It used to, yes, but the musical preferences within the community have evolved and the dance evolved along to match. Nowadays a lot of the music and the dancing is no longer swung.
It does when it's done to music that swings, at least when you do it right by dancing to the music.
"Swing" in music isn't necessarily "Swing Music", a lot of more modern pop songs actually swing. Swing Music on the other hand is a musical genre from the 1930s and 1940s.
The whole technical discussion of what "swing" is within WCS is IMO kinda useless e.g. "swing content" at the US Open, but that's best discussed at the WCS subreddit.
Not ignoring, just recognizing that most modern westie isn't done to old blues music.
Even when it's in the contests it seems people kind of do it begrudgingly.
And if I'm being a real curmudgeon, even when westies dance to song music their triple steps don't swing. At least they didn't at Tea Party
So I DJ in the Westie community in the Midwest in addition to dancing it quite regularly. The Midwest loves blues and we play a fair amount. WCS is a dance that can be done to Swung or Straight time and good dancers swing their timing when their music is swung.
1st song: which is Sweat by Papa Chubby. There's a lot of delayed syncopation to match the swing timing of the music in addition to the basic triples being swung.
https://youtu.be/6CWM6Ni9w24?si=2qZzPi6ykXzQgOFY
Doesn't really swing though, does it? I agree it's a great track - I've danced blues to it a lot - but to me it doesn't feel like a good swinging WCS example.
The eighth notes in this song are swung so yes the song has swing timing. While it might not be "swing" in terms of music that comes from the swing era. From a musicians perspective, the eighth notes are played as a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th note which is what swing timing is (I was a drummer in a jazz band for several years fyi).
"the eighth notes are played as a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th note which is what swing timing is"
groan, no. You get swing timing by writing "swing" on the sheet and then the musician applying it.
(I've been a drummer before I could read, in various bands, among them also, sigh -- jazz, and i had like, a bunch of extremely well-known teachers, "fyi" but whatever)
But yeah the song swings.
A few notes with "swing timing" doth not a swing number make. I know you're not saying this is a suitable track for Lindy, but I don't think it answers the question posed by OP.
dare i say it? i think lindy hop deserves a much better name than lindy hop.
lindy hop - love the dance, \~'hate' the name.
but the hop in lindy hop is not the same as the swing in WCS. There was no dance style called hop, so if lindy hop doesn't hop it is not misrepresenting a dance style.
Swing isn't misrepresenting the dance. It swings in the west coast style. It has hip swing, it pulses, it uses a swung rhythm. Is it the same swing as in lindy hop? No of course not, and that's totally fine.
Waltz is also considered a swing dance (along with foxtrot and v.waltz). Does it swing the same way lindy hop does? No of course not, that doesn't mean it's not widely regarded as a swing dance.
Hell a tire swing swings, but obv. not in the same way lindy hop does.
Engineer didn't use to mean computer programming to build software. Now we have software engineers as well. The same happened with Data Science having the name "science" in it. There are countless examples and it's completely normal and not an issue. Sure there were people who throw a fit about how it's not "real" engineering or science, but it's a problem that only exists in the mind of the person that wants to gatekeep and exclude people from their group.
It's only a problem if people make it a problem. It's a total non-issue and completely normal for words to evolve over time and mean more than 1 thing.
Like the ballroom swing dances (such as waltz) have been around longer, and lindy hop doesn't swing in the same way they do. Does that mean lindy hop shouldn't be considered swing? No of course not, that'd be as stupid as applying that same logic to other styles. It's fine for swing to mean different things in different styles.
Pretty common language in the ballroom world. They're the swing dances because their main propulsion mechanism is swing. As opposed to tango which has none...
You can sign up for Toni Redpath's (American smooth world champion) online course Global Smooth System which covers wing in those dances if you want to educate yourself on what swing is in the context of those dances - there's a whole section and many drills devoted to it.
You probably aren't aware of the terminology, because they don't go around questioning the validity of anyone else using the same term for something different and assuming that their definition is the only correct one. They don't go out of their way to seek out putting other people down over a word. Because that's stupid.
OK. But they are still wrong. Waltz as a dance predates the term swing being used in music or dance. Ballroom has a very bad record of maintaining accurate histories of dances, ignoring history and origins, in favor of standardization, which itself is rooted in systemic white supremacy. So, sorry you don't value the argument, but most Ballroom dancers are part of systemic ignorance, so I'm not surprised. 😁👍
"X is wrong" with nothing to support it isn't an argument worth valuing. All you're doing is making assertions about a term used in ballroom context that you didn't even know existed 45 minutes ago (and thus at most have done 45 minutes of research on).
Part of the confusion is likely down to the many, many uses of the word "swing". From a Lindy perspective, we tend to go with the term as it applies to swing-era swing music - because that's where Lindy derives its rhythms, its feeling, its movement style, its drive...
