It's unfortunate that these articles and discussions written by Americans about the dance are mostly going to be lost to the ether in the next ten years. As this dance and some others are mostly on their last breath in the US. Pre-covid things had slowed down a lot but covid killed almost every college dance club out there. It's uncommon to see anyone under 25 at these dances. The cost of dances/events skyrocketed as well. Young people who had no money were the life blood of any scene - the future organizers, instructors, DJs, and so on. It was rare to see people who started after 30 becoming organizers. Now, it's harder to even see people under 30 at a dance in the US and most organizers/DJs/teachers started over ten or even twenty years ago. It looks like there are more people who used to dance than future dancers.
I'm not optimistic about the future of social dancing and that's why I've mostly given up on it after 15 years and doing 10 different styles.
There was one swing dance revival already, no reason there couldn't be another one. There's so much more information online about it now then people had when trying to reconstruct the dance style in the 90's as well, so even if it does die in our lifetime maybe there will be a 2120's swing dance revival as well. :)
For me at least, I took around 2 years of swing dance lessons (1~2 a month). It was HARD, at least for me. It didn't take that long to get through the basics but I never got confident at it and always felt unwelcome at dance events where everyone only wants to dance with already skilled dancers. The only exception was beginner parts of dance events where the participants have no experience.
I also found east coast swing to be very counter intuitive. 6 count on 4 count songs. Ugh! I picked it up but still....
Maybe it's unrealistic expectations from movies or something but basically, before taking the classes I thought social dancing would come kind of naturally with just a little instruction. Instead it turned out, again, at least for me, that it's a highly skilled activity and only others who've spent months training can participate.
To put it another way, I thought a random skilled lead dancer could pick a random partner and guide them through some moves. I felt like I've seen that from salsa leads. But, charleston and 6 count east coast swing are not intuitive and require practice beforehand, AFAICT.
You're right. It is very hard for men/leads. Most follows/women I know are incredibly judgy and won't dance with new leads. This is a big difference from a decade ago when saying "yes" was the norm. This is also a reason why I think it's falling off. Social dancing used to have a strong emphasis on the "social" part. It often now is completely organized around the actual dancing - not socializing. Socializing is a nice secondary effect whereas it was the primary effect before.
I have a lot of thoughts about dancing overall since I spent so much time doing it from organizing, DJing, teaching, and traveling the world for it. In general, I'd say dancing sucks in the US. It's not a welcoming atmosphere for men/leads anymore.
With the rise of dating apps, I don't see a reason to go out dancing for most men. Yeah, apps are terrible but very few women who go out dancing are of typical dating age and, more importantly, single. Most women who go out are in a relationship whereas most men who go out are single. I've done a lot of polling - the ratio is bonkers in the US. Relatively few men who are in relationships continue to dance once partnered. You will have as much competition at a social dance as you will on a dating app. I'd branch out.
I'm sure it varies by dance and region, but at least in the Northeast the contra community is doing well! Lots of new dances, lots of people of all ages, and the group I help organize is well above our pre-pandemic attendance.
Eh. I'm in a large US metro area and one of our local dances recently had to put a cap on class sizes because it was getting too crowded. The local university club recently started back up after a post-pandemic hiatus. I'm considered one of the oldest at one dance I attend (I'm in my early thirties with some greys). The local yearly convention is back to pre-pandemic size
appears I learned Savoy without knowing it owing to the emphasis on charlston, circularity, swingouts, and being more down low. I didn't think about why I stopped dancing.
one of my favorite stories to tell about dancing in those days was going out to see a friend in LA and ending up at the Derby, a swing dance bar that was in a couple of movies and was central in the 90s swing revival. a girl we were with had just arrived in town from colorado to pursue her acting, she was an amazing dancer (to me) and one of those rare people who, with just a glance, could leave you completely charmed and happy to have met them. we never met again. some years later I saw her in a preview as she had landed a supporting character part in an indie movie that was showing at the toronto film fest or something. It was called Junebug. she became pretty famous, and knowing nothing about her at all- but just after dancing lindy hop in passing with her that one night, I always think she earned it.
Anyway, dancing really connected people. I hope it becomes a thing again. it was a source of serendipity that's missing these days and it's funny to think about what became a part of the story of your life.
> dancing really connected people. I hope it becomes a thing again.
Social dancing’s demise has been greatly exaggerated! If you live in any moderately large city, there is almost certainly a swing dance scene, and you can find people doing social Latin (salsa, bachata) pretty much everywhere. My city’s swing dance club has a social every Sunday, with events on most Saturday evenings too.
I'm quite surprised by the impression in the first place, since "dancing events" as a way to meet others and connect seems more ubiquitous than ever to me.
It may not look much like typical social dances performed with a partner, but I'm definitely thinking of clubbings, raves and festivals as happenings were "dancing connects people" - and it's one of the primary ways almost anyone I know has been socializing, at least throughout their 20s and 30s.
An example of Sylvia Sykes dancing West Coast Swing[3], a swing dance that was heavily influenced[4] by Hollywood style. For the keen eyed among you, she does a bit of Lindy and a bit of Balboa in the midst of the dance.
