A final note on West Coast Swing
Steve Holdener
During the 1940s and into the 1950s the Big Bands were very popular across America with touring, radio and television which all helped to sell records. The preferred dances were Lindy and Jitterbug for Big Band music. Towards the end of the 50s the inevitable happened as the younger listeners wanted simpler and noisier music given the name Rock ‘n Roll. This new music was now the most popular music for dancing which featured rising stars such as Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley and many others.
It’s interesting to note that while the teenagers preferred to freestyle dance through a changing procession of social dance fads during the 1960s, it was the adults that kept Swing alive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Swing – cite_note-52In the mid-1970s, disco music and dancing re-popularized touch partner dancing and, in California, West Coast Swing (WCS) was one of the dances of the era. By the 1990s country western dancers were dancing WCS to contemporary country western songs.
I came across an interesting quote regarding WCS that, “The only problem that exists in Swing is when someone decides there is only one way to dance it. There is never only one way to do anything, so try on different styles that you admire in other people until you find the comfortable one that fits you.”
Our dance club provides a forum via our monthly dinner/dances at SaddleBrooke One in the Vistas Dining Room with the adjacent Vermilion Room dance floor on the first Tuesday of the month at 5:30 p.m., as well as weekly open dances/practices on Sunday afternoons (4:00 to 5:30 p.m. at MountainView Ballroom) and Wednesday afternoons (4:00 to 5:30 p.m. at the Vermilion Room). We have wonderful music provided by great DJs who play excellent dance music. Why not attend our next dinner/dance on Tuesday, February 3 at SaddleBrooke One?
We are looking forward to more ballroom dancing with the Let’s Dance hosted event on Saturday, February 7 followed by SBDC dances on March 20 and April 11, 2015. These events will be here before you know it, so please save the dates for these events on your calendars!
You are very welcome to join us and meet new and old friends and share in the joy of dancing at our first Tuesday gatherings at the SaddleBrooke Clubhouse as well as the weekly open dances/practices. You are invited to visit the new Facebook page that we share with Let’s Dance (just type Let’s Dance in the search box on Facebook). Please feel free to share your own favorite dance story or ballroom tune; you can write me at [email protected].