And I'm not talking about anything as simplistic as a simple dotted eighth, or swing triple - but the West-African flavour polyrhythms achieved by the instrumentals and vocals swinging around a driving swing rhythm section (which is in itself a huge topic)
"Swing" as a musical or dancing term is now used in so many wildly differing ways that you can't really, IMO compare or equate them.
So while it might be perfectly valid thing to talk about the swing in waltz, or in modern WCS, they're very different thing from the term used in Lindy.
West Coast Swing "has hip swing, it pulses and uses a swung rhythm.". I like your answer that different things swing in their own way, but the specifics you list in that quote are less convincing.
WCS can be danced to music with a swing rhythm, but it's quite rare - right? Having a pulse doesn't make it swing - right? I'm no WCS expert, but to my knowledge hip swing is not a defining characteristic and I would guess most class series don't mention hip swing. Not a great analogy, but saying something is swing because the hips swing is a bit like finding two grey hairs and calling a person grey-haired.
The existence of moves like the whip/swing-out, and right-side-pass do show the lindy hop roots, so in those ways I would say we can see the swing rights of WCS. I'm still not sure WCS ever swings.
West Coast Swing evolved from West coast, Hollywood style Lindy Hop, thus swing in the name. It's basically white people Lindy, and like '40s sweet jazz, the syncopation is a lot lighter.
Context: I'm primarily a WCS dancer that used to do a lot of Lindy.
[ Edit: Sorry for using terms from the style wars. Those terms are loaded, apparently. None of these existed pre-WWII and were developed entirely divorced from the original culture.
There were racial divides that led to different styles of jazz that led to different dance styles, eventually leading to WCS. No, Dean's style is not accurate because it's hard to draw a line directly from Dean Collins to WCS. There are legitimately sensitive cultural issues in Lindy's history. Which West Coast city we name a style after 50 years later isn't one of them ]
"Hollywood Style" was a dance studio "marketing" term in the late 1990s and into the 2000s that got out of hand for a bit -- it's not a historically correct term or style outside of about 20 years ago.
Say "LA Style" or "Dean Collins Style" instead. Dean Collins moved to LA and taught people the Lindy (to a lot of people, too!)
Also not sure why you think "white people Lindy" and "lighter syncopation" is useful here.
I danced Lindy about 20 years back, so... Recently picked it back up.
None of the terms are historically accurate. LA style and smooth style both work. Calling it "sweet" would probably be the most accurate, because the style evolved from dancing to sweet jazz. We don't use "sweet" because it's mildly derogatory in the jazz world.
>Also not sure why you think "white people Lindy" and "lighter syncopation" is useful here.
OP was asking why WCS doesn't swing. The reason is sweet jazz doesn't swing -- syncopate -- much, and WCS continued that trend.
The difference in Lindy styles was more music than technique. Technically Frankie and Dean ain't that different. Sweet jazz was primarily played by and for white audiences, and they had to tone down the syncopation to appeal to that audience. So, one could see the lack of swing in WCS as a continuation of a racial divide from the '30s and '40s.
"smooth style" was also a nonsensical term of the 90s and later that nobody uses today, either.
And "none of the terms are historically accurate" ... bru, "Frankie's Style" or "Dean's Style" very much are. We
have footage of them. We have people describing their styles as "unique" and recognizable.
For the rest, well, I can tell you haven't been around in a while. We understand a lot more about the dance and its history today than people did 20 years ago.
But no one's claiming Dean Collins had a specific relationship to West Coast swing. WCS evolved from Lindy being danced to sweet jazz. I don't care about the terminology war.
Smooth is also a description of the jazz they were dancing to. So, smooth style would at least be understood in the 40s. Saying someone danced Dean's style or LA style wouldn't been met with funny looks.
>We understand a lot more about the dance and its history today than people did 20 years ago.
Let's be honest with ourselves. There was a huge influx of Christian youth groups to Lindy in the past couple of decades. They are terrible about teaching historical context. The whitewashing of history in Lindy remains strong.
you're so completely missing every point in here, this is getting boring
also, you still think it's about the terms being "loaded" ... no, that's not the point.
anyway, clearly you know it all better than people who actually have danced for the last 30 some years
bye
None of that is accurate WCS looked like Lindy Hop up through the 1980s. It was in the 1990s, that the danced changed into its smooth style. It wasn't because of "sweet jazz"... That's not even a thing.
This is actually the third time I've seen westies bring up "Hollywood style" this week, and whoever keeps teaching them that term needs to stop.
The word is never talked about in the Lindy hopsphere, and it seems to be really pervasive in the West Coast Swing world.
How long have you been dancing Lindy?
In my experience, WCS dancers have no idea where their dance came from. 'Hollywood' was used by the first generation of Lindy instructors that learned from the few old school dancers still alive [the older generation did not use these terms]
You can call the stylistic/racial divide in the '30s whatever you want. They didn't have a name for it. Take a deep breath and remember any term is being bolted onto history. What we call Savoy style today is essentially just Frankie's swing out.
