by Alain Wong

A few months ago, I interviewed dancer Bethany Powell. Stefan Durham and Bethany are guest teachers at Cat’s Corner’s tenth anniversary in Montreal this October, and I thought it’d be nice to get more than just a regular teacher bio from her for the event. Here’s the interview. Enjoy.

1. What’s your story? How did you start dancing?

oh geezum.  i don’t want to bore anyone.  i’ll just say that swing dancing was already sort of passe when i started, sometime in 2001.  It was post-gap commericial and post-neo-swing fervor.  i’ll also say that initially i was drawn to this dance because it seemed so expressive and unassuming; it didn’t take itself too seriously.  for a long time - partly because of the type of music that was popular in my scene when i was learning - i thought i didn’t really like swing music and at best would have to tolerate it until i could build up some kind of scheme for subverting it.  later on i became exposed to a wider array of artists and was relieved to discover music that i felt profoundly connected to and inspired by and which is now some of my favorite music (e.g. Stuff Smith, Fats Waller, Cats and the Fiddle, Slim and Slam, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Django Reinhardt).

2. You both have very distinctive styles. What are your inspirations, and what tips would you have for dancers who are trying to discover their own style?

i’m starting to think dance “style,” distinctive or otherwise, is kind of like smell; it’s difficult to recognize your own because you’re so accustomed to it.  so i’ll have to take your word for it.  The best advice I can think of as far as developing or tapping into your own style is to avoid the pitfall of studied imitation and try to be more thoughtful about what it is you are responding to when you admire another person’s dancing.  You don’t want to be a poor man’s version of someone else.  Try to figure out the fundamental quality of what it is that’s inspiring to you and nurture that quality in your own body.  i suppose it’s like translating an idea into your own body’s language instead of just copying it phonetically (or optically in this case) without knowing what it means.

3.  What’s the story behind the waterfalls picture?

we did a photoshoot one day with our talented friend Matthew King and i had been wanting to dress up real fancy and stand waist-deep in water for a long time.  this shot is our take on American Gothic i guess.

4. I remember watching your choreography at the US Open in 2005 and being refreshed by what I saw. It wasn’t just another swing routine made out of pieces, it was a piece of art (sorry for the cliché, but
that’s how it made me feel). Same thing at ALHC 2006. Out of all the American Showcase routines, yours was the one I wanted to watch again the most, because I had a feeling I had missed a bunch of subtleties the first time around. How do you come up with these choreographies?

that’s an incredibly generous and flatteringly worded question.  thank you so much for the implicit praise, you’re much too kind.  as far as choreographing, i have always thought and continue to believe that song-choice is by far the most important part of the process.  Apart from that…we try to allow ourselves to be inspired by sources inside and outside of lindy-hop.  stefan has had to labor against the outlandishness of my ideas sometimes because they are often unreasonable and occasionally completely undoable.  we are always working on simplifying and making sure the routines flow and are danceable.  i like the routines to have, not a story necessarily, but a character.  something human that makes them more than just a string of moves, more than just a kind of paint-by-numbers athleticism.  i also remember making up dance routines to cindy lauper with my friends when i was about 7 years old, so it’s not such a new thing for me and that probably helps too - that choreographing is a familiar and undaunting activity.

5. You’ve danced in Portland, D.C and now Seattle. What are your thoughts on each scene, and how have they influenced your dancing?

stefan and i love portland more than any other city we’ve lived in.  that said, we have struggled mightily with the dance scene there because it is so based on the social aspect of things and therefore slow to challenge itself or to change.  growing up as dancers there we definitely had to travel and actively seek out national trends to avoid stagnating and feeling isolated. that’s probably true of a lot of local scenes.  DC and Seattle are exceptionally vibrant.

while in DC we danced at Jam Cellar (and events thrown by that crew) pretty exclusively and I was profoundly delighted and inspired by the dancers there.  it’s a very young-hearted scene if that makes sense, energetic and not too guarded, which i think seems awfully true to the origins of the dance.  I miss dancing in DC and I hope to go back there for ILHC later this year.  We left DC only because we found the city itself, separate from the dancing, to be a little depressing.  It didn’t feel like a compatible home base for us.

seattle is also an exciting scene that has both a lot of energy and a lot of deference for the history of the dance. there is a large, pretty cohesive group of talented kids out here and no charlatans. everyone is committed in some way to being a student of the dance, which is great.  we enjoy both the dancing and the city a ton.  the only problem is that it is so close to portland; it’s kind of hard not to accidentally find ourselves buying a house back there in the city we love the most and really call home.  shoot.

6. I ran into you at a Whole Foods in Minneapolis during Showdown. What’s the verdict? Does healthy eating contribute to good dancing?

at this point i believe healthy eating contributes to overall quality of life and could not help but affect one’s dancing.  also sleep.  for god’s sake get some sleep people.  don’t make the same mistakes i made.

7. What’s next for you as a dancer? what are you working on/ trying to achieve?
i think what i’m working on is trying to be more confident as a performer.  i have a tendency to drop my head, turn inward and close myself off from the audience.  i think genuine confidence and intention are what make someone compelling to watch, more than flash or difficulty of the movement (although flash is pretty great).  and of course i always want to be swinging.

Watch Stefan Durham and Bethany Powell’s latest showcase routine from ILHC this past weekend.

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