The Spirit Still Moves

by Brittany Kapa

There is a place in today’s culture for those who love the throwback era of Duke Ellington’s serenades, quick turns, and trick moves. Social dances, including the likes of swing, jazz, and blues, are seen by some as long lost art forms, but there are those that know this is untrue.

In all actuality, these styles are ever present, and have taken hold in today’s major cities. With a resurgence in the 1980s, social dances have come back in a big way. Jazz is a loose term associated with the music used in these partnered dances.

Understanding the history behind these popular dance styles and songs is an important key in understand their resurgence in today’s markets. The original age of jazz took hold in places like New York’s Harlem, Chicago’s Bronzeville, and St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri. It was the amalgamation of two cultures that spear headed the evolution of what is now known as the era of swing.

The History

Jazz has a darker history than many would expect, and culminates with what we now know as the social dances that are still practiced today. The origins of the dance deals with enslaved Africans, dances from their cultural backgrounds, and the European influence that was thrust upon them by those that owned them.

“One of the things to help frame social dance, is the function of social dance,” Raquel Monroe, Ph.D., associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, said in an interview.

Monroe, who obtained her Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles, has spent the last seven years teaching black folk dance, among other subjects, at Columbia College. She talked in depth about the history that lies beneath these widely known dances.

“African dances [were] performed specific to gender — women danced together and the men danced together,” Monroe said.

“The European influence happened when they were doing couples’ dances, and when the two are side by side because of enslavement, and on plantations, we start to see this merger happen.”

Interior of a Black dance hall with band and dancers (1914), from the Prelinger Archives

Coupled dances such as the waltz and foxtrot were common dances in the European society, both upright, and slower than a traditional African dance. In truth it was enslaved Africans mocking the European dance styles that is said to have given life to what would later be known as jazz dancing, which included styles we now know today as swing, and partnered blues dances, often known as “slow dragging” in the early and mid twentieth century. These dances first formed concurrent with blues music, the two developing together in the 1900s and 1910s.

It was the migration of many African Americans to the north that brought these styles to the cities mentioned earlier. While many of the styles specific to the blues category, like the Strut and the Fish Tail, remained largely within the black community, the overall premise of social dancing to blues and jazz expanded in popularity. Some elements beyond slow dragging’s strict core emphasis would lend themselves to new forms like Lindy hop — dance styles that would become nationwide trends among both black and white youth, at least until popular music tastes changed after World War II.

Excerpt from The Spirit Moves, Chapter Two: Blues

It was this change that catapulted the transformation of different dance styles, and it wouldn’t be until the 1980s when a first resurgence of these styles would be seen again, to be followed by a flourishing fascination in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Modern Day

For those eager to learn these styles of dance, there is still a large market to do so. Big City Swing, located in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, is just one outlet that provides an area and space for those to learn, and is run by founder Julee Mertz. Mertz has been teaching all forms of swing dance since 1997, and is an advocate of the dance.
She welcomes all skill levels into her studio, and has herself participated in not only feature films, but many dance competitions. Mertz’s repertoire includes all forms of Lindy hop including swing, East Coast Swing, 6-count Swing, Jitterbug, Partnered Charleston, and Vernacular jazz.

“The age range of students and dancers is also impressively wide,” Mertz said. “We have enthusiastic teens all the way through fantastic dancers in their [seventies] and [eighties].”

Swing has markets not only all over the United States, but across the world as well. Braden Nesin, a Lindy hop enthusiast, travels across both the United States and Canada 20-25 times per year, competing and attending events. While he says he’s slowed down in recent years, his experience has shown him the extent of the influence.

“There are dance scenes in every major city, most college towns, and a few other places all over the world,” Nesin said in an email interview.

“My favorite cities to dance in at the local weekly dances, in no particular order, are Seattle, Montreal, Boston and New York,” he said. “There are events I attend every year in [Washington] D.C., Minneapolis, Asheville, North Carolina and St. Louis.”

BluesSHOUT! 2012 Novice Jack & Jill finals. Nesin is one-half of the third couple to dance.

Like Mertz, there are those who strive to keep the pure form of the dance alive. Unlike dances such as salsa, jazz and swing dances didn’t survive the changes in popular music. Salsa as a traditional social form is still taught in households, and danced by parents.

“Swing is something that is a hangover,” Monroe said. “It’s maintained, there’s an effort to keep it present and relevant. People learn swing largely in studios.”

And today’s dance community, too, pays special heed to the roots of these vernacular dance styles, especially concerned to find the line between appropriate homage and cultural appropriation of another’s history. Some of the earliest stirs of this spiritual crisis remain extent on a circa-2005 blues dance discussion forum. Austin-based instructor Campbell Miller, a long-time community member, has tracked the real world development.

“The blues scene has gone more and more historical, toward trying to discover music genres that are blues music that we don’t dance to and figuring out how to dance to them to represent blues dancing more appropriately,” she said. “The blues dance scene has definitely become more, I would say, educated about what blues actually is, and certainly I have and all my peers have — from five years ago to now, there’s so much more knowledge. I think there’s an interest and a value in doing that and not appropriating — not just trying to take it and turn it into whatever we want — but trying to be respectful and keeping the feel of it true, in a way.” Many of those less interested in historical roots have meanwhile branched off into the blues fusion scene — in its way, an indication of the dance’s vitality.

But the resurgence of the movement overall is evident in places as far-flung as South Korea, which has experienced an explosion of interest in the jazz dance styles within the last 10 years.

The Evolution of Social Dance

In the last 100 years society has changed drastically, and so too has the art of dance. There are no longer many dance halls to frequent, and rarely do we see coupled dances at a modern day club. Outside of the competitive circuit there are few places where you can see partnered dances, but they do exist.

On Chicago’s South Side there has been a dance style that is largely an evolution of the jazz era. While the music may not reflect what is traditionally considered jazz dancing, it’s the best example of a modern day interpretation. Chicago stepping, Monroe says, is a direct evolution of the jazz, swing and even the disco era.

“Swing, like jazz music, was the pop music of the day,” Monroe said.

Monroe also noted that one of the main reasons dances categorized as social dance fell out of favor were due, in part, to the shift in what society considered popular music. As music shifted in beat and tempo, so too did the style of dance.

Today’s stepping music can be heard on R&B radio stations, and while to the average listener it may just sound like a normal mainstream song, to someone who is familiar with stepping it is a set of dance moves. Stepping music is slower in pace, and with fewer quicker turns changes the dynamics of the dance altogether.

Chicago stepping and even salsa dancing are dances taught from mother to daughter, and father to son. They’re dances that are seen in the home, and learned as the next generation grows, and thus their reason for survival.

Once again though, as society changes, so too does the dance. With the age of technology has come a new way to learn popular dances. Sites such as YouTube have created a whole new age of sharing group dances, and often result in new dance trends that can be easily learned, recreated, and shared again.

Such examples of these dances include the whip/nae nae, juju on the beat, and even country line dancing can be considered part of this category. These dances created a social phenomenon for a small amount of time, before something else came alone expounding on that particular style of dance.

 
With additional reporting from Jacquelyn Thayer. Follow Brittany on Twitter at @BrittanyKapa