Swing History
It is hard to separate the history of swing dance from other dances and types of music. Coming out of jazz, blues and ragtime it has common movements to the Cakewalk, Foxtrot and Back Bottom. Swing dance grew, like jazz, out of the African American culture from the time of the Civil War right through most of the 20th century.
It started during a period of great cultural and intellectual achievement among African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, the Harlem Renaissance. The dances were generally played to jazz music, another new art form of the time period expanded rapidly. In a sense the dance was the African American response to European social dances. However, swing was more like an opposite of Europe's sedated and composed waltzes, while Latin American dances grew from a mix of Spanish colonial forms and African beats. The dance was performed with a partner, but the wild movements were a mix of tap, Charleston and free-form expression created as the inspiration struck. This new movement had its roots in Africa. However, dancing with a partner was a foreign concept in African dance forms, so that is the enduring contribution of European dances to swing.
The history of swing dates back to the 1920's, where the black community, while dancing to contemporary and co-existing Jazz music, discovered the Charleston and the Lindy Hop.
Lindy Hop originated from Harlem, New York’s African American communities. It was a mixture of swing, waltz, and jive. The lindy hop is considered one of the fastest dances to evolve in a short period. Lindy Hop is closely related to earlier African American vernacular dances but quickly gained its own fame through dancers in films, performances, competitions, and professional dance troupes. It became especially popular in the 1930s with the invention of aerials, a dance movement which includes aerial jumping and other aerial stunts.
Charleston is a dance developed from African American communities and named for the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Originally, the steps started off with a simple twisting of the feet, to rhythm in a lazy sort of way. A fast kicking step, kicking the feet, both forward and backward and later done with a tap were added movements when it was conducted in Harlem. It was popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States in the 1920’s by a tune called The Charleston by composer/pianist James P. Johnson which originated in the Broadway show Running Wild. It became one of the most popular hits of the 1920’s. The peak year for the Charleston as a dance by the public was mid 1926 to 1927.
The Savoy Ballroom opened its doors in New York on March 26, 1926. With its block-long dance floor and a raised double bandstand the Savoy was an instant success. Nightly dancing attracted most of the best dancers in the New York area. Stimulated by the presence of great dancers and the best black bands, music at the Savoy was largely Swinging Jazz.
During the mid 1930's, a bouncy six beat variant was named the Jitterbug by the band leader Cab Calloway when he introduced a tune in 1934 entitled "Jitterbug".
The communities began dancing to the contemporary Jazz and Swing music as it was evolving at the time, with the discovery of the Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug. Dancers soon incorporated tap and jazz steps into their dancing.
In 1938, the Harvest Moon Ball, a dance competition held in New York in the 1930’s, included Lindy Hop and Jitterbug competition for the first time. It was captured on film and presented for everyone to see in the Paramount, Pathe, and Universal movie newsreels between 1938 and 1951.
In early 1938, Dean Collins, an American actor, arrived in Hollywood. He learned to dance the Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Lindy and Swing in New York City and spent a lot of time in Harlem and the Savoy Ballroom.
Between 1941 and 1960, Collins danced in, or helped choreograph over 100 movies which provided at least a 30 second clip of some of the best California white dancers performing Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Lindy and Swing.
The terms Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Lindy, and Swing were used interchangeably In the late 1930's and through the 1940's by the news media to describe the same style of dancing taking place on the streets, in contests, in the night clubs, and in the movies.
By the end of 1936 the Lindy was sweeping the United States. As expected, the first reaction of most dancing teachers to the Lindy was a chilly negative. In 1936, president of the American Society of Teachers of Dancing, Philip Nutl, expressed the opinion that swing would not last beyond the winter. In 1938, president of the Dance Teachers' Business Association, Donald Grant said that swing music "is a degenerated form of jazz, whose devotees are the unfortunate victims of economic instability." In 1942 members of the New York Society of Teachers of Dancing were told that the jitterbug (a direct descendent of the Lindy Hop), could no longer be ignored. Its "playful movements" could be refined to suit a crowded dance floor.
The ballroom dance community was interested in teaching the foreign dances such as the Argentine Tango, Spanish Paso Doblé, Brazilian Samba, Dominican Merengue, Cuban Mambo and Cha Cha, English Quickstep, Austrian Waltz, with an occasional American Fox-trot and Peabody. The dance schools such as The New York Society of Teachers and Arthur Murray, did not formally begin documenting or teaching the Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Lindy, and Swing until the early 1940's.
In the early 1940's Arthur Murray, a former dance instructor and businessman, looked at what was being done on the dance floors in each city and directed their teachers to teach what was being danced in their respective cities. As a result, the Arthur Murray Studios taught different styles of undocumented Swing in each city.
Lauré Haile, as a swing dancer and competitor, documented what she saw being danced by the white community in the early 1940’s. At that time, Dean Collins was leading the action with Lenny Smith and Lou Southern in the night clubs and competitions in Southern California. She gave it the name of "Western Swing". She began teaching for Arthur Murray in 1945. Dean Collins taught Arthur Murray teachers in Hollywood and San Francisco in the late 1940's and early 1950's.
During the late 1940's, the soldiers and sailors returned from overseas and continued to dance in and around their military bases. Jitterbug was danced to Country-Western music in Country Western bars, and popularized in the 1980's.
As the music evolved between the 1920's and 1990's, (Jazz, Swing, Bop, Rock 'n' Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Disco, Country), the Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Lindy, and Swing evolved across the U.S. with many regional styles. The late 1940's brought forth many dances that evolved from Rhythm & Blues music: the Houston Push and Dallas whip (Texas), the Imperial Swing (St. Louis), the D.C. Hand Dancing (Washington), and the Carolina Shag (Carolinas and Norfolk) were just a few.
From the mid 1940's to today, the Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Lindy, and Swing, were stripped down and distilled by the ballroom dance studio teachers in order to adapt what they were teaching to the less nimble-footed general public who paid for dance lessons. As a result, the ballroom dance studios bred and developed a ballroom East Coast Swing and ballroom West Coast Swing.
In the late 1950's, television showed programs which include swing dances like "The Buddy dean Show", "American Bandstand" and other programs to the teenage audiences. The teenagers were rocking with Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry leading the fray. In 1959, some of the California dance organizations, with Skippy Blair setting the pace, changed the name of Western Swing to West Coast Swing so it would not be confused with country and western dancing.
In 1951 Lauré Haile first published her dance notes as a syllabus, which included Western Swing for the Santa Monica Arthur Murray Dance Studio. In the 50's she presented her syllabus in workshops across the U.S. for the Arthur Murray Studios. The original Lauré Haile Arthur Murray Western Swing Syllabus has been taught by Arthur Murray studios with only minor revisions for the past 44 years.