Guido and Marta

Guido Maria Bianchini and Marta Leoni, or if you prefer, as for their students, simply Guido and Marta, have been teaching dance for eight years and are Balboa teachers.
But not only that. They love jazz music so much that they have spread their passion through a podcast born two years ago, which they have called 'Lost in the shuffle', literally 'Lost in the shuffle'. In order to offer anyone who wants to approach this genre a different musical perspective, so that they don't get lost in the shuffle. How? By telling us all the jazz stories we need to hear.
'Shuffle' actually also has a clear reference to Balboa, it's a play on words: and in this case it means to move by sliding back and forth without lifting or shuffling your feet, i.e. to perform a dance with a dragging, flowing step.

'With Marta we created a cultural association,' Guido begins, 'and we called it 'Lost in the shuffle'. We don't have a real dance school. We are interested in creating events, we made this podcast on Spotify where we talk about music, women in music, sexism, racism, and of course we also give some advice on what's good to listen to. Our intention is to promote live music and tell stories about music'.

How do you currently carry out your activities?
"Marta and I are teaching individually in Milan, Como, Bergamo and Parma. Upcoming programmes? We have been called to Cagliari and the Trieste festival in July'.

Tell us about how you got started.
"I have been a musician since before I started dancing. I started when I met Marta, I saw her dancing in a Dixieland (*) evening here in Milan and I fell in love with both her and dancing. I am a saxophonist and double bass player, I have played with Giorgio Cuscito and Mauro Porro's groups, among others. Swing is our music and as a double bass player I am particularly fond of the sounds of the 20s and 30s, I have an instrument set especially for 1930s hot jazz'.

In dancing, therefore, Marta started first. We asked her to tell us about Balboa in particular.
"I can tell you why I started dancing Balboa and I would recommend dancing Balboa. I love the fact that being symmetrical makes it easy to break down and recompose figures, to be very musical. I am free to interpret the music, to play on the rhythms. I have a predilection for faster rhythms so I am very comfortable in Balboa'.

What kind of dancers would you recommend it to?
'For Lindy Hoppers who do not like to appear too much, the Balboa is perfect because it does not have the show component of the Lindy. Of course, it could also have it but it doesn't have to have it: for people like me who mainly like to dance without appearing too much, it is just perfect. Also, the relationship between leader and follower is not so defined: of course at the beginning you start with the leader leading and the follower following, but then everyone can take their own space and the leading becomes shared, making it even more manageable to play music as a single and not necessarily as a couple'.

And you, Guido, do you perhaps feel like a musician 'lent' to swing dancing?
"When I started playing I had a penchant for more modern jazz, 50s-60s, John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins style, to be precise. Thanks to dance I discovered the whole world of classic jazz or traditional jazz, call it what you will: in short, hot jazz, all that genre that exploded before the war. And I got into it. I think there is also a bit of snobbery on the part of jazz musicians towards swing, whereas there is still a lot to be said for swing, besides being a lot of fun to play. I also find it very didactically useful for modern jazz musicians to get to know swing from the 1930s and 1940s well'.

How do you position yourself in this, shall we say, parallel role?
"As a musician, I learnt to feel at the service of the ballroom. Many musicians snub the dance because there is a lack of mutual education: some dancers often do not applaud the orchestra, I happen to see at festivals people sitting on the stage, with their backs to the musicians, looking only at the dance floor, and the musicians thus do not feel much part of the whole, of the party going on. I like to play for the dance because I have a personal response. Then of course there are nicer environments and uglier environments in which to do it. Until the 1950s jazz was a dance music, and if you play that in the 1930s, which was a music inextricably linked to dance, it's only right that history perpetuates itself. In a jazz club I play differently, I can afford to do something else, they are two different levels of expressiveness that must, however, be complementary'.

At first you talked about a double whammy: Swing and Marta...
"I got into dancing by chance. One evening, as I said, I went to a hall to listen to Paolo Tomelleri performing in a Dixieland orchestra. To some people they were just 'old caryatids' who had been playing for no one for 18 years in an unknown club in Milan. There I met Marta with four or five other people who were dancing together with the elderly wives of those talented musicians. It was a bit of a passing of the baton in my opinion, a beautiful little bubble. I was passionate about seeing these people dance, I thought it was a wonderful environment. Marta was dancing Lindy Hop but we decided to experience something new for both of us together and we chose Balboa. And I have to say that it won me over immediately: it allows me to be musical because you dance closer, the connection is faster and so it allows me to break down the material I have and play with it. Just like I do as a musician. Like I play the phases on the double bass and saxophone, I play them while I dance..."

(*) Dixieland, according to the definition in the Treccani encyclopaedia, is a style of jazz specific to ensembles formed by non-African-American musicians. Born as an imitation of the black music typical of New Orleans, and also based on the extensive use of improvisation, Dixieland represents an evolution of the jazz language, mainly due to the greater technical mastery of the instruments.

To follow Lost in the Shuffle: https://www.lostintheshuffle.it/

Their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lostshuffle

To listen to the Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/37lX3Oeaw5zTg7AhgV06Kv?si=07fa1895a0c14d3e