Thread: Who dances regularly with a band?

One of my joys I have discovered over the past three years is dancing to live music. Becoming involved in the SCA has opened up many opportunities for me to dance with musicians on a fairly low stress performance level. In my area, we have little opportunity to perform with a live band, much less on a regular basis. Its inspired me so much to the point where I have rekindled my love/hate affair with playing the violin and am currently trying to start growing interest in Middle Eastern music in my area with the hopes of getting some people interested in starting band, so I just would like to know:

Who out there dances regularly to live music?
What to you love about it, what do you not like about it, and what would you change?
I've heard of the spitting tips rule between the house, band, and dancer, but does anyone know how bands have been employed at venues?

My experience is purely on the workshop/festival/SCA level. I've performed with Sohail Kaspar a couple of times when he's taught workshops in the Southeast, but again all my experiences have been pretty rosy. I'm looking for some realistic experience to help in my journey of ensemble exploration. Any advice and experience is welcome.

Thanks in advance!

~Majda

I don't perform anymore but I did dance to live bands almost exclusively for 20 some years. I LOVE live bands IF the band knows how to play for a dancer. Luckily I worked in clubs where at the time that they had house bands and house dancers. The longer you work with a band the better it is. I could have the band change a song or rhythm with just a crook of the finger. They knew me, I knew them.

Now occasionally, I'd do parties with a stange band. It's best to have a large selection of songs to choose from. A house band maybe able to play oriental musicals and Oum Khoulsoum, but a party band may not have enough musicians to pull of those type of pieces or even know them as they tend to play more pop.

There are times when a band will test the dancer to see if she can keep up with them. I've seen bands deliberately try to screw up a dancer as well.

I know in the nightclubs they tended to hire individual musicians to form a band rather than hire an established band.

At parties I've performed sometimes they hire established bands and sometime they hire one musician who then hires the rest.