There are many other regional dances, such as Shag that also popped up in little pockets throughout the Swing Era and Rock n’ Roll era. Rather, our dancing is based on a fun, care free and not overly complicated approach to social dancing. That EU version of Rock n’ Roll is primarily danced for competition and consists of very athletic acrobatics with very few actual dance steps in between. There are also more “street” interpretations of Jive that are basically what we call Rock n’ Roll, and the Rockabilly communities will even call it Rockabilly dancing though it’s the same dance simply put to rougher music.Īlso, what we call Rock n’ Roll dancing in Canada is actually called Boogie Woogie in Europe as opposed to the very athletic performance dance that the Europeans call Rock n’ Roll. You might be most familiar with the name Jive Rock n’ Roll is similar though more free than the Jive that is often associated with Ballroom studios and Ballroom culture. Essentially, these are all dances based on Lindy Hop, but they started to bounce more and become less horizontally stretchy than Lindy Hop instead the dances of the 50s and early 60s tend to be more contained and while they still have some elastic, they connection is tighter and shorter and the posture is more vertical. Some communities would even still hang on to the earlier white name for Lindy Hop and call it Jitterbug. However, depending on where you are geographically, or what kind of community you dance with, you might call almost the same dance steps Boogie Woogie or Jive. Rock n’ Roll dancing is danced to early Rock n’ Roll music. He influenced the popular music of the time, and the music inspired changes to the dancing. Just as Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong were defining musicians for the Jazz Era, Chuck Berry was one of the early defining forces in the Rock n’ Roll Era. West Coast Swing is a style of dance that did evolve out of Dean Collins’ smoother style of Lindy Hop, but it’s not danced to the same kind of music. It’s less of a traditional swing dance and more of a contemporary partnered dance that suits pop, soul, R&B, blues and hip-hop. “West Coast Swing” is a dance that confuses many people who are looking for Lindy Hop but aren’t familiar with that name. East Coast Swing can be danced to the music of the 30s and 40s but better suits early the Rock n’ Roll of the 1950s. East Coast swing is strictly based on six-count patterns while Lindy Hop, which evolved organically as a street dance, is a mix of six-count, eight-count, Charleston, jig and other patterns. They took the most basic Lindy Hop steps and simplified them in a standardized way so that they could instruct the masses. Everyone wanted to learn Lindy Hop and essentially the studio created a dance that would be easier for them to teach. “East Coast Swing” was the Arthur Murry Dance Studios response to Lindy Hop. Dean himself picked up his Lindy Hop back in New York at the Savoy and, like all of good dancers, had his own unique style, but when he moved out to California his smoother style of dancing rubbed off on the people around him, mainly white dancers, and that’s the style that you’ll see in most of the old Hollywood movies. Lindy Hop was born in Harlem, New York but as it began to spread across North America, the same steps with a slightly different style might have been called Jitterbug, or just “Lindy” and on the West Coast many of the dancers were influenced by a dancer named Dean Collins and they named their own smoother style of Lindy Hop after him. Jitterbug was the white name for Lindy Hop. Some of the very orchestrated sounds of the big bands is more suitable for ballroom dances like Fox Trot, where Lindy Hop is best danced to the hotter jazz that came earlier. But even by the 1940s big bands, the music was changing and so was the dancing. Afterward, Lindy Hop (which also integrates the earlier Charleston steps) is best danced to the swinging jazz of the late 1920s through to the mid-1940s. People should dance to the type of music that they enjoy, and when you connect with the music your dancing will shape itself appropriately.įirst came straight Charleston which was danced to the very specific Charleston music of the 1920s. The titles don’t *really* matter. The defining factor for each style of dance is the music. When most people think of Swing Dancing, they might not know the name but they usually have Lindy Hop in mind.īut what are all of these other styles of dance? Rock n’ Roll, Boogie Woogie, Jitterbug, Jive, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, etc. At Bees’ Knees Dance, we specialize particularly in Lindy Hop which is the original form of Swing Dancing that evolved out of the Charleston era and was popular until WWII. Swing Dancing represtents a broad umbrella of styles of dance. Pop by and check out more of our Blog Posts! Toronto Blog Posts.
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