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).

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Filed Under: Dancer Interviews | Tuesday, August 26th, 2008