Swing (dance)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Swing dance" is a group of dances that developed with the swing style of jazz music in the 1920s-1950s, although the earliest of these dances predate swing jazz music. The best known of these dances is the Lindy Hop, a popular partner dance that originated in Harlem and is still danced today. While the majority of swing dances began in African American communities as vernacular African American dancees, some swing dances, (Balboa, for example) developed in white communities.
Swing jazz features the syncopated timing associated with African American and West African music and dance — a combination of crotchets and quavers (quarter notes and eighth notes) that many swing dancers interpret as 'triple steps' and 'steps' — yet also introduces changes in the way these rhythms were played — as a distinct delay or 'relaxed' approach to timing.
Today there are swing-dance scenes in many countries. Lindy Hop is often the most popular, though each city and country prefers various dances to different degrees. Each local swing-dance community has a distinct local culture and defines "swing dance", and the "appropriate" music to accompany it, in different ways.
See also
- Frankie Manning
- Lindy Hop today
- Hollywood-style Lindy Hop
- Savoy-style Lindy Hop
- Lindy Exchange
- Yehoodi
- Charleston
- Balboa (dance)
- Swing Camps
- Swing Rueda