A Snippet of History
A monthly little bit of education
Did you know that ballroom dance instructors in the late 1930s originally dismissed lindy hop as just a passing fad? In 1936, Philip Nutl, president of the American Society of Teachers of Dancing, declared that swing would not last beyond the winter.
When it became obvious that this was not the case, the ballroom instructors turned to sniping - in 1938, Donald Grant, president of the Dance Teachers' Business Association, said that swing music "is a degenerated form of jazz, whose devotees are the unfortunate victims of economic instability."
Finally, by 1942, members of the New York Society of Teachers of Dancing decided that the jitterbug could no longer be ignored. However, they decided to tone down the "cavortings" and refine them for their largely white (and older, upper class) students.
The result? East Coast Swing.
The New York teachers (on the east coast...) took the very basic steps of lindy, stripped them way down, and then decided to base them on a slightly different timing - not the eight counts of lindy, but the six counts of the fox trot. Then they called this new dance the "jitterbug" or the "lindy," which is also what the original eight-count version of lindy was called at the time, thereby confusing everyone as to what was what.
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This is why Swing Des Moines usually tells its students that swing is not a ballroom dance, it's actually an anti-ballroom dance. It's a street dance, danced originally by black kids in Harlem, and developed organically - about as far removed from a ballroom dance studio as one can get.
Did you know that ballroom dance instructors in the late 1930s originally dismissed lindy hop as just a passing fad? In 1936, Philip Nutl, president of the American Society of Teachers of Dancing, declared that swing would not last beyond the winter.
When it became obvious that this was not the case, the ballroom instructors turned to sniping - in 1938, Donald Grant, president of the Dance Teachers' Business Association, said that swing music "is a degenerated form of jazz, whose devotees are the unfortunate victims of economic instability."
Finally, by 1942, members of the New York Society of Teachers of Dancing decided that the jitterbug could no longer be ignored. However, they decided to tone down the "cavortings" and refine them for their largely white (and older, upper class) students.
The result? East Coast Swing.
The New York teachers (on the east coast...) took the very basic steps of lindy, stripped them way down, and then decided to base them on a slightly different timing - not the eight counts of lindy, but the six counts of the fox trot. Then they called this new dance the "jitterbug" or the "lindy," which is also what the original eight-count version of lindy was called at the time, thereby confusing everyone as to what was what.
-----
This is why Swing Des Moines usually tells its students that swing is not a ballroom dance, it's actually an anti-ballroom dance. It's a street dance, danced originally by black kids in Harlem, and developed organically - about as far removed from a ballroom dance studio as one can get.
posted by Swing Des Moines at
9:26 PM
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