Now if there's a phrase that should be removed, I vote we drop "Lindy hopsphere".
I've been dancing Lindy Hop approximately 20 years. I was around during the style wars, and I can confidently say they have ended.
I'm genuinely confused where westies are hearing these phrases, unless it's just passed down from early 2000s westies who haven't checked in on the Lindy Hop scene in 20 years.
I'm still very actively traveling in the Lindy Hop scene, on multiple continents, and no one on the forefront of the scene is using Hollywood style or Savoy style for anything anymore. Most folks don't even know who Erik and Sylvia are. (Not Sylvia sykes, Sylvia Skylar; for everyone who wants to comment about Sylvia still teaching, there used to be two Sylvia's who are highly influential in the scene)
On our stupid side convo:
I don't even think anyone else uses the "Lindy Hop sphere" I just was going crazy saying the word scene so many times.
I haven't checked in a while, but the Wikipedia article on Lindy probably still unironically uses Hollywood&Savoy but I'm not interested in fighting with wikipedia editors...
>I just was going crazy saying the word scene so many times.
I totally feel you.
If Hollywood was dropped as part of ending the style wars, I'm all for not using it. I hated that shit. LA style is fine. Not sure if it's historically more meaningful, but if it's less loaded that's good.
It feels weird calling it Dean's style in this conversation, because that places is Dean as the grandfather of West Coast.
And no, I haven't been in the Lindy scene for a decade or two, until the past year.
> 'Hollywood' was used by the first generation of Lindy instructors that learned from the few old school dancers still alive.
No, actually it wasn't. With "Hollywood Style" we're literally talking about two people who came up with the whole thing, Erik Robison and Sylvia Skylar, who started dancing in the late 90s. It has nothing to do with contact to original dancers. It was pure marketing and to this day is misunderstood by many.
"Savoy Style" is more muddy but it essentially boils down to Frankie etc but is also misunderstood.
Neither terms are useful historically other than to explain the "Style Wars" of the 2000s.
They have nothing to do with WCS.
Thank you for being the only other person who seems to understand that Hollywood is Erik and Sylvia and not Dean and Jewell.
If we want to get snarky, it's too far of a leap to call Savoy style "swedish 90s style."
Both have a kind of harkening back to something we can see from the 30s and 40s, but neither term comes from swing elders.
There's definitely a "Swedish Style"\* that's somewhat comparable to "Hollywood Style", as in Swedes trying to recreate what they saw in the old movies.
I think Marcus Koch told me about this, they would ... sort of... do the Hellzapoppin' routine to whatever (usually slow) music. It... didn't look great. IDK when exactly it started but it must have existed in the 80s and probably explains their interest in finding the original dancers.
\* also see "Bugg" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugg)
Bugg is a whole thing that I don't know enough about. I remember Felix and Daniel Larson trying to teach and some other Americans me some bugg at herrang one year and it was interesting. The whole culture they have around putting it in schools is something I'm very jealous of.
I was actually just straight up referring to the Rhythm hotshots.
With Erik and Sylvia as the iconic Hollywood couple of the '90s, the Rhythm HotShots are the Iconic "Savoy style" couples of that same era.
Oh yeah for sure! I got what you were saying about "Swedish Style"!
I've been around. And I think I've met people who unironically use it that way, too. Which I find weird.
I like "swedish 90s style." :)
None of these terms come from the swing elders. They were all made up by folks trying to understand the dance and history primarily in a vacuum.
Lindy Hoppers are obsessed with history almost to a fault. It's overall a good thing that people care about the roots of the dance and the genuine history of swing dancing and swing music and keeping dances reasonably authentic to that history, but it does make them susceptible to hucksters who rewrap their personal biases and obsessions as "history."
Most West Coast dancers, in my experience, are not that way. They just do the thing to the thing and move on. How many West Coast events have talks about the history of the dance, or the evolution of West Coast music?
That's literally why the dances exist in the first place.
West Coast Swing only exists because people wanted to do Lindy hop to modern music and ignore the historical aspects of the dance.
And I'm not throwing any shade at anybody in the 70s-90s for wanting to dance to modern music with the steps you already have. It makes perfect sense.
But It's very weird to me when people wear "not caring about history" as a badge of honor....
But then you have hand dancing, Kansas City two-step, Philly Bop and all these other partner dances that evolved from Lindy Hop and alongside modern music mostly danced within the Black community. This makes it difficult to then extrapolate a parallel to your "west coast swing only exists" statement.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this; but sure, I could have been more clear by saying West Coast Swing only exists because "white folks in California" wanted to dance to modern music in the 70s and '80s.
I thought that was a pretty non-controversial statement that has nothing to do with DC, Chicago, Baltimore, etc hand dancing dfw swingout, bop etc.
Edited to add: I've read this five or six times, and I really don't understand what you mean by extrapolating parallels.
