KIM MILLER, MILWAUKEE STEPPERS AND BALLROOMERS UNITED, STILL FROM DIGITAL VIDEO, 2023.
Stepping is a social dance form with specific footwork, rhythms and phrasing. The form has origins deep in American history, probably emerging from ring dances and the cakewalk of the 19th century. More recently, influences came from dances from the big band era that required a partner, including the Lindy Hop and Jitterbug. Stepping took hold in urban areas like Chicago and Detroit. The particular form practiced in Milwaukee migrated from these places, but also was influenced by a local variation called bopping. The mix of step dance footwork and bopping creates a unique Milwaukee style.
The Milwaukee Steppers and Ballroomers United (MSBU) is a step dancing social club with a philanthropic and political arm. The club meets several times a week at venues around the city, giving free step dance lessons, hosting dance events, and raising money for various charities and causes.
On the floor, steppers move as both a group and in pairs. Pairs move fluidly together, matching and leading box step-like patterns with countless variations, while embracing, spinning, reversing direction and alternating upper body orientation. Partnering has elements of line dancing, ballroom, and salsa. The addition of bopping places the center of gravity forward, with dancers positioned lightly on the balls of the feet. The follower is led traveling up and back in a lane. The leader travels on, off and around the lane.
The group dances surface seemingly intuitively, although signaled by the music. With complex footwork and floor patterns, the group moves seamlessly. The form includes the cha-cha, 8-count, half-turns, 360 turns. The upper body moves smoothly in relation to the footwork. Arms are held at the waist, and certain moves, including turns and direction changes, are signaled by a gentle touch of the partner’s hand or wrist. Loose, smooth, relaxed, and in control are the modes of presentation.
The Milwaukee style differs from the Chicago style in small, but important details. The standard steps of the 7, 8 phrase in Milwaukee are slightly more exaggerated. Chicago-style footwork sometimes blends the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 steps into intuitive, organic rhythms like 1-3, 4, 5, 6-8. Milwaukee starts on the upbeat, with left foot on the 7 count. It is only through practice and experience that one can perform these variations in a way that can be read and understood by a knowledgeable and smooth partner. At all times, execution and style are emphasized.
Social choreography’s strategies to produce conditions of possibility include rehearsal and improvisation. We need models of art, society, and politics that move, dance, shimmy, stumble, flex, bend, twist, fold, improvise, rehearse and practice. We need models that may flail and stutter and repeat with difference and hold and release.
How can the movement vocabulary of choreography transpose, or translate to an idea of a new genre of Human as process, a practice, moving, a verb? When we say moving, we include such modes as stillness, silence, resistance, refusal, stumbling, gesture, failing or flailing. A body at rest is still in motion. Any conception of the body is a body in action – at the cellular level we are a churning mess of activity, our organs are always at work, etc. The body is always engaged with process, with doing, and sharing and showing this doing to others. The body is not a philosophical event, but an open set of ongoing relations.
The members of MSBU rehearse several times a week across the city of Milwaukee. These rehearsals may take the form of dance classes, offered for free. They attract a spectrum of participants, from young adult to older, and across a wide range of professions and social positions. Bars and clubs offer dance floor space, and a place to gather in the name of the social.
The rehearsals themselves are fairly loose in structure. There is a leader, usually one of the senior members of the club. Importantly, there is also a DJ to organize the music. The DJ is deeply invested in the stepping community and understands what the instructor needs on the dance floor, focusing on music with a clear 8-count beat. The DJ and leader work together seamlessly. The leader begins the rehearsal with some very basic steps to welcome in any newcomers. These are usually an up-and-down 8-count, with the followers staying within their lane. She calls out the count and direction changes, and proposes new combinations. She may perform the new steps quickly for everyone, but depending upon her read of the room, she may assume her participants’ familiarity with the moves. The mood is relaxed and easygoing, with laughter and teasing when someone misses a step.
Newcomers are expected to catch up quickly or step to the back of the group, so that the more experienced dancers can move freely and in unison. The dancers who are having trouble eventually converge at the back to create their own small subset of a class, helping and encouraging one another in their count. At the end of the rehearsal class, the DJ changes the music to more complex counts. Now the rehearsal has ended, and the performance begins. The dance floor opens to everyone, and the experts take center floor. Newbies and less experienced dancers are left to hang at the edge and watch.
Improvisation within the Milwaukee Steppers and Ballrooms United (MSBU) organization is a major factor on the dance floor. Their complex and beautiful improvised patterns and footwork are only possible with much practice, rehearsal, artistic knowledge and grace. The lead and the follower, as partners, must have an intuitive sense of one another’s movements. This intuition is necessary in order to anticipate the improvisational forms performed by each, as well as the ability to build off of these, enhancing their partner’s form and style. It is only by understanding the form at an embodied level that the dancers can exhibit improvisation. Improvisation is making informed decisions at the moment the possibilities arise, and is a kind of thinking by doing. The dancers of MSBU improvise and adjust with dexterous fluidity, grace and confidence.
Choreography produces or shapes relations. I propose a choreography that acts as a ‘rehearsal’ for intersubjectivity and politics. Philosopher Lewis Gordon asks, “What ultimately is the point of calling for democracy if we cling to models that don’t groove — that is, don’t exemplify the people’s living engagement, participation, and responsibility for institutions of power and their creative transformation?”
BECAUSE WE DO IT, WE BELIEVE IT. It is not because we believe it we do something, but because we do something we believe it. This is the register of social choreography. Social choreography has the capacity to bring about new ideologies, in addition to reproducing existing ones. Social choreography does something, and does something for and with others.
Ideology is not a reliable choreographer. MSBU practices a liberatory social choreography, making room for more and exceeding the original form. With their example, may we all make moves toward ethical ways of being together.
In anticipation of the opening of our new space in September 2024, we invited active participants and longtime contributors to the artistic communities in Wisconsin to write about the cultural context of this region. While we recognized the impossibility of capturing this state in its entirety through this one endeavour, the goal was to gather a range of perspectives to provide a fuller and more complex understanding of the artistic production of this region. We welcomed thoughtful, critical pieces that allow readers to see the artistic milieu, or this place, in a new light, reflections on Wisconsin's histories that have defined its present, or future-facing pieces that guide us towards new directions.
Kim Miller is an artist, performer and choreographer based in Milwaukee, WI. She has performed live and shown video at Anthology Film Archive, New York; ImpulsTanz, Vienna; The Suburban, Oak Park; Green Gallery, Milwaukee; MOMA, New York City; MASS MoCA, North Adams; and Art in General, New York City.