Why I Miss East Coast Swing (a.k.a. Jitterbug)

I have had a realization the last few weeks.

I really miss East Coast Swing (also commonly called Jitterbug).

Just so we are all on the same page, by East Coast Swing/Jitterbug I mean the