Looking for group classes? Our early 2010 class schedule is already set! If you are looking to get a solid start with swing dancing in the new year, be sure to check out the Swing Dance series class. Also, spice things up by adding some Charleston into you swing!

Keep these classes in mind if you are looking for an out-of-the-ordinary Christmas gift this year for someone special, friends, or family. Knowing how to dance is a lifelong skill that is called upon sometimes at the most unexpected times. Gift certificates for any of our series classes can be purchased by contacting us.

“The irony is that vintage is actually what all of the new stuff in stores is made to look like anyway. In a world where everything’s accessible and ubiquitous, vintage is the way to personalize your look.

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Looks like the had a shortage of leads back then.

Now before I go any further, let me say that this is by no means a slam on the ballroom community. Nowadays, this “one off” history is being passed along through no malice. It’s simply people relaying the information they were told from what they felt was a reliable source. Fortunately, as the swing scene boomed and many others found a love for the history and culture of the dance, this misinformation has become more the exception. It’s now easy to find good information about the roots of swing dancing and many ballroom dancers have embraced it’s rich history. However, there are still pockets who have not been enlightened.

So what is this misinformation that I am talking about? We’ve heard all kinds of stuff over the years. When we first started dancing, our instructor told us several interesting factoids including “Arthur Murray invented swing” and “the name ’swing’ comes from the swinging of the hips”. Both statements are clearly false. Other statements include swing being a “modified Foxtrot” and/or a “modified box step”. Knowing the true history of swing (more specifically, Lindy Hop) proves that both are again false.

So what’s the big cover up? What’s the source of this inaccurate information? Well, just recently a good friend shared a website with us that sheds light on this. On this ballroom dance site was a “misleading” (at best) history of swing dancing. Having a hunch that this information was probably copied from a studio syllabus or publication, I did some searching and found that this description appeared almost word-for-word on multiple ballroom sites. This says that it was clearly a copy/paste job. It’s not my goal to single anyone out, so I will simply link to Google results so you can view the source. Since one site references the swing era as “about 35 years ago”, we can assume that this is from a studio publication that has been passed down over the years. The wording has either been changed by some when put online, or the document evolved over time. In fact, I’ve seen some of this wording that has been mixed in with more factual swing histories.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that you can see some of the roots of the years of misinformation. Look past the facts and look at the writing. Certain phrases stick out:

“For many years now the better establishments have frowned upon the wilder forms of the Swing”

“It is possible, however, to do a fine Swing… providing the dancers are better than average…”

“There is no question that the dance is here to stay”

“…originally called the Lindy Hop, was born in the South of the U.S.A.”

To really understand the meaning behind these phrases, you have to put them in context. Swing is a street dance. During the swing era, the ballroom community and studios rejected it as an improper dance. It was viewed as a passing fad that would soon go away. In their eyes, no respectable person would do the Lindy Hop. What was the motivation behind this? Some say that it was because during the time the dance was popular amongst the youth of America and was viewed as wild and rebellious. Others say that race came into play. At the time, ballroom catered to upper class white clientele while swing was created by blacks in Harlem. Personally, I think it was a heaping helping of both.

Regardless, sometime in the 1940’s and into the 50’s, the ballroom community came to accept swing, however, not in its entirety. After years of the dance being wildly popular, it was clear to them that “the dance is here to stay”. At that point, studios looked to capitalize on the trend. However, due to their previous bias, they felt the dance must be repackaged to be more acceptable to their clientele. In marketing material and internal publications, the history of the dance was obscured. Instead of acknowledging the black roots of the dance in Harlem, it was instead claimed that the dance came from the south. While possibly true seeing Lindy Hop evolved from Charleston (a dance with some roots in the south), the statement is misleading at best. To further cover the roots, the steps were likened to basic ballroom steps like the box step. This gives the impression that swing came from a more “proper dance” and not an evolution of jazz steps. To add on, studios implied that with proper training it is possible for someone to dance a “fine swing” and not be frowned upon when visiting “better establishments”. This was an early form of what we would now call marketing spin.

Here we are many decades later and these old inaccurate, misleading publications are still making appearances on modern web sites. It’s a sad reminder that a part of our cultural heritage was almost obscured. This isn’t due to any conspiracy on the part of any modern ballroom studios or instructors. They are just relaying what they were taught and what they have always assumed as accurate information. However, this is a good warning that marketing spin can often rewrite history and obscure the real facts… often destroying culture in the process.

“So why did swing dancing fizzle out following the late-’90s rage?”

The instructor being interviewed responds with…

“I really couldn’t tell you,” Yannacone said. “I think it’s the popular media what determines what’s hot and not. And its not that it disappeared entirely, but to most people not in the swing dance world, yeah, it kind of was around then left.”

He is right, popular media has a lot to do with it. But why didn’t they latch on to it like they did with the current round of dance TV shows?  Having danced through the boom and decline, I think I can add some to his response. It’s really quite simple. Swing doesn’t “sell”.

In the late ’90s swing was briefly snatched up by nightclubs all across the nation. It wasn’t long before they realized that swing isn’t profitable as a format. You can’t drink alcohol and spin all around the dance floor. Let’s face it, profit margins are in bar sales, not cover charges. Swing brought in the crowds, but everyone was on or around the dance floor and not building up a bar tab. Most clubs changed format while crowds were still high, leaving many to wonder “what happened?”. While Salsa can occasionally bend the rules, in general, partner dancing and nightclubs don’t mix. That’s why you haven’t seen any clubs pick up on the latest ballroom dance craze… they learned their lesson in the ’90s.

But in reality, it goes much beyond bar sales. In small pockets around the nation, swing was was an underground movement before the Gap commercial launched it into the mainstream. It was a rebellion against… well, pop fads and pop culture. In a time where people were recovering from grunge and “freak dancing” was sweeping the country, swing (and the vintage lifestyle that surrounds it) was the counterculture to counterculture. This didn’t mesh well with mainstream media. While swing certainly caught people’s attention, it wasn’t… well… sexy enough… and we all know, sex sells.

Let’s not forget about the music. There was certainly mass interest in swing music during the boom. The neo-swing “daddy bands” rocketed in the charts and people where buying up Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman CDs at music stores. Again, this didn’t fit into the mold of mainstream media. Bands are now manufactured by record and media companies (anyone watch American Idol?). The facts are that swing bands are not easy to artificially manufacture and there was no way that big media was going back to the old way of doing things.

In many ways, the swing fad of the late 90’s paved the way for the dance show craze of today. The mainstream media learned by trail and error to find what they were looking for. The latest dance shows have a sexy side and offer a variety of dances, that can be conveniently danced to whatever song that needs promotion time. Is this a slam on the current dance shows? No, not at all. In some ways, they are just reinventing a format that started way back with American Bandstand. In fact, it is probably a great win/win situation. It gives dances some spotlight time, while still allowing individual dances scenes to thrive “underground”.

However, learning from the 90’s fad, I am concerned about the “post boom”. How about you? Feel free to leave a comment.

So what does all these mean for the Sunstate Jam? It takes a while to get up to speed when you first start hosting dances and putting on events. Maria was interested in keeping the Sunstate Jam going, but we advised her that if she didn’t feel 100% ready for the undertaking, it would be best to postpone it for a while. It’s better to put on a top quality event than something that wouldn’t live up to the name.

So that’s where it stands. The event is far from forgotten about. The torch is being passed and there are already rumblings of 2010.