Solo Blues with Rachel Cassandra: Fish Tails

Solo blues dancing is awesome! It allows you to express yourself musically when you’re dancing on your own. It also prepares you for more varied partner dancing. You’ll never feel at a loss when you find yourself in breakaway! In this series, Rachel Cassandra presents the technique for each move, starting from its simplest form and layering up. There is a huge range of possibilities for variation, so once you feel confident, try doing it do different styles of blues music. You might change the tempo, rhythm, size, direction, or a number of other factors. Have fun! This video is about Fish Tails. We focus on two main styles - “smooth“ and “broken.“ The music is Gertrude “Ma“ Rainey’s “Stack O’ Lee Blues“ and Louis Armstrong’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’.“ Blues dancing is movement done alone or with a partner to blues music. Like blues music, it originates in African American culture. Musicality and improvisation are at the forefront of this form. A large vocabulary of steps exists, drawing from the various styles done across the United States over the last 120 years. To learn more about Rachel, check out Special thanks to David Nunn for filming.