Pat McNees, writer, editor,
personal historian

Selection from Dancing: A Guide to the Capital Area by Pat McNees, currently in revision. See links below

Swing dance, says Leslie Plant, “developed in the 1920s when the Lindy Hop, an energetic improvisational jazz dance, took Harlem by storm. By the 1930s, with the arrival of the swing style of Big Band Dance, the Lindy Hop, sometimes referred to as the ‘one true American Folk Dance,' had become even more popular, drawing huge crowds to ballrooms across the country.” Swing dancers consider swing a folk dance. Stan Fowler, the clogging Glen Echo Park ranger, backs his case with a 1943 article from Lifemagazine headed: “The Lindy Hop: A True National Folk Dance Has Been Born in U.S.A.” Much of the energy behind the original swing revival in D.C. came from contra dancers, many of whom became interested in swing in the 1980s because Ken Haltenhoff and Anne Townsend were doing it at all-night parties Ken would hold after the Bluemont contra dance. Many contra dancers do both; some are shifting their allegiance to swing.

What is the difference between the Lindy Hop, swing, jitterbug, and shag? between West Coast, western, and East Coast swing? and between Varsity, St. Louis, and Carolina shag? First, it's important to understand that there are both eight-beat and six-beat forms of swing (not to mention four-beat). The Lindy Hop used eight (not the usual four) beats of music to complete a figure. Popular in the late ’20s, it originated in 1927 after Lindbergh's flight to Paris, when some young black dancers began improvising eccentric off-beat steps in a corner of the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. The couple would start together in ballroom position, then the man would fling his partner away and improvise on a “solo hop,” reminiscent of Lindbergh's then-recent flight across the Atlantic. (I lean here on two excellent accounts by Robert Crease of the dance's early history: “Swing Story” in the 2/86 Atlantic Monthly and “Last of the Lindy Hoppers” in the 8/25/87 Village Voice.)

Jitterbug, which was popular in the 1930s, speeded the dance up, says Craig Hutchinson of Potomac Swing (emphasizing that no two people will agree on these definitions), using six beats of music for each figure. Both the lindy and jitterbug used acrobatics, aerials (e.g., flipping the woman over the man’s back), and breakaways (where the partners break apart from each other and do different things). “In the forties,” says Hutch, “the dance schools tamed the jitterbug and Lindy Hop — took out all the bumps and grinds, squats and aerials — and the music changed, too. They started playing swing music and came up with a much smoother, more sophisticated form of dance called swing.

The extended rhythm of the Lindy's eight counts, writes Crease, gave the dancers “plenty of leeway to incorporate elaborate twirls, flips, and all the other jazz steps, including the Charleston. The dancing became hotter still with the arrival of the swing style of big-band music, in the mid-thirties; the swing sound developed when bands substituted bass and guitar for tuba and banjo in their rhythm sections. (The term swing soon spread from the music to the dance. Today dance studios use swing, Lindy, and jitterbug synonymously, although dance connoisseurs make distinctions among them, considering swing dancing to be the whole genre and jitterbugging to refer to a bouncy, six-count variant of Lindying.” Crease says the Swedes (who are great at swing dancing) call swing “the American hambo” (a wonderful but complex Scandinavian couples dance).

Swing developed in two different directions: into East Coast swing, which is danced in a circular area, and West Coast swing, which is danced on a straight track. “In country swing and jitterbug,” says Craig Hutchinson, “the emphasis is on leading the lady through a variety of dance positions: the man who can take the woman through the most moves in fifty beats is the winner. Westcoast swing is sometimes called slot dancing, because the man stands in one place and passes the woman back and forth to either side as if she were in a slot.” West Coast swing in the Midwest emphasizes taking the ladies through a variety of dance positions. On the West Coast it emphasizes the lady doing synocopated rhythm breaks (syncopations). West Coast swing on the East Coast, a la Carolina shag, emphasizes the man doing the rhythm breaks — the man is the show.

In country swing there's very little leg work; in West Coast there's a lot of leg and foot work. (In the hustle the emphasis is on the upper body and the lady's arm work.) To the old timers East Coast swing is jitterbug and West Coast swing is swing and then there’s ‘studio swing’ (or “jive”) to cover the swing taught in dance studios. There's also ‘triple swing,’ where you add a couple steps on the slow beats.

If that doesn't confuse you, add shag, which, says Hutch, “has its roots in the Charleston music of the twenties and was popularized as the Varsity shag in the thirties. Shag has different meanings to dancers in different parts of the country. Originally it was a light bouncing dance predominantly performed in closed dancing position, emphasizing fancy footwork and an eight-beat figure, with a few breakaways. It was originally (in the thirties) called Varsity Shag, is currently called the Balboa out on the West coast, and is not to be confused with St. Louis shag (which is a variation on the Lindy hop) nor Carolina shag (which is a variation of West Coast swing, which in turn is called Alcatraz in New Orleans).” [See Robert Crease's interesting article, “The Return of the Shag” in the September 1988 Atlantic.]

“The problem is,” Hutch continues, “every major U.S. city has its own style of swing dancing. I use the term generically to cover every form of swing from the l910s Texas Tommy to the 1980s hustle. It’s the form of dance the young generation performs to their popular contemporary music. You can lump Charleston in there — it’s predominantly where they’re dancing as a couple. The dance schools are continually trying to tame whatever dance forms are out there so the elderly ladies can dance it. They’re always saying the younger generation is going to pot — and their dances have to be watered down so their older clientele can feel comfortable doing them.” (They said the same thing about the waltz, which so wickedly brought male and female bodies close together.)

“The Lindy Hop was performed by young kids in the twenties, jitterbug in the thirties, swing in the forties, and rock and roll/bebop/Carolina shag in the fifties. In the sixties, young kids broke away and danced animal caricature dances; in the seventies they danced the hustle.” Each of these dances is characterized by a unique set of moves that are suited to the music of the period. “The music of the seventies lent itself to the development of the hustle just as the music of the twenties lent itself to the development of the Lindy Hop.”


Copyright (c) by Pat McNees. Do not reprint without permission (for which, contact the author at www.patmcnees.com).