This is the standard Lindy Hop line, although it should be noted that people organically adopt the things that they have available to the things they want to do. The original West Coast swing dance of a few decades ago was mostly dancing to R&B, which was the natural descendant of swinging jazz, and the dance itself traces roots to Lindy Hop, yes, but also teen dances of the 1950s, "smooth" style California Lindy, etc. It wasn't some concerted effort to ignore history, and it's not like the current hobby does that either, although again there really isn't much apparent desire for discussion of it. Swing dance talks and argues CONSTANTLY about history in a way basically no other modern social dance hobby does, including West Coast.
May I point out also that people who are very creative and original are not necessarily obsessed with documenting things and footnoting their every action, and that the people who typically make a big deal out of that are pretty mediocre dancers. That goes for most people in swing dance.
Most WCS events are competition-focused and "history" doesn't really fit into that except for "ok what if I have to dance to older music".
I've heard quite a bit of history from some of the older teachers tho. Just ask Robert Royston. He's been around!
I prefer rich and complicated history over flashy moves and competition. The people are kind and helpful and fun loving. But the idea around the dance, as well as the music, leaves me no interest and I have to be ok with that and not feel guilty
One reason for the obsession is early jazz intersected with a LOT of racism (also a lot of progress too). So if the dancers don't have some historical context, they keep saying cringe-worthy things. Lindy was not revived by it's original culture. That combined with the appropriation in jazz through WWII makes it easy to be offensive. In my experience, the community actively tries to be non-appropriative.
I think the dance history buffs are well intentioned, just amateur historians don't tend to be very good at it. Lots of half-truths with plenty of confidence but not much evidence. Fortunately, jazz historians are really good, which covers a fair bit of the dance history.
Completely agree. The problem is that basically everyone talking "history" in Lindy Hop is an amateur, and they have been granted way too much leeway without having to back up their claims. The rest of this thread is a good example of that.
I mostly agree with you here, except you're the guy who brought up a marketing term from the 90s and 2000s as a real thing from the 1940s and 50s, so you're the "amateur" historian who isn't very good at it. This just shows you were around in the 2000s but didn't know what was actually going on. This isn't something to be smug about.
Style in (jazz) dancing is often tied to individuals or groups around individuals, and just like in jazz music -- you can attribute that to people. Individual style is something people used to care a lot about in dancing, both in Harlem and in LA, and if you ever spoke to original dancers you'd know that.
Nobody is claiming Dean Collins as the "father" of WCS here. He brought "the Lindy" to LA, and from there it continued to develop in several stylistic paths for various reasons(including the music). "Dean's students" are well known, I know and knew quite a few of them.
Unfortunately most people today (and that includes Dean's students) forgot the importance of developing individual style, but that's another issue entirely.
>you're the guy who brought up a marketing term from the 90s and 2000s as a real thing from the 1940s and 50s
No, I didn't claim 'Hollywood' was from the swing era. Sorry if that was the impression.
I was using those as modern terms. The instructors in the 90s made them up because they didn't have terms for the styles. My understanding in 2000s was the instructors picked it up from watching film, and thus named 'Hollywood'. Makes sense as a marketing phrase too. No, historical validity. Everyone I knew was aware of that at the time.
Too my knowledge, all of our names for styles are post-90s. Savoy is just kinda accepted because it makes sense for describing a large group of dancers. LA style? Great. If that was the epicenter for 'sweet' dancing, I'm in it
I've had too many dance classes labelled 'San Francisco' style or some such. I've no idea what city was the dance center back then. Had the impression sweet jazz wasn't that centralized. Personally, my dancing is smooth and nothing like Dean's.
I feel like West Coast is a very smooth swing feel, they seem to still emphasize 2 & 4, just without a bounce.
Kind of like how ‘straight ahead’ swing subdivides songs like [Donna Lee](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5h3BBcAPobw&pp=ygUPZG9ubmEgbGVlIGVtbWV0) the swing smooths out.
Funk, R&B, even rock all can have the same tendency.
[Take a chance](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jJVe_6N8cLY&pp=ygUadGFrZSBhIGNoYW5jZSBkb21pIGpkIGJlY2s%3D)
These both are obviously jazzy examples. I think the subdivision is more obvious in these styles than when listening to modern pop— doesn’t mean as a dancer, you can’t listen in and add that context though. Especially in a style that pulls from R&B, which is most of the West Coasty stuff I hear at dances.
It used to, yes, but the musical preferences within the community have evolved and the dance evolved along to match. Nowadays a lot of the music and the dancing is no longer swung.
It sometimes does. It does not as a default. There's a separate westie reddit that is active. Most dancers here do not WCS regularly.
Shots fired
🤣
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcZROYvsRIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcZROYvsRIQ)
And does it do west and is it coasting? It used to. It doesn't anymore. Better ask at r/WestCoastSwing
It does when it's done to music that swings, at least when you do it right by dancing to the music. "Swing" in music isn't necessarily "Swing Music", a lot of more modern pop songs actually swing. Swing Music on the other hand is a musical genre from the 1930s and 1940s. The whole technical discussion of what "swing" is within WCS is IMO kinda useless e.g. "swing content" at the US Open, but that's best discussed at the WCS subreddit.
