Original east coast swing dance moves1/21/2024 ![]() Before Erik and Sylvia coined the term, most people referred to it as Dean Collin’s Style, or G.I. The term “Hollywood style” is actually a modern term to differentiate the style that Dean Collins and other Hollywood movie dancers were doing in the 1940’s. Both the “Hollywood Style” and “Smooth Style” emerged during the process of lindy hop going from niche to mainstream popular culture. The dance includes spectaculer aerials, and As the Lindy Hop dance diffused west from New York and gained popular acceptance two distinctive new forms appeared. The original savoy style is marked by a heavy influence from Charleston. The original Savoy Style was by far the most dynamic and creative and evoked the culture of the Harlem Rennaissance. Because of Lindy Hop’s multiple rhythmic patterns, emphasis on personal style, and strong relationship to improvisation, you find that people dance Lindy Hop in as many ways as there are people who dance it. You cannot put everything into perfectly neat delineation, there are some gray area in how any one person interprets what thing belongs to what name. With dancing, you can mix and match styles, influences can overlap, movements can be borrowed. It began in Harlem and the original style is still sometimes referred to as Savoy Style or Harlem Style. Its a mix of 6,8 and Charleston rhythms that can be regrouped into any set of 2 count rhythms. Its called the granddaddy of all swing dances for a reason! Lindy Hop is the original swing dance out of which most of the other styles originated. It is truly its own thing and deserves its own article. There are whole, websites, Channels, and conventions dedicated to it. There are entire independent dance schools that teach West Coast Swing and nothing but it. It has its own codified ranking system for competitors. If you’re interested in West Coast Swing its a whole different animal. Both Lindy Hop and West Coast Swing are complex enough dances that you could spend your whole life dancing either or both, and never cover all the ground that there is to cover. The triple step is divided clearly into two distinct variations called anchor and coaster. West Coast Swing has a much more strict sense of things than Lindy Hop. It is a stricter more codified dance that draws a lot from Lindy Hop and adds new never before seen elements. ![]() It was developed a swing related dance form that reacted to the popular music of the time. ![]() Eventually dance schools changed the name to West Coast Swing to avoid confusion with Country Western Dance and as an opposite to East Coast Swing. It was also called “Sophisticated Swing” as it was a newly invented innovative form of swing dancing. West Coast Swing was originally called Western Swing, and also referred to as “California Swing”. Other swing dances were created from studying old lindy footage, ballroom dance syllabi, rockabilly dance, and even creative innovation. You still probably notice that East Coast Swing is an offshoot of Lindy Hop as most swing dances are. It has much more of the classical ballroom aesthetic than does lindy. If you dance lindy you may notice that ballroom east coast is kind of rigid. In ballroom east coast swing there is lots of spanish and structured classical dance influence. During this time ballroom schools developed their own codified syllabus which was different from the dynamism of the swing scene. Such dances were often relegated to stage and screen in the 1950s onward. One thing you might have noticed from history is that partner dancing fell out of fashion for a time. Oftentimes the “street swing” that is a mixture of both lindy and ballroom east coast is what you refer to as east coast swing in the social scene. Sometimes 6 count lindy or the true ballroom east coast swing are described by this term. As you may known the term is used rather loosely and can describe any east coast swing type dance. This dance was watered down to make it easier for beginners to assimilate. East Coast Swing began as simplified lindy hop promoted by ballroom dance studios. You might refer to this as simply “Swing”. I will try my best to clarify what the most commonly referenced swing dances actually are as well as what the names mean. Different dance moves may be names differently by teachers and there are about as many schools of thought in swing dance as there teachers. Swing dances are vernacular and the names of different dances or moves may vary from region to region. There has been a lot of cross pollination of jazz related dances as there has been in the music. Swing itself is a particular compositional form, mostly 32 bar, and AABA. Swing is an umbrella term for a great variety of dances. We often confuse the names of the various swing dance styles that fall under the “swing” umbrella.
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