Kiai Echo - Summer 2001
Swing Jutsu
by David Klaus
| Cross-training in other martial arts is a helpful way to polish and enhance one's jujutsu skills. Some of the
benefits of cross-training come from the opportunities for different varieties of physical training, such as practicing
kicks and punches in a focused way, and from learning different techniques to flesh out and inform Danzan Ryu techniques.
But perhaps the most important aspect of cross-training is the opportunity to look at Danzan Ryu from a different
perspective. Over the last few years, I have found this different perspective not by studying a different martial art, but by dancing. My wife and I have been swing dancing, specifically, doing Savoy Style Lindy Hop. Lindy Hop is a dance that started in Harlem in the Twenties, and was named in honor of Charles Lindbergh's famous flight. Lindy is an improvisational dance, done to Big Band-style Swing Jazz. It is improvisational because although there are standard basic moves, the leader mixes them up in the dance, trying to suit the moves to the music, the beat, and the energy of the moment: the follower never knows what's coming next. (Sound familiar?) Lindy is theatrical and playful, and reemerged as a major dance form in the Eighties. It all started because my sister-in-law hired a swing band for her wedding, and my wife Alycia wanted to learn a few steps for the reception. It's important to note that I had never liked dancing before, especially not partner dancing, but I was willing to give it a try. From the first lesson, we were hooked. Ever since then my wife and I have been committed dancers. We've taken many lessons, both private and in groups, have attended swing camps, and go out dancing at least one night a week. For my wife, dancing is fun, good exercise, and was a nice contribution to her sister's wedding. But for me, it is all about martial arts. I saw in those first few lessons that partner dancing is just a different manifestation of all my favorite parts of Danzan Ryu. But even better, I could share these things with my wife and the rest of the "normal people" in the world that don't study jujutsu. For example: Frame: The first thing my dance teacher said to us was that we needed to have good frame in order to dance. That meant good balanced posture, with weight on the balls of the feet (never the heels), with the shoulders over the hips, and the hips over the slightly bent knees, with the knees over the feet. Sound familiar? Without good frame, you can't dance. Without good frame, it's very hard to maintain your balance, it's hard to maintain a good connection with your partner, and it's hard to be soft and relaxed. And without good frame, you just don't look good on the dance floor. Of course, frame is just as crucial to doing jujutsu. Without frame, all of your arts will suffer, and it will be difficult to advance beyond a beginning understanding of the techniques. Connection and Softness: Lindy Hop is a partner dance. There is a leader and a follower. Usually men lead and women follow, but I live in San Francisco, so anything goes. There are many outstanding women leaders, and fewer, but equally accomplished male followers. For the sake of simplicity in this article, I'll use he for leaders and she for followers. The leader's job is to decide which moves will occur, when to initiate them, to communicate this to the follower, to protect the follower from injury, and then to keep going on to the next move. Sound familiar? In order for leader to communicate to follower, he needs to establish a good connection. When you start out, the connection is just physical: take her right hand in your left, and move from your hips with your whole body, so that she can feel where your body is going. Follower must be soft and pliable, sensitive to the smallest cues from leader. As leader and follower advance, the connection becomes more spiritual. Leader wants to connect to the soul of follower, to let her know that he is only dancing with her, and that it is wonderful. Followers don't necessarily want to dance with the most technically skilled dancers: they want to dance with the leaders that are fun to dance with, the ones that are relaxed, unselfconscious, nonjudgmental, and present in focus and attention. Similarly, a leader wants a follower who is attentive, soft, relaxed, and who seems to behaving fun. Nothing can spoil a dance more than when one of the dancer's seems irritated, frustrated, or distracted. In order for leader to communicate his intention to follower, he must be soft, using his intent and connection to move follower's center of balance. Different from jujutsu, leader only wants to make follower take a step, not fall down. A jujutsu example is in Deashi Harai: when tori steps forward with good connection to uke, and moves uke's center; uke feels compelled to step backward, thereby opening him up to an unbalancing, and therefore vulnerable to a sweeping foot. In Swing, leader moves the center of follower by establishing a good connection, then moving from his hips with his whole body (not just the arm). Because follower has a good frame, with good centered balance, she will step rather than fall, and the move is initiated. If leader is stiff and rigid, it is very difficult to make a connection, and very difficult to make follower move in a balanced way. Stiff, tense leaders tend to jerk their followers around, cause followers to tense up, and often cause injury. These kinds of dancers have a tough time getting their followers to dance with them a second time. If follower is stiff and rigid, she will have a very difficult time perceiving what the leader wants her to do. She will tend to get off beat, and may stumble. Although I am generally a leader, in the last several months my wife and I have been teaching each other the opposite part. I find that following is perhaps even better training for jujutsu than leading, because it is largely reactive. Follower feels the intent of leader, and then blends with it as fluidly and softly as possible. A good follower is not just a limp doll however, instead she (or he) is an active participant, giving energy and creativity to the dance. A good follower is relaxed, and yet energetic, soft and yet full, balanced, yet ready to fling herself around (or over) leader at a moment's notice. Maai: Dance floors are crowded and wild, and a swing dance floor has special issues. The Charleston, a version of swing, is a dance with lots of front and back kicks; the popular Swing-Out move is one where leader flings follower out from a closed position at high speed. All this is to say that it's easy to get kicked or knocked over on the dance floor. For anyone who has ever gone to a crowded nage class at Convention, you know what this is like: lots of shouts and kiais with bodies, fists, and feet flying everywhere. One of leader's most important jobs is to protect follower. She doesn't have control of where she is going: she has to trust leader. So leader must be aware of his physical distance of follower, as well as the proximity of all the other dancers. And he must sense not only where the other dancers are, but where they will be next. This is tremendous training for maai awareness, and for awareness in multiple attacker scenarios. Aerials: Yes, one other thing Lindy Hop has in common with jujutsu is airtime! Lindy Hop emerged in Harlem during the Twenties and Thirties. The first aerial, or air step, was created by a brilliant dancer named Frankie Manning, who is still actively teaching in his eighty-fifth year. You may have seen these moves in a dance show or exhibition: some of the moves look like maeyamakage, or ogoshi, while other have the appearance of a shoulder carry like kine katsugi or jigoku otoshi (without the otoshi of course). All of the aerials involve leverage, balance, precision, and control. Some of the folks who initially took to the aerial steps were the servicemen dancing at the USOs. These men had been trained in hand to hand combat, with throws and the like, and they were eager to use their new knowledge of leverage and unbalancing. Some of them may even have been trained using Professor Okazaki's hand to hand combat manual for the army, but that is another story. Just like in jujutsu, aerials can be dangerous, so they are never performed on a social dance floor, only at exhibitions or in dance contests. But they are dramatic and fun to do. Attachment: There are many more aspects of crossover principles in dancing and jujutsu to be discussed, but time and space are limited. In summary, I would recommend dancing as cross-training to all jujutsuka. I happen to like swing dancing best of all, but I also do some salsa and cha cha. The principles discussed above apply to all the partner dances. But dancing is not only great cross-training, it's great fun! It is a good workout, you can do it at home without mats (my wife and I dance in the kitchen a lot), and it's something you can do with your spouse, loved ones, or friends who may not be interested in martial arts. The only hold up for most people is fear: fear of looking stupid or silly. This is one of the major issues of dancing (and with beginning training in the martial arts) which may be called Attachment. If leader and follower get hung up on their ego, and worry about the judgment of others, or about "looking cool", they will get tense and will not dance their best. Leaders who always want to do a certain move, no matter what the music is doing, or how crowded the floor is are too attached to that movement. When you are attached, it is very difficult to improvise and flow. And improvisation is the heart of the dance. Similarly, in jujutsu, when you initiate an art, you must do so without concern for how you look, how well you are doing the art, or what other people will think; when these kind of self-criticism and judgments enter the mix, your jujutsu suffers. Let it go. To that, I will end with a quotation I saw the other day: Work like you don't need money, Love like you've never been hurt, and Dance like no one is watching!! Biographical note: Dave Klaus is a Shodan from Yoshin Jitsu Kai, in Livermore, CA, where he is fortunate to have Rich Howell, Nidan, as his Sensei. Dave is a Public Defender in Oakland, and lives in San Francisco. Please contact him with thoughts or comments at klausthepd@hotmail.com. |