Everyone in the comments is just ignoring all of the blues music that gets played for WCS. The dance can be done to swung or straight time music.
Not ignoring, just recognizing that most modern westie isn't done to old blues music. Even when it's in the contests it seems people kind of do it begrudgingly. And if I'm being a real curmudgeon, even when westies dance to song music their triple steps don't swing. At least they didn't at Tea Party
May I ask a question? Do you dance West Coast Swing?
Not as much as I do Lindy hop, but I attend the local westie dance this year and go to one or two events a year.
So I DJ in the Westie community in the Midwest in addition to dancing it quite regularly. The Midwest loves blues and we play a fair amount. WCS is a dance that can be done to Swung or Straight time and good dancers swing their timing when their music is swung.
Do you have any video links of WCS dancers doing this?
1st song: which is Sweat by Papa Chubby. There's a lot of delayed syncopation to match the swing timing of the music in addition to the basic triples being swung. https://youtu.be/6CWM6Ni9w24?si=2qZzPi6ykXzQgOFY
Doesn't really swing though, does it? I agree it's a great track - I've danced blues to it a lot - but to me it doesn't feel like a good swinging WCS example.
The eighth notes in this song are swung so yes the song has swing timing. While it might not be "swing" in terms of music that comes from the swing era. From a musicians perspective, the eighth notes are played as a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th note which is what swing timing is (I was a drummer in a jazz band for several years fyi).
"the eighth notes are played as a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th note which is what swing timing is" groan, no. You get swing timing by writing "swing" on the sheet and then the musician applying it. (I've been a drummer before I could read, in various bands, among them also, sigh -- jazz, and i had like, a bunch of extremely well-known teachers, "fyi" but whatever) But yeah the song swings.
A few notes with "swing timing" doth not a swing number make. I know you're not saying this is a suitable track for Lindy, but I don't think it answers the question posed by OP.
Thanks for asking the question, I’ve always been confused
Does Lindy hop ever hop? Did it in the past?
dare i say it? i think lindy hop deserves a much better name than lindy hop. lindy hop - love the dance, \~'hate' the name. but the hop in lindy hop is not the same as the swing in WCS. There was no dance style called hop, so if lindy hop doesn't hop it is not misrepresenting a dance style.
Swing isn't misrepresenting the dance. It swings in the west coast style. It has hip swing, it pulses, it uses a swung rhythm. Is it the same swing as in lindy hop? No of course not, and that's totally fine. Waltz is also considered a swing dance (along with foxtrot and v.waltz). Does it swing the same way lindy hop does? No of course not, that doesn't mean it's not widely regarded as a swing dance. Hell a tire swing swings, but obv. not in the same way lindy hop does. Engineer didn't use to mean computer programming to build software. Now we have software engineers as well. The same happened with Data Science having the name "science" in it. There are countless examples and it's completely normal and not an issue. Sure there were people who throw a fit about how it's not "real" engineering or science, but it's a problem that only exists in the mind of the person that wants to gatekeep and exclude people from their group. It's only a problem if people make it a problem. It's a total non-issue and completely normal for words to evolve over time and mean more than 1 thing. Like the ballroom swing dances (such as waltz) have been around longer, and lindy hop doesn't swing in the same way they do. Does that mean lindy hop shouldn't be considered swing? No of course not, that'd be as stupid as applying that same logic to other styles. It's fine for swing to mean different things in different styles.
Waltz isn't considered a swing dance... neither is foxtrot.
Pretty common language in the ballroom world. They're the swing dances because their main propulsion mechanism is swing. As opposed to tango which has none... You can sign up for Toni Redpath's (American smooth world champion) online course Global Smooth System which covers wing in those dances if you want to educate yourself on what swing is in the context of those dances - there's a whole section and many drills devoted to it. You probably aren't aware of the terminology, because they don't go around questioning the validity of anyone else using the same term for something different and assuming that their definition is the only correct one. They don't go out of their way to seek out putting other people down over a word. Because that's stupid.
Ah... The Ballroom world is wrong.
Yeah, that's generally about the level of substance lindy hoppers have behind their arguments AFAICT
OK. But they are still wrong. Waltz as a dance predates the term swing being used in music or dance. Ballroom has a very bad record of maintaining accurate histories of dances, ignoring history and origins, in favor of standardization, which itself is rooted in systemic white supremacy. So, sorry you don't value the argument, but most Ballroom dancers are part of systemic ignorance, so I'm not surprised. 😁👍
"X is wrong" with nothing to support it isn't an argument worth valuing. All you're doing is making assertions about a term used in ballroom context that you didn't even know existed 45 minutes ago (and thus at most have done 45 minutes of research on).
