anyone know how to swing dance??

Question

im way into the fifties and the fifties music...like ricky nelson...and all the other awesomely cool people and bands back then...but i wanna take it farther...how can i learn to swing dance?? ....i dont really have time to take a class...so a video would be awesome...so does anyone know of a good one??...or a website that could help me find one??

Answer 1

Take a class, or attend a swing dance-most have begginner classes at the beginning, and then dance with people better than you. They could teach you a ton. It's the easiest basic to learn...then go from there.

Answer 2

I learned when my mother coerced me into taking a cotillion for three years. Ugh. However, now I'm completely socially acceptable and can dance to pretty much anything that comes on at a party where dancing is required/optional.

I would highly recommend taking a class, trying to make time for it. There's really nothing like physically performing in front of an instructor who can help and getting practice.

Answer 3

If you/ve had lessons it's possible to steal a move from an internet site, but there's just no way to learn the connection without real-life lessons. The patterns look good, but they are just patterns. The dancing is in the communication between the two people.

Answer 4

The following message is from Wikipedia
The term "swing dance" is commonly used to refer either to a group of dances developing in response to swing (genre) music in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, or to lindy hop, a popular partner dance today. While the majority of swing dances began in African American communities as vernacular African American dances, there were a number of forms which developed within Anglo-American or other ethnic group communities. Balboa is one of the most commonly cited examples.

Though they technically preceded the rise of swing music, and are commonly associated with Dixieland jazz which developed in New Orleans in the south of the United States, dances such as the black bottom (dance), charleston (dance) and tap dance are still considered members of the swing dance family. These sorts of dances travelled north with jazz to cities like New York, Kansas City, and Chicago in the Great Migration (African American) of the 1920s, where rural blacks travelled north to escape persecution, Jim Crow laws, lynching and unemployment in the South during the Great Depression.

Swinging jazz music features the syncopated timing associated with African American and West African music and dance - a combination of crotchets and quavers which many swing dancers interpret as 'triple steps' and 'steps' - yet also introduces changes in the way these rhythms were played - a distinct delay or 'relaxed' approach to timing. Swinging jazz developed from Dixieland jazz, and travelled north with black dancers during the Great Migration.

Today there are swing dance scenes in many developed Western and Asian countries throughout the world, and though each city and country varies in their preferences for particular dances, lindy hop is often the most popular. It is important to note, though, that west coast swing dance attracts more dancers, particularly in the United States. Each local swing dance community has a distinct local culture and defines "swing dance" and "appropriate" dance music in different ways.