Swing dancing is one dance form that has been evolving ever since it has been invented . There have been different dance forms that have been introduced to this dance form. There are thousands of dance forms that come under this and each dance form has its own variation. Here is a simple timeline that shows how the swing dance evolved from its origin till today.
The African community invented the swing dance form while entertaining themselves and listening to Jazz music. They discovered the Charleston and the Lindy Hop. These were six to eight beat dance forms that were done with upbeat jazz or any other upbeat music. The dance forms were couples’ dance forms. As the name suggests, swing music was played.
The Savoy Ballroom was opened to the people in New York, and it played a lot of jazz music. It was a huge success because of its amazing dance floor and the night life. It attracted many big dancers from the country and they danced the swing dance.
In the year 1934 (or at least the mid 1930’s) the six-beat variant of the swing dance form, the Jitterbug, was invented. This was a faster-paced dance form and Cab Calloway gave it this name based on the tune called the Jitterbug that was produced by his band.
With this, more and more people started dancing to swing music and jazz music. Soon many dancers started including steps from Jazz and Tap dance forms into it.
In the year 1937, the head bouncer of the Savoy Ballrooms in New York created a group named Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. The group became extremely famous and soon they were being called to perform in different movies and stages all around the world. They made the dance form even more popular and also people in different parts started doing their own versions of the Lindy Hop.
In the 1940’s Arthur Murray studios did research on the dance forms that were being performed on the streets, and decided to teach them in their dance classes. The teachers in different schools of different cities found out that swing dances in every place were performed differently. So, they taught the respective form in the each city.
A woman named Laure Haile who was a swing dancer took notice of the trends in the white community regarding the swing dancing and named it the ‘Western Swing”. This was the origin of the western swing dance form. Same year the schools were teaching different variants of swing dances but nobody considered it as a formal dance form.
Laure Haile made a formal curriculum of the swing dance form and created a syllabus for learners. The syllabus was first used in the Santa Monica Arthur Murray Dance school. The curriculum is still in use today, and only very minor revisions have been made to it.
This was a very good year for swing dancing because new TV shows named American Bandstand and The Buddy Deane Show were introduced to the audience. The western swing later became western coast swing. During this time, dance schools also decided to teach swing dancing as a proper dance form and made some changes to it so that it could be turned into a more sophisticated ballroom dance form rather than a street dance form.