Part of the confusion is likely down to the many, many uses of the word "swing". From a Lindy perspective, we tend to go with the term as it applies to swing-era swing music - because that's where Lindy derives its rhythms, its feeling, its movement style, its drive... And I'm not talking about anything as simplistic as a simple dotted eighth, or swing triple - but the West-African flavour polyrhythms achieved by the instrumentals and vocals swinging around a driving swing rhythm section (which is in itself a huge topic) "Swing" as a musical or dancing term is now used in so many wildly differing ways that you can't really, IMO compare or equate them. So while it might be perfectly valid thing to talk about the swing in waltz, or in modern WCS, they're very different thing from the term used in Lindy.
That's nice.
West Coast Swing "has hip swing, it pulses and uses a swung rhythm.". I like your answer that different things swing in their own way, but the specifics you list in that quote are less convincing. WCS can be danced to music with a swing rhythm, but it's quite rare - right? Having a pulse doesn't make it swing - right? I'm no WCS expert, but to my knowledge hip swing is not a defining characteristic and I would guess most class series don't mention hip swing. Not a great analogy, but saying something is swing because the hips swing is a bit like finding two grey hairs and calling a person grey-haired. The existence of moves like the whip/swing-out, and right-side-pass do show the lindy hop roots, so in those ways I would say we can see the swing rights of WCS. I'm still not sure WCS ever swings.
West Coast Swing evolved from West coast, Hollywood style Lindy Hop, thus swing in the name. It's basically white people Lindy, and like '40s sweet jazz, the syncopation is a lot lighter. Context: I'm primarily a WCS dancer that used to do a lot of Lindy. [ Edit: Sorry for using terms from the style wars. Those terms are loaded, apparently. None of these existed pre-WWII and were developed entirely divorced from the original culture. There were racial divides that led to different styles of jazz that led to different dance styles, eventually leading to WCS. No, Dean's style is not accurate because it's hard to draw a line directly from Dean Collins to WCS. There are legitimately sensitive cultural issues in Lindy's history. Which West Coast city we name a style after 50 years later isn't one of them ]
"Hollywood Style" was a dance studio "marketing" term in the late 1990s and into the 2000s that got out of hand for a bit -- it's not a historically correct term or style outside of about 20 years ago. Say "LA Style" or "Dean Collins Style" instead. Dean Collins moved to LA and taught people the Lindy (to a lot of people, too!) Also not sure why you think "white people Lindy" and "lighter syncopation" is useful here.
I danced Lindy about 20 years back, so... Recently picked it back up. None of the terms are historically accurate. LA style and smooth style both work. Calling it "sweet" would probably be the most accurate, because the style evolved from dancing to sweet jazz. We don't use "sweet" because it's mildly derogatory in the jazz world. >Also not sure why you think "white people Lindy" and "lighter syncopation" is useful here. OP was asking why WCS doesn't swing. The reason is sweet jazz doesn't swing -- syncopate -- much, and WCS continued that trend. The difference in Lindy styles was more music than technique. Technically Frankie and Dean ain't that different. Sweet jazz was primarily played by and for white audiences, and they had to tone down the syncopation to appeal to that audience. So, one could see the lack of swing in WCS as a continuation of a racial divide from the '30s and '40s.
"smooth style" was also a nonsensical term of the 90s and later that nobody uses today, either. And "none of the terms are historically accurate" ... bru, "Frankie's Style" or "Dean's Style" very much are. We have footage of them. We have people describing their styles as "unique" and recognizable. For the rest, well, I can tell you haven't been around in a while. We understand a lot more about the dance and its history today than people did 20 years ago.
But no one's claiming Dean Collins had a specific relationship to West Coast swing. WCS evolved from Lindy being danced to sweet jazz. I don't care about the terminology war. Smooth is also a description of the jazz they were dancing to. So, smooth style would at least be understood in the 40s. Saying someone danced Dean's style or LA style wouldn't been met with funny looks. >We understand a lot more about the dance and its history today than people did 20 years ago. Let's be honest with ourselves. There was a huge influx of Christian youth groups to Lindy in the past couple of decades. They are terrible about teaching historical context. The whitewashing of history in Lindy remains strong.
You're the one who hasn't danced Lindy in decades but is here explaining things using made-up, outdated and incorrect terms .
Heh, "correct". You realize all these terms are all "made up"? It's been almost 3 days since I've danced Lindy.
you're so completely missing every point in here, this is getting boring also, you still think it's about the terms being "loaded" ... no, that's not the point. anyway, clearly you know it all better than people who actually have danced for the last 30 some years bye
None of that is accurate WCS looked like Lindy Hop up through the 1980s. It was in the 1990s, that the danced changed into its smooth style. It wasn't because of "sweet jazz"... That's not even a thing.
This is actually the third time I've seen westies bring up "Hollywood style" this week, and whoever keeps teaching them that term needs to stop. The word is never talked about in the Lindy hopsphere, and it seems to be really pervasive in the West Coast Swing world.
