bluesSHOUT! April 6-8, 2018

What is blues?
What is idiom?
How are these ideas related and where do they meet?

Blues-idiom dance and the blues-idiom dances are two parts of the same whole. Dancing in the blues aesthetic to blues music is doing blues idiom dance. At the same time, dancing a specific historical dance that was created for a specific style of music is doing a blues-idiom dance. Blues idiom dances represent both the diversity and commonality of the people.

Each year we reflect on the work we have done and the pulse of the blues community. Blues is not a moment in time, it is a movement. Blues is a living tradition. The momentum of the community is what carries that tradition forward.

"We tend to think of shouting in the standard English sense of referring to noisemaking, but it means a … way of moving the whole congregation, whether through vocal or movement vocabulary. ...Through moving together while playing apart, the entire universe is animated for the moment...” Roger Abrahams