Dance Resources

News resource in the shape of an email newsletter, Facebook and Instagram account. Here, I collaborate with Seattle-based blues dance organizations to share upcoming events and learning opportunities.

There are many internationally-renowned blues dance instructors who maintain blogs about the art form! Here are a couple I recommend:

• Damon Stone's Blog

  • Interview with Damon Stone​

• Obsidian Tea

A book club that you can follow along with! Some of the many books listed include:

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

• The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues by Giles Oakley

• A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

• Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday with William Dufty

• Corregidora by Gayl Jones

Although this book club is no longer active, it contains schedules that you can still follow to ensure you are able to read everything. ​

The group also includes blues dance organizers from around the world who you can speak with directly about topics covered in these books.​

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Additional books I might recommend adding to your list include:

• Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis

• Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African American Culture by Katrina Hazzard-Gordon

• Black and White Styles in Conflict by Thomas Kochman (Also recommended by Grey Armstrong at Obsidian Tea)

There is a lot of misinformation around what blues dancing is (and isn't), even within social dance communities like ours, so you might see that a Google or YouTube search yields a ton of different results. Here are some videos that I trust are representative of the shape of blues dancing today:

• The Strut: A Ballroomin' Blues Dance

• Struttin': A Jookin' Blues Dance

• The Stride: A Ballroomin' Blues Dance

• Texas Shuffle: A Jookin' Blues Dance

• Slow Drag

• Fun Ballroomin' Demo

• Fun Jookin' Demo

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You can also find concrete descriptions of blues dancing here, here or here.