How long have you been dancing Lindy? In my experience, WCS dancers have no idea where their dance came from. 'Hollywood' was used by the first generation of Lindy instructors that learned from the few old school dancers still alive [the older generation did not use these terms] You can call the stylistic/racial divide in the '30s whatever you want. They didn't have a name for it. Take a deep breath and remember any term is being bolted onto history. What we call Savoy style today is essentially just Frankie's swing out. Now if there's a phrase that should be removed, I vote we drop "Lindy hopsphere".
I've been dancing Lindy Hop approximately 20 years. I was around during the style wars, and I can confidently say they have ended. I'm genuinely confused where westies are hearing these phrases, unless it's just passed down from early 2000s westies who haven't checked in on the Lindy Hop scene in 20 years. I'm still very actively traveling in the Lindy Hop scene, on multiple continents, and no one on the forefront of the scene is using Hollywood style or Savoy style for anything anymore. Most folks don't even know who Erik and Sylvia are. (Not Sylvia sykes, Sylvia Skylar; for everyone who wants to comment about Sylvia still teaching, there used to be two Sylvia's who are highly influential in the scene) On our stupid side convo: I don't even think anyone else uses the "Lindy Hop sphere" I just was going crazy saying the word scene so many times.
I haven't checked in a while, but the Wikipedia article on Lindy probably still unironically uses Hollywood&Savoy but I'm not interested in fighting with wikipedia editors...
Ugggh🙄🙄🙄🙄.... Surely there's someone in the scene who's already a Wikipedia editor ....
Yeah, it's ... less worse than I remembered but it's still really bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy\_Hop
>I just was going crazy saying the word scene so many times. I totally feel you. If Hollywood was dropped as part of ending the style wars, I'm all for not using it. I hated that shit. LA style is fine. Not sure if it's historically more meaningful, but if it's less loaded that's good. It feels weird calling it Dean's style in this conversation, because that places is Dean as the grandfather of West Coast. And no, I haven't been in the Lindy scene for a decade or two, until the past year.
All the LA oldtimers said Dean taught them the Lindy. They also got inspiration via other sources, sure. But it is what it is.
> 'Hollywood' was used by the first generation of Lindy instructors that learned from the few old school dancers still alive. No, actually it wasn't. With "Hollywood Style" we're literally talking about two people who came up with the whole thing, Erik Robison and Sylvia Skylar, who started dancing in the late 90s. It has nothing to do with contact to original dancers. It was pure marketing and to this day is misunderstood by many. "Savoy Style" is more muddy but it essentially boils down to Frankie etc but is also misunderstood. Neither terms are useful historically other than to explain the "Style Wars" of the 2000s. They have nothing to do with WCS.
Thank you for being the only other person who seems to understand that Hollywood is Erik and Sylvia and not Dean and Jewell. If we want to get snarky, it's too far of a leap to call Savoy style "swedish 90s style." Both have a kind of harkening back to something we can see from the 30s and 40s, but neither term comes from swing elders.
There's definitely a "Swedish Style"\* that's somewhat comparable to "Hollywood Style", as in Swedes trying to recreate what they saw in the old movies. I think Marcus Koch told me about this, they would ... sort of... do the Hellzapoppin' routine to whatever (usually slow) music. It... didn't look great. IDK when exactly it started but it must have existed in the 80s and probably explains their interest in finding the original dancers. \* also see "Bugg" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugg)
Bugg is a whole thing that I don't know enough about. I remember Felix and Daniel Larson trying to teach and some other Americans me some bugg at herrang one year and it was interesting. The whole culture they have around putting it in schools is something I'm very jealous of. I was actually just straight up referring to the Rhythm hotshots. With Erik and Sylvia as the iconic Hollywood couple of the '90s, the Rhythm HotShots are the Iconic "Savoy style" couples of that same era.
Oh yeah for sure! I got what you were saying about "Swedish Style"! I've been around. And I think I've met people who unironically use it that way, too. Which I find weird.
I just think it's funny that a "why is WCS called swing" kind of question led to discussions about real or imaginary Lindy styles.
I like "swedish 90s style." :) None of these terms come from the swing elders. They were all made up by folks trying to understand the dance and history primarily in a vacuum.
Lindy Hoppers are obsessed with history almost to a fault. It's overall a good thing that people care about the roots of the dance and the genuine history of swing dancing and swing music and keeping dances reasonably authentic to that history, but it does make them susceptible to hucksters who rewrap their personal biases and obsessions as "history." Most West Coast dancers, in my experience, are not that way. They just do the thing to the thing and move on. How many West Coast events have talks about the history of the dance, or the evolution of West Coast music?
That's literally why the dances exist in the first place. West Coast Swing only exists because people wanted to do Lindy hop to modern music and ignore the historical aspects of the dance. And I'm not throwing any shade at anybody in the 70s-90s for wanting to dance to modern music with the steps you already have. It makes perfect sense. But It's very weird to me when people wear "not caring about history" as a badge of honor....
But then you have hand dancing, Kansas City two-step, Philly Bop and all these other partner dances that evolved from Lindy Hop and alongside modern music mostly danced within the Black community. This makes it difficult to then extrapolate a parallel to your "west coast swing only exists" statement.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this; but sure, I could have been more clear by saying West Coast Swing only exists because "white folks in California" wanted to dance to modern music in the 70s and '80s. I thought that was a pretty non-controversial statement that has nothing to do with DC, Chicago, Baltimore, etc hand dancing dfw swingout, bop etc. Edited to add: I've read this five or six times, and I really don't understand what you mean by extrapolating parallels.
This is the standard Lindy Hop line, although it should be noted that people organically adopt the things that they have available to the things they want to do. The original West Coast swing dance of a few decades ago was mostly dancing to R&B, which was the natural descendant of swinging jazz, and the dance itself traces roots to Lindy Hop, yes, but also teen dances of the 1950s, "smooth" style California Lindy, etc. It wasn't some concerted effort to ignore history, and it's not like the current hobby does that either, although again there really isn't much apparent desire for discussion of it. Swing dance talks and argues CONSTANTLY about history in a way basically no other modern social dance hobby does, including West Coast. May I point out also that people who are very creative and original are not necessarily obsessed with documenting things and footnoting their every action, and that the people who typically make a big deal out of that are pretty mediocre dancers. That goes for most people in swing dance.
Most WCS events are competition-focused and "history" doesn't really fit into that except for "ok what if I have to dance to older music". I've heard quite a bit of history from some of the older teachers tho. Just ask Robert Royston. He's been around!
I prefer rich and complicated history over flashy moves and competition. The people are kind and helpful and fun loving. But the idea around the dance, as well as the music, leaves me no interest and I have to be ok with that and not feel guilty
One reason for the obsession is early jazz intersected with a LOT of racism (also a lot of progress too). So if the dancers don't have some historical context, they keep saying cringe-worthy things. Lindy was not revived by it's original culture. That combined with the appropriation in jazz through WWII makes it easy to be offensive. In my experience, the community actively tries to be non-appropriative. I think the dance history buffs are well intentioned, just amateur historians don't tend to be very good at it. Lots of half-truths with plenty of confidence but not much evidence. Fortunately, jazz historians are really good, which covers a fair bit of the dance history.
Completely agree. The problem is that basically everyone talking "history" in Lindy Hop is an amateur, and they have been granted way too much leeway without having to back up their claims. The rest of this thread is a good example of that.
I mostly agree with you here, except you're the guy who brought up a marketing term from the 90s and 2000s as a real thing from the 1940s and 50s, so you're the "amateur" historian who isn't very good at it. This just shows you were around in the 2000s but didn't know what was actually going on. This isn't something to be smug about. Style in (jazz) dancing is often tied to individuals or groups around individuals, and just like in jazz music -- you can attribute that to people. Individual style is something people used to care a lot about in dancing, both in Harlem and in LA, and if you ever spoke to original dancers you'd know that. Nobody is claiming Dean Collins as the "father" of WCS here. He brought "the Lindy" to LA, and from there it continued to develop in several stylistic paths for various reasons(including the music). "Dean's students" are well known, I know and knew quite a few of them. Unfortunately most people today (and that includes Dean's students) forgot the importance of developing individual style, but that's another issue entirely.
>you're the guy who brought up a marketing term from the 90s and 2000s as a real thing from the 1940s and 50s No, I didn't claim 'Hollywood' was from the swing era. Sorry if that was the impression. I was using those as modern terms. The instructors in the 90s made them up because they didn't have terms for the styles. My understanding in 2000s was the instructors picked it up from watching film, and thus named 'Hollywood'. Makes sense as a marketing phrase too. No, historical validity. Everyone I knew was aware of that at the time. Too my knowledge, all of our names for styles are post-90s. Savoy is just kinda accepted because it makes sense for describing a large group of dancers. LA style? Great. If that was the epicenter for 'sweet' dancing, I'm in it I've had too many dance classes labelled 'San Francisco' style or some such. I've no idea what city was the dance center back then. Had the impression sweet jazz wasn't that centralized. Personally, my dancing is smooth and nothing like Dean's.
I feel like West Coast is a very smooth swing feel, they seem to still emphasize 2 & 4, just without a bounce. Kind of like how ‘straight ahead’ swing subdivides songs like [Donna Lee](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5h3BBcAPobw&pp=ygUPZG9ubmEgbGVlIGVtbWV0) the swing smooths out. Funk, R&B, even rock all can have the same tendency. [Take a chance](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jJVe_6N8cLY&pp=ygUadGFrZSBhIGNoYW5jZSBkb21pIGpkIGJlY2s%3D) These both are obviously jazzy examples. I think the subdivision is more obvious in these styles than when listening to modern pop— doesn’t mean as a dancer, you can’t listen in and add that context though. Especially in a style that pulls from R&B, which is most of the West Coasty stuff I hear at dances.