What is Fusion?

© 2013 Sara Van Vreede - Shot at Livin' The Blues - http://www.livintheblues.co.uk

Fusion… A can of worms surely. One of those things that seemed to develop while no one was looking. This has been the subject of much debate, as has nearly every change in music, dance and culture. Like many things including Lindy Hop, Blues Dance and Hip Hop, it is being heralded as something that will destroy us all, something for people who don’t know how to dance, and a really good time if you’re not too stodgy to enjoy it.

It is the opinion of the organizers that fusion is nothing more than the intersection of your dance experience, your partner’s dance experience and the music. None of which might line up in a tradition sense. This does leave us with some intriguing implications. For instance:

If you’ve danced lindy hop to a song from the 50s and inserted Charleston… you could be considered to be doing fusion.

Done Charleston to some new electro-swing with a partner who knows balboa… you could be doing fusion.

Dancing blues with a tango dancer to trip-hop? Definitely doing fusion.

Fusion happens anywhere your dancing and the music blend at a level that transcends any artificial boundary we’ve set up for ourselves in our dancing.  The more dances you know and the more music you want to dance those dances to, the more likely it is that you’ll be dancing some sort of fusion.

Still not sure what it means? You’ll just have to come by to see what it means.

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4 thoughts on “What is Fusion?

  1. My thought as someone who organizes a Fusion event is that Fusion is starting to develop it’s own style of music genre that is definitely contemporary, dub-step, lyrical, electronic. And that Fusion is the dance that comes from dancing our older style to the newer music. So I guess my comment is that Fusion dancing is doing Charleston to electronic, or Lindy, or Tango, but the music is starting to become a definite genre.

  2. I like this definition. It’s pretty loose, but so is fusion. When you take more than one style and combine them you have a fusion dance, ta da! I’ve thrown a mess around into a WCS dance during a break. It was epic and very fusion oriented.

    • Nice example! Taking influences from other dances when the moment seizes you is a natural way to do fusion that doesn’t require a lot of being precious or thinking too hard about it. In the end, if you had fun and it fits the music, that’s awesome!

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