More recent additions to the genre include, Rock 'n Roll, Modern Jive, Ceroc and Le Roc.
The Turkey Trot and the Bunny Hug were popular during the first decade of the 20th century.
The Turkey trot was danced to ragtime music such as Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. The dance was denounced by the Vatican, and it immediately achieved great popularity. The positions assumed by the dancers were thought by the church at the time to be suggestive.
The Bunny Hug developed along the West Coast in California's dance halls. The dance was characterized by dancers moving, wriggling, shaking and even grinding their bodies together to slow blues music.
Up until the first decade of the 20th Century, dances were generally danced in closed dance position. Swing dancing is characterized by breaking away into open positions. Many claim that the first Swing dance was the Texas Tommy. It originated in the Red-light district of San Francisco, and became legitimized and popular at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
Today, there are two main sub-categories in the Swing dance genre. They are the East Coast Swing and the West Coast Swing.
East Coast Swing has a simple structure and footwork, with basic moves and styling. It is popular because of its forgiving informal nature. It is usually danced to slow, medium or fast tempo jazz and blues, or to slow tempo rock and roll.
West Coast Swing was developed as a stylistic version of the Lindy Hop. The followers in West Coast Swing stay in a slot, going back and forth, and don't move from left to right. But, this also improves their ability to spin to the left or the right. West Coast Swing can be danced to blues, jazz, and slow rock and roll. The West Coast of the USA, is where a very strong movie industry developed (Hollywood). It is thought that the slotted movements may have developed to make it easier to film the dancers, with the dancers staying in the same focal plane (to stay in focus), and not having their backs to the camera as much as they would in East Coast Swing.
Also today, Swing is the term generally used for the slower paced 8-count Jazz or Rock ‘n Roll music. In Australia the terms “Rock ‘n Roll” and “Jive” are quite often used synonymously to label the faster paced dance, danced to 4/4 time Rock ‘n Roll music. Elsewhere, what we call “Rock ‘n Roll” dancing is called Boogie-Woogie, and the term “Rock ‘n Roll” is reserved for the more acrobatic style of the dance.The term “Lindy Hop” is not used a lot in Australia, but it is overseas.
Jive in Ballroom dancing competition is danced at a speed of 44 bars per minute, otherwise at between 32 and 40 bars per minute.
Page 2 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next
|