Swing Dancing at Supperclub's Mowtown night

Some friends of ours over at Supperclub asked Swing Goth to put together a dance performance for their Mowtown dinner. So, always one to help out our friends, we put aside our post-punk preferences (and added a little alliteration)... and viola! Dance instructor Brian is joined by Marna as they tear up the floor to The Condors, "Do You Love Me?"

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• dance
• performance
• live
• dancing
• swing

[SwingGoth]

@lindyhop411 - Please to read the Wikipedia entry on "East_Coast_Swing" and "Jitterbug" (it's not letting me post links) and then sit down and shut up.

No one likes a troll. Especially one who doesn't know what they're talking about.

[ParaWanderer]

@lindyhop411 The lead is dancing a slightly modified Jitterbug, while the follow is occassionally doing Lindy steps. The Hustle (not the line dance) came from Swing and so will look similar to anything else in the Swing family tree. The Hustle has a pattern of 1 2 3&4 5 6, where as jitterbug will have a pattern of 1 2 3& or 1 2 &4 or 1 3 5 6, where as Lindy will have a pattern of 1 2 3&4 5 6 7&8. Occassionally you'll see this couple do a bit of Blues/Sway fusion as well.

[TheBrianGardner]

@lindyhop411 You know what would be really impressive about that, if you were right?

It's that neither of the people dancing have ever taken a SINGLE Hustle class. For people who never learned a dance, they sure are pretty good at it!

In reality, you're wrong. What's being done is based on three count swing (sometimes called Jitterbug) from the '60's, with heavy footwork improvisation (some of which was borrowed from Lindy). But that doesn't matter. Swing Goth is about defying definitions.

[1sherrych]

@lindyhop411 Also - who do you think created the dances you love so much? People proclaiming the right way, or people who didn't care what people thought and tried new things because it felt good and looked awesome? Innovation and even fusion created the dances you love. Minds trapped in 'the right way' don't easily come up with new ideas. Dance, like many art forms, changes over time - and that's good. But there's always the grumps that just don't get it. That's not new either.

[1sherrych]

@lindyhop411 I used to be so intimidated by 'Lindy Hop' that I never learned to partner dance swing, even though I love to dance and really wanted to learn. Dance should be about having fun and attracting more people to partner dance. As soon as I started at Swing Goth I realized 'I can totally do this!' and you know what, it makes me want to learn more about all kinds of dance, and I'm learning fast and loving it. Elitists like you proclaiming 'the right way' scared me away from dance.

[kadiya3]

For Brian; Alright boys, play nice. Lol, who cares what it is called? Dance is dance and just makes me happy. :)

[ParaWanderer]

@lindyhop411 WCS is not "swing adapted disco". WCS is a fusion of many dance styles to many genres of music, and is a slotted style dance. Please stop spouting incorrect information and furthering the ignorance of others by posting it here and on Wikipedia. Thanks so much.

And of course no one danced this way back then. That's the point of dances -- to evolve with the times and the music. The progression of /Jitterbug/ ("ECS" refers to both Jitterbug AND Lindy Hop styles) exemplified here.

[lindyhop411]

@TheBrianGardner lol, Right. Maybe there's not right way to do it, but there's what people did during the swing era, and then there is what people didn't do the swing era. The wikipedia artcle also fails to distinguish between single step ECS and triple step ECS. I bring this up because single step ECS wasn't danced in the 30's and 40's. It was simplified by Arthur Murray to teach people who didn't know anything and were learning out of a book.

[TheBrianGardner]

@lindyhop411 Here's the paragraph that you need to read:

"East Coast Swing is a standardized form of dance developed first for instructional purposes in the Arthur Murray studios, & then later codified to allow for a medium of comparison for competitive ballroom dancers. It can be said that there is no right or wrong way to dance it.... on the social dance floor, the 6 count steps of the East Coast Swing are often mixed with the eight count steps of Lindy Hop."

Which is what I'm doing.

[stardustsweeper]

I don't care what you call this : I like it. Makes me "Swing" with a smile. Deffinately going to take some of this onto a dance floor. :)

[lindyhop411]

@ParaWanderer Jitterbug isn't a dance. It's a dancer. The term was coined by Cab Calloway in the mid 1930s (song by the same name, and soundie "Call of the Jitterbug"). Today it's a general term for any kind of swing dance.

Specifically, the movement of the pull and pass is taken directly from Hustle. For some reason this dance movement was confused with swing dancing during the 1990s Neo Swing revival. The problem is that you are calling this dance swing, when NOBODY actually did it.