ABOUT SWING
What is Swing?
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Swing is both a style of Jazz developed by Black American musicians in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s (becoming the dominant popular music of that era) and a rhythm present within that music characterised by splitting a beat into a longer note followed by a shorter note. Some well-known examples are Splanky, T'Ain't What You Do and Flying Home.
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Swing dance is an umbrella term for a set of dances created by Black Americans to fit swing music. Swing dance is known for being upbeat, flashy and acrobatic, but it has the range to cover many different tempos.
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The cultural dominance of swing was brought to an end by World War 2, both because the war made it harder to form the Big Bands that produced the music, and due to a wartime Cabaret Tax levied in 1944 that made social dances extremely expensive to host.
The Cabaret Tax helped motivate less danceable, more instrumental Jazz, and drove partner dancing back into smaller, private venues. After it was lifted, Rock and Roll took centre stage and the most popular dances in White America gradually became solo dances (starting with The Twist). Swing music and social partner dancing persisted in the Black American community.
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The current worldwide swing dance scene was set in motion in the 1980s, a period in which interest in Swing grew significantly in Europe and the USA, closely associated with Frankie Manning and the Herräng Dance Camp (both pictured below), and reaching its peak in 1998 with a famous Gap commercial.
​​​What is Lindy Hop?
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Lindy Hop is a partnered dance that was created in Harlem, New York by Black American dancers during the Swing era, as part of the Harlem Renaissance. It was traditionally danced to Big Band Jazz music and evolved from dances such as the Charleston, Tap dance and the Breakaway.
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The dance is closely associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, the first desegregated ballroom in the country (pictured below, now closed). The Savoy was a White-owned ballroom that would host 3,000-5,000 people on a single night, grossing roughly £4–5 million per year in 2026 money.
Being a social dancing venue, the Savoy's rules specifically precluded "exuberant dance innovation", but as the Great Depression swept America, the Savoy Ballroom became one of the last affordable public dancefloors left in New York. Under this pressure, Lindy Hop was developed in the northeast corner of the Savoy's dancefloor, an area that gradually became known as The Corner.
Conventionally, the name "Lindy Hop" is said to be inspired by Charles Lindbergh's first non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927, but alternative accounts exist that suggest this may simply have been a market-savvy retcon by the Savoy Ballroom themselves.
Another common association is Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, a legendary performance group featuring Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Al Minns and Leon James amongst many others. You can see their work in this famous sequence from Hellzapoppin' (1941). They were incredible dancers, but suffered great mistreatment and prejudice both from Whitey and others in the industry at the time.
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Don't let the acrobatics scare you! Steps that have dancers flying through the air are very much intended as a performance piece, not a regular social dance. While modern dancers certainly try to emulate their work, the average dancefloor is much more sedate.​
​Black American values
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As White interest in Lindy Hop grew, it was modified in order to make it easier to teach and more palatable for White audiences, who at the time knew partner dancing mostly in the form of highly structured Ballroom dancing. The "jockey step", which we now call the "basic", was created artificially, specifically to make the dance teachable to large classes.
This was one of a number of changes that drew the dance away from its cultural roots, straining and constraining the artform. The dancers produced by this structured, static tuition were derisively called "Jitterbugs" by Black Americans due to their habit of completing fast, complex moves without any apparent regard for the music.
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In the Black American culture that created the dance, there are a number of values that are different to the sanitised, codified version of Lindy Hop that arose later, including but not limited to:
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Focussing on musicality, creativity and expression over the ever-more-perfect, ever-faster reproduction and chaining together of fixed step patterns.
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Being rhythmically adventurous rather than following strict counts exactly on the beat.
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Teaching on the floor, during social dances and in smaller groups, rather than in a formal class setting.
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Valuing personal expression in clothing and appearance over adherence to a 1950s vintage aesthetic.
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Valuing interpersonal connection and community-building over productivity and efficiency.
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Focussing on mastery and development of the dance over appealing to the widest possible audience.
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Dancing in a party atmosphere complete with flirting, alcohol and other intoxicants, not in a restrained, abstinent "regency ball" atmosphere.
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Jam circles forming spontaneously, at a variety of tempos, with a focus on collaboration and experimentation rather than being scheduled events focussed on elite performance and entertainment.
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More male follows, female leads and openly Queer dancers.
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The follow having a greater voice and expressing more individuality in the dance.
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Learning by oral tradition, watching and copying, rather than reading and explaining.
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We seek to respect both the dance's cultural roots and the enormous efforts made since, deprioritising without wholly disposing of the values that were introduced later on.
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References
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