The East Coast Swing

The East Coast Swing

Swing dancing was developed in America, and is also known as the Jitterbug. There was actually a dance scene to a song called The Jitterbug that was cut out of the movie The Wizard of Oz. One line remains in the movie where the Wicked Witch says, "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them." Dorothy and friends get bitten and dance themselves to exhaustion singing, "Keep away from The Jitterbug!" This dance occurred just before the flying monkeys arrive to attack the little group.

Swing derived from the Lindy Hop, which began in 1927 and was looked down upon by professional dance organizations such as the Dance Teachers Business Association (DTBA) and the American Society of Teachers of Dancing (ASTD). It was called "a fad and would not last out the winter," and the kids who danced it were called "victims of economic instability." Of course, the kids dancing the Lindy Hop didn't realize they shouldn't be having fun just because some pointy-headed bureaucrat said so. The dance grew in popularity until it could no longer be ignored. As the old saying goes, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," and the American dance experts did so - but on their terms.

Unable to conquer the Lindy Hop, the ASTD literally invented their own version, primarily as part of their dance instruction for movie studio dancers. In 1942 they went public with their dance because independent dance teachers were stealing students away from their members who refused to teach the Jitterbug. They simplified the steps and combined it with some elements of the Foxtrot to give it somewhat more flexibility and to reduce the amount of necessary dance floor space. Although they substantially changed the dance, they kept the names Lindy and Jitterbug, because that's what paying students wanted to learn and dance teachers always want paying students.

    The refined version created by the ASTD is what we call the East Coast Swing today. The terms Swing and Jitterbug were somewhat generic, so there was no need to define "East Coast Swing" until the "West Coast Swing" was developed on the West Coast (of course). Some people claim that the soul of Swing was removed when it was revised, but that is patently false. The soul of a dance is what you put into it, not the arrangement of steps. In the 1950's the Jitterbug was all the rage whether it was danced to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, or a traditional Swing orchestra.

East Coast Swing has a basic 6 count set of steps. The single-step version is the simplest, starting on the downbeat, the pattern is simply rock step, step, step. Believe it or not, the triple-step version is actually easier to dance because the feet keep moving. The triple-step version is rock step, triple-step, triple-step. Whichever version you choose, you follow a long history of dancers who have danced the Swing to all kinds of music. For once, the pointy-headed bureaucrats did something right!