It's extremely funny to watch these vs. modern WCS champions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nuessx9D23c), which has almost none of the actual WCS basic you'd expect and see a lot of in (3).
IMO, the primary reason for this is because WCS is danced to contemporary music. When the music changes, the dancing changes to suit it.
I think your example is actually quite illustrative of this - the 2nd song had a lot more "swing content" than the first; since it's an older blues song the traditional West Coast Swing patterns fit it better.
About 20 years ago I took a few courses in beginner's swing at the local community center that was co-taught by Sylvia Sykes. Had no clue she was well known in the swing dance community until much later.
Swing dance is second nature to us dance aficionados so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the general difference between Hollywood and Savoy style Lindy-Hop.
I’m solidly middle-aged and I’m reasonably certain I’ve never even known anybody who could do a name-able dance of any kind, aside from briefly and not-very-well mimicking meme dances. Earliest I recall was the Macarena. I don’t even know anyone who could convincingly do the Carlton.
My best guess from the headline would have been this was about food.
The only time I’ve ever been taught a dance, or even been present when anyone was learning a dance in anything resembling a serious fashion, was when they taught us the Minuet in 1st grade for some unfathomable reason.
I am not at all confident I could describe or recognize Swing at all, versus any remotely-similar dance (like, if you showed me swing on one video and someone doing the stanky leg on another, I could guess that correctly, but make it much harder and my odds will be reduced to chance)
I’m fairly sure the above is more-or-less the case for a large majority of adults I’ve ever known. The exceptions are a handful who did ballet as young kids.
Maybe there are strong regional effects at play? Or something SES/class related. I also don’t know anybody who did the hardcore college-prep thing that lots of folks on HN take as a given for any college-bound kids, though nearly everyone in my circle did attend college. I even know a couple who went Ivy, but they didn’t do that. Maybe that sort of thing is more likely among (though I don’t mean exclusive to!) the set who’re pushed to collect activities as a kid and carry that on into college and young adulthood.
[edit] I don’t mean to imply dance is bad, in fact it’d be sorta neat to be decent at dancing, it has just not been my experience that it’s at all a common skill—I know a lot more people who can play at least one instrument sort-of OK than people who can dance, like, at all. Actually I know more people who can play several instruments decently than who can dance at all. And I don’t run in musician-heavy circles.
I was all "did he mean 'convincingly do the Charleston'", and thought that was an odd choice. Then I googled :)
But that aside: It's kinda sad a lot of folks don't really learn to dance any more. It's a great way to socialize (and closely get to know mostly members of the relevant sex, if that's your kinda thing ;)
The Swing community is still relatively strong, the ballroom community is somewhat smaller but at least somewhat alive, but social dancing as a general way to get together is almost non-existent outside of that.
Highly recommended. (Though, skip most dance schools. If I've ever seen a money-extraction-scheme, it's ballroom dance schools in the US)
> Maybe there are strong regional effects at play?
100% there are, plus age/cohort effcts. I grew up in central Italy and didn't know anyone who knew any dance, but by middle age caribbean dances (mostly salsa and bachata) became quite popular and every group of friends had a few folks taking classes and going to dance. There might have been a moment in time lambada was popular?.
When I moved to Hungary it turned out everyone had learned waltz in school or something (tho nobody would go out to dance it).
Not dance it, though. Personally I’d only have a prayer of identifying it because I’d recognize it as “not Flamenco… probably?” and that’s nearly the end of old-timey dances that I know the names of, so I’d guess waltz. Not because I actually know what it is, though—you could probably trip me up by picking any of several other kinds of non-waltz dances to show me, and I’d call them waltzes too.
It depends where you're coming from. The waltz has a very different rhythm to most other music. If you can tell (obvious) waltz music from (obvious) non-waltz music, you could identify the dance fairly easily. But if you do not know the musical difference between a waltz and a tango/foxtrot/jive/etc, then you'd need to know specifics of the dance to tell them apart - and could be fooled, eg. by pairs in ball costumes doing a different dance.
not knowing what this article was talking about about, I searched youtube, nope. So I ddg'ed (and the first thing to come up was TFA eyeroll.gif) but luckily there was also this:
Hollywood Style and Savoy Style
In the '90s two new swing styles emerged in California that for a while were strong rivals with each other, the Savoy Style which can be traced back to the ‘80’s revival of interest in lindy, and the 'Hollywood Style' which Erik Robison and Sylvia Skylar from Los Angeles put together in 1997. The latter combined west coast swing techniques with '40s dance stylings, most specifically Jean Veloz (who is featured in the 1940's short 'Groovie Movie' along with a number of major feature films), and "a look" derived from the dance sequences of various 1940’s and 50’s Hollywood films.
Despite the name a sizeable proportion of the LA swing dance scene continued to adhere to the basic Dean Collins technique...
I'm not optimistic about the future of social dancing and that's why I've mostly given up on it after 15 years and doing 10 different styles.