Dance away to the blues

It only makes sense then that for a couple Fridays out of the month, REO Town hosts an event where you can slick back your hair, grab your best girl and dance the Cake Walk. Enter Sugar House Blues.

“Blues dancing is very accessible, though it’s unlike most dancing,” said Kent Kovac, co-founder and dance instructor at Sugar House Blues. “It’s all about grounding yourself.

Sugar House Blues is a new community dance group that meets on the first and third Friday of every month at REO Town’s AA Creative Corridor. The group’s focus is on educating, teaching and dancing the blues. Seasoned vets are encouraged to come out and show off their best Slow Drag just as much as those of us who don’t even know what the Black Bottom is.

Blues dancing is a style of dance developed over many decades that is performed alongside blues music. Like most dance classifications, there are many styles and it can even be performed at times without a partner.

To further envelop you in the Sugar House Blues experience, Kovac said guests are encouraged to wear periodappropriate clothing, but it’s not required.

While blues dancing saw many periods of popularity, many blues dances were developed alongside hit songs of the 1920s. So when choosing your attire, think double-breasted jackets for the gents and cloche hats for the ladies.

“Sometimes we dance dressed casual and sometimes we dance dressed to the nines.” Kovac said. “But if you got it, trot it.”

While not necessarily always in the blues style, Kovac has been involved in dancing for over 10 years. His early forays into community dance were the ballroom dance groups he participated in when he was a student at MSU. It wasn’t until a friend of his took him to an event in Grand Rapids where Kovac found a more favorable niche in the dancing world.

“It felt like I got into blues dancing almost accidentally, but I was really drawn to the improvised style,” Kovac said. “It was so simple to learn complicated tricks.”

But Kovac’s fondness was merely a steppingstone to Sugar House Blues. Kovac made a few attempts at starting a community blues dance group in his time at MSU, but it never seemed to stick (although MSU is now home to the Michigan State Blues Club). It wasn’t unit the efforts of two friends and Kovac’s fiancée — and a little help from Bryan Grochowski of AA Creative Corridor’s other community dance group, Salsa Capital — that Sugar House found its home in REO Town. And Kovac feels the location couldn’t be more appropriate.

“REO Town is an up-and-coming community,” he said. “We’re not working directly with REO Town or anything, but we really want to be there.”

Sugar House Blues is relatively new:

Friday’s event, a New Year’s-themed celebration, will only be its fourth meeting. As far as what’s to come for 2015 and the future of Sugar House Blues, Kovac hopes to see his project grow organically.

“We just want to see more community involvement,” said Kovac. “And after that, see the group take a life of its own.”

—JONATHAN GRIFFITH

Sugar House Blues

Friday, Jan. 2 Drop-in beginner lesson 8 p.m./Open Dance 9 p.m.- midnight $5 AA Creative Corridor, 1133 S. Washington Ave., Lansing sugarhouseblues.com