What is Swing Dancing

What is Swing Dancing?

"Swing dance" is an umbrella term to describe a variety of amazing dance styles that developed with the swing style of jazz music in the 1920s to 50s. These dances include Lindy Hop, Charleston, Balboa, Collegiate Shag, along with so many more. Here at Steel City Swing, we primarily focus on Lindy Hop, Charleston, and Solo Jazz, but will occasionally have classes that focus on dances like Balboa and Collegiate Shag.

Lindy Hop

Lindy Hop is a fun and exciting partnered dance, originally developed by the African American communities in Harlem, New York during the late 1920s. The dance itself consists of both 6 and 8 count steps and includes footwork borrowed from Charleston and Tap. With its exciting and spontaneous nature, it is easy to see why this dance style quickly grew in popularity across the world -- and why it's become a local favorite for Steel City Swing!

While the lineage of Lindy Hop has been difficult to trace at times, it is easy to see that this dance was born from combining African rhythms and movements with European partnering structures, especially as we watch footage of the original dancers.

Charleston

Charleston is a fun, high energy 8-count dance with a lot of kicks that can be danced solo or with a partner. Its simple and flexible basic step makes it easy to concentrate more on styling, improvisation and musicality while you're dancing. There are two distinct types of Charleston that we still dance today: the 1920s style and 1930s/40s style.

The Charleston was named after the harbor city of Charleston, South Carolina. It's popularity exploded into the mainstream during the 1920s with the song called "The Charleston" and it quickly spread throughout the nation. While we don't know exactly when the Charleston step was created, we do know it has ties to African dances from Coastal West Africa.

Balboa

Balboa is commonly used as a general term for dances that originated on the crowded dance floors of Southern California during the 1920s and 30s. It is an 8-count dance that is danced primarily in close embrace with smaller steps (commonly referred to as shuffles) and is led with a full body connection. The subtilties in communication between the lead and follow to execute moves and dance to the music have led many to consider this dance to be a "dancer's dance." While this dance is typically danced to faster songs, Balboa can be danced to a variety of different tempos.

Balboa was named for the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, California, where it was invented. What we refer to as Balboa today is a combination of three different dances: "Balboa", "Swing", and "Bal-Swing". Back then, Balboa was a purely close embrace dance (hence the modern term Pure Balboa/Bal) that allowed dancers to express themselves on cramped dance floors. Eventually that close embrace dance merged with the twisting, turning, and stretching open position style of "Swing" to create a new style that combined the best of both dances, better known today as Bal Swing.

Solo Jazz

Solo Jazz is, as the name implies, a solo style of dance that can be pure improvisation or a choreographed routine, such as the Shim Sham, Big Apple, or Tranky Doo. This style of dance pulls from the energetic vernacular movements of the 1920s-40s and is a great way for you to express yourself during a dance.

Fun Fact:

You can mix and match all of the dance styles that we described above while you're out on the dance floor! Most dance styles that fall under the term "swing dance" are danced to the same style of music (swing). Because of this, it's easy to shift to moves and footwork from different dance styles throughout a song.