All About Swing Workshop

African Roots

• Swing dancing has African roots.
• Commonalities in African dances are linked through their orientation towards the earth, animals, and daily life.
• Many African dances express the motions of life such as animal movements (strutting like a bird) and daily human tasks (planting crops), or “express the power of spirits in whirling and strong forward steps.”
• African dance also takes a holistic approach to the dancing body – all parts are used, sometimes resulting in an asymmetrical use of the body, contrasting greatly from European forms of dance that often rely on arm and leg movement only.
• Typical types of actions include angular bending of arms, legs and torso, shoulder movements, bending at the waist, centrifugal hip movement, scuffing, stamping, hopping, flat-footed gliding, dragging and shuffling of the feet, and a wide crouching, solid stance

Swing Dance = distinctly American

• African dance in North America began through slavery
• “Contemporary Afro-American dances are frequently a recycled version of dances performed in previous generations, some dating back to the pre-emancipation and a few traceable to Africa” – Katrina Hazzard-Gordon in “African-American Vernacular Dance…”
• Many early dances mimicked animals – Pigeon Wing, Buzzard Lop, Snake Hips) or human activity (Cakewalk)
• CAKEWALK: the most famous of competitive African-American dances. It was developed as a parody of owner’s aristocratic manners by slaves, imitating the stiff upper bodies of quadrilles, cotillions and other pattern dances and contrasting it with loose leg movements from African dance. It was customary for the winner of a Cakewalk competition to be awarded a cake (hence the name Cakewalk?)
• On stage, most dancers were white, such as Thomas Rice. T. D. “Daddy” Rice was a “white northern performer who popularized the parody of the ‘dancing darkie’ by ‘blackening up’ and performing a syncopated jig.” His most famous dance, the ‘Jump Jim Crow’ was the duplication of the movements of a crippled slave.
  

Charleston/Black Bottom

• The Black Bottom was basically a solo challenge dance. Predominantly dance on the ‘off-beat’ and was the prototype for modern tap phrasing. The dance featured the slapping of the backside while hopping forward and backwards, stamping the feet and gyrations of the torso while making arm movements to music with an occasional ‘heel-toe-scoop’ which was very erotic in those dances. The dance eventually got refined and entered the ballroom.

Lindy Hop

• Soon, in ballrooms, music started to change – jazz music spread from New Orleans to the rest of the United States. Characterized by syncopation, polyrhythm and improvisation, it evolved directly from African influence.
• As jazz musicians experimented, as did dancers and it is from this experimentation that Lindy Hop emerges.
• The Lindy Hop is a partner dance that is characterized by the ‘swing out’ where the partnered couple spends 4 beats in closed position and 4 beats in open position, allowing for improvisation and freedom of expression for each member of the couple.
• “Where did Lindy Hop come from? A blending of African solo movement for personal expression and European folk/courtly social dance, swing dance has remote plantation roots. The marriage at first took place on the Afro-American side, often as a mockery of European partner dancing. As Afro partnering styles developed, they became much more sexually suggestive than even the most torrid of Anglo social dances, the (gasp!) Waltz… LINDY HOP quickly encompassed the huge repertoire of its pre-history jazz dances and moves; then its’ repertoire grew like crazy.” - Kurt Lichtmann “Lindy Hop: aka Jitterbug Origins”
• By the mid-1930s, the Lindy Hop was the rage and everyone (black and white) flocked to Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom to participate in the craze. The style that dominated this period in time is now referred to as Savoy style.
• Side-note: Balboa - Another dance, Balboa, emerged when dance floors became so crowded that ‘swing outs’ were impossible to do. Characterized by close contact and fast footwork, Bal has now reemerged as Bal-Swing.
  Balboa Rhythm and Basic
• However, there were many in society who found the pelvic gyrations and frantic movements immoral and sinful. By the late 1930s and 40s, as Lindy Hop became popular middle class youth, the establishment decided to revamp the dance and a more erect, proper, and conservative style (now referred to Hollywood style as characterized by Hollywood movies featuring dancing Gis) emerged.

50s to 60s – Jitterbug - Jive/East-Coast/West-Coast

• As music changed, the dance once again changed.
• As well, dance instructors such as Arthur Murray and Dean Collins began to water-down and standardize the Lindy Hop, which gradually evolved into Jive/East-Coast and West-Coast Swing
• By the 1960s, partnered dancing was considered old-fashioned and restrictive compared to the individualist nature of The Twist and other types ‘free-dancing’.
• As Frances Rust writes in “Dance in Society”, “The twist, in turn, ushered in the era of ‘solo’ or ‘partner-less’ dancing, now accepted as completely normal amongst the young, but still regarded as a rather startling phenomena by the middle-aged [during The Sixties].”
• Ballroom dance, where a watered down, simplified version of the Lindy Hop existed, was felt to be representative of the conservative views of the older generation regarding sexuality and was no part of youth culture during the 1960s-80s.
  

Swing Today

• However, by the 1990s, there emerged a desire amongst a number of youth to return to the days of old.
• As Degan Pener argues in “The Swing Book” - Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, gender roles have become increasingly ill defined. Women were told they should ask men on dates, pay their own way, and be the sexual aggressors. Men, meanwhile, worried they could be threatened with a sexual harassment suit if they so much as looked twice at a woman. The swing movement reembraces certain established conventions: men hold doors, buy drinks, and ask women to dance. In the dance, they tend to be the leaders, the women the followers.
• Pener argues that people are attracted to Swing Dance for its inherent social structure, feeling that it will make it easier to relate interpersonally. He also suggests that dance, because it incorporates skill, expertise and manners with social interaction “swing provides a way of enjoying physical intimacy without the dangers of sex…”
• However, personally I feel that these words need to be taken with a grain of salt. Not all dancers wear suits and dresses or that only men ask women to dance.
• For example take this dated statement form the Don’ts For Beginners section of Arthur Murray’s 1947 book, “How To Become A Good Dancer” he writes: The Man always asks for the favor of a dance… it is bad form for the Girl to decline to dance unless she is ill or is not dancing. Above all, she must not dance with one man and refuse another.
• I think we can all agree that this is a little dated. The fact remains that swing dancing today, although many steps have managed to survive the years, the dance culture associated as definitely changed.
• Swinging both ways – “Switch-hitters” – new dance identity! Some even argue that by learning both roles it makes one a better dancer. Also it illustrates that dancing has evolved to become something beyond a method to find a husband or wife.
• Jack & Jill / Jack & Jack / Jill & Jill Competitions
• HOWEVER, the etiquette associated with dance culture has managed to stay intact. RESPECT yourself, your partner, and everyone else on the dance floor!

Getting Involved

• Lindy Exchanges
• Dance Camps
• Private Lessons
• Workshops