This past weekend I attended a 2-day blues dance workshop in Philadelphia, called Blues Muse. It was 3-nights of open dancing late into the night with some pretty great live music. Many of the lessons were for all-levels and I learned some interesting ways to think about how to move my body. I wanted to attend this particular event because it combined the opportunity to dance the blues in a new place, with new faces, and also because Philly is a relatively good walkable city that I had yet to fully explore. Kill two birds with one stone!

It’s important for me to mention that there is something I am seeking as part of my human experience. I seek out places filled with faces from all walks of life. In my recent travels, I‘ve taken account of how diverse every city, place, space is, because I feel diverse spaces offer a richness to every lived experience.

However, unless you are of African descent, it’s quite possible that you will read this and feel confusion. That’s understandable. Blues Muse was a surprisingly White event. Unless you have lived what I am about to discuss, or personally witnessed it, understanding what it is to be Black in White spaces can be a foreign concept, perhaps entirely unfamiliar to your human experience.

I fully appreciate and recognize my fortune to have grown up how I did and in the place I did. I grew up in one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, Los Angeles, CA. I had friends who were White, Asian, Mexican, Black, and all sorts of mixed. I had a Filipino grandma, an Armenian uncle, a Samoan uncle, god parents from St. Vincent, and a Vietnamese best friend whose family often let me join them for dinner. I love to experience cultural richness, to be a fly on the wall or a human at a dinner table soaking in all the nuance of what it means to be X or Y or Z. The only time however I feel a bit out of place is when I am in a primarily White space.

Throughout life, I became very aware of how my presence alters spaces. How vocal I can be, how passionate I speak, can come off as aggressive to those with delicate sensibilities. How loud I laugh and how expressive my hand gestures can be. Let’s not get me started on my face when I hear someone say something crazy. In White spaces, I tend to be a much more dialed down version of myself. I keep my thoughts to myself for the most part because I’m not always so interested in finding out just what kind of White person I’m encountering. There is almost this unspoken agreement of “hey, we have to interact now, let’s just keep it surface level so no one gets upset.”

This is not to say that I don’t like White folks, I just don’t ever know if they really like me because of how I look and how I speak and how I think. So when I walked into the venue and took a look around, I was kind of bummed to see very little diversity.

For a little backstory, I got into swing dancing first because I always had an interest in it. It probably started with Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin Daddies and those old timey movies grandma used to watch late at night. I started taking swing dance lessons at LindyGroove in Pasadena, then one day I waltzed into “the blues room”, and I was hooked. The music, the vibes, the style, the connection, this is what my soul craved. While the L.A. based organizers are trying their best to revive the blues dance scene here in L.A., I aim to explore other cities in hopes of discovering a more robust and diverse blues dance community. This is why I chose to attend Blues Muse in Philly.

I fully expected this to be an event with an array of people and faces from all walks of life. This was not the case. I was surprised by how much of a White space this was, especially because Philly is pretty diverse on its own. This was an event where people traveled from all over the country to attend, so where were all the Black and brown faces I wondered? I am tangentially aware of how the blues dance scene in its resurgence has become a White dominated space, still, it surprised me to see that not many Black folk seemed interested in participating in this particular event.

I can completely understand why. It would be hard to explain to someone who is White what it’s like going into a White dominated space and inherently understanding that as a Black person, you have to now operate under a different set of societal rules. You aren’t as free to be, because historically, being your authentic Black self makes White people very uncomfortable. Also, there are a lot of spoken and unspoken rules of engagement that exist in White spaces vs Black spaces. There is a lot of self-regulation that has to happen as a Black person in these spaces. Even the instructors have to tip toe around what they say and how they say the things I know they were really trying to say. It’s an interesting dynamic to witness and experience.

Considering the history of blues music and blues dancing, there are things that cannot be taught, not even by Black instructors. Sure, you can teach some fundamentals, basic steps, how to move your body, but you can’t teach people to tap into the depths of the soul and unleash what’s within, you either have it in you or you don’t.

I write a lot of poetry, and I often feel that it is my souls way of calling out to someone, anyone, who could hear the raging beat of my heart and come dance to its rhythms. The blues speaks to me, and I hope to find connection to those who could read my words or connect with me through dance and feel what my soul is vibrating.

I enjoyed the weekend nonetheless. I probably would not attend this particular event again however, for several reasons:

One being, that there are many other places I’m sure where I could find a more culturally rich experience with the music, the dancing, the city, the food, the people, etc.

Two being, probably my biggest gripe about this event, was the number of fusion dancers who only wanted to dance fusion. They came to learn blues dancing, but more often than not I found myself being wiggled and manipulated by fusion dancers as they often like to do. This agitated me greatly. In my local dance spaces, there is a crossover between swing and blues. So more often than not, I end up dancing swing to blues music… not that I don’t enjoy it, but, I did fly all the way to Philly to dance the blues.

Lastly, as huge of an event as this was, it was kind of hard to get a dance at the evening ballroom events. There were many more followers than leads, and some of the dancers I really wanted to dance with were in high demand, as they should be! But, as a silver lining, that just made me want to become more comfortable with also learning to be a lead.

All in all, I had a good time and I’m glad I went and learned some things about myself as well as the blues dance scene. It reinforced my need to seek out spaces where I feel I can show up as my authentic self, where others might embrace my fullness, my laughter, my voice, my light…without asking me to dim.