i've really wanted to learn to swing dance but then i found these different types. any help appreciated.|||You should really learn the dance that is associated with the music that you like! If you try and learn a dance, and you don't like the music, you won't have any fun.
Here's the break down:
East Coast Swing . . . is a ballroom standard dance. It really could be danced to any kind of music, so it really depends on the teacher or studio you learn from. It's normally the easiest form of swing dancing, the first kind you will learn because it's easy. Personal recommendation, don't learn the "single step" version. You really will want to learn the version that has a "triple step" in the basic, as this will help you excel at more advanced kinds of swing dancing.
West Coast Swing . . . is generally associated with ballroom, but it's not a standard ballroom dance. It's normally danced to blues, pop, dance, disco, funk, hip hop, and country music, but rarely real swing music. Again, if you like this kind of music, then this is the way to go, but personally, I prefer old swing music.
Lindy Hop . . . is a dance you won't find at most dance studios or ballrooms, yet it's the grand daddy of all swing dancing and is almost exclusively danced to big band swing music form the 30s and 40s. Even if you want to learn Lindy Hop, you will normally start with East Coast Swing as a beginner.
Here's the history of the dances:
Lindy Hop developed out of partner charleston in the late 1920's in Harlem. The dance evolved with swing jazz music in the 1930's till it be came the rage toward the end of the decade and into the early 1940's. The best dancers of the day would go to "The Savoy Ballroom" in Harlem and rub elbows with celebrities. A famous dance troupe to come out of the Savoy was "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers" who can be seen in this movie from 1941:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTg5V2oA_鈥?/a>
With the popularity of swing music booming in the early 1940s, ballroom teachers, studios, and associations scrambled to get some kind of standard swing dance they could teach to beginners. They determined that Lindy Hop was too difficult a dance to teach beginners, so they developed East Coast Swing out of a Foxtrot Basic. While the dance was essentially the easier to learn; however, it actually removed a lot of the aspects of the dance that "swing", which is why I'm removed from recommending anyone learn "just east coast swing". Anyways, the dance was relabeled many times by ballroom schools, calling the dance "the swing", "the jitterbug", "rock n' roll", and even "rockabilly".
West Coast Swing is a different story all together. A white kid from Jersey named Dean Collins, learned to dance Lindy Hop at the Savoy Ballroom, and at the age of 17 moved to Hollywood to try and break into movies. He eventually wound up being in more movies than any other swing dancer of the day. His smooth style was adjusted to show off the girl in a slot so that movie cameras could easily film dancing sequences, and this variation of smooth/slotted dancing eventually evolved into West Coast Swing. As the music changed, the West Coast Swing community simply adjusted the dance to fit the music resulting in the type of dance we see today.
If you want to see any of these dances, simply go to YouTube and type in the dance you want to see.
Additionally, even though these are the main dances you should be familiar with, there are several more kinds of swing dances you should be aware of, such as:
Charleston
Balboa
Collegiate Shag
Carolina Shag
Jive/Ceroc
Boogie Woogie
Hand Dancing
...and many others.
Anyways, I personally prefer Lindy Hop because it's the original form of swing dancing, plus I love the music! If you want to see some professional lindy hoppers doing their thing, check out this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJj0mNNe鈥?/a>
I hope that helps!|||Wow!! i think ill go with west coast swing.
Report Abuse
No comments:
Post a Comment