell out of there.

Looking back, I think the conclusion of this presentation should have been that so many awful things happened to me that its a wonder why I still dance at all! Just kidding. But after I presented this (back in Spring 09), the comment I most got from other teachers was that I'd probably scared all of the students away from social dancing. Which I guess is why I still don't give it now.

Anywho, I hope all that read this found it entertaining. I am going to go save it in the SwingCal wiki now so that this presentation will live forever long after I am gone.

Also should include the "lecture" that was given in Fall '08. CHECK OUT BRIAN'S CREEPY STARE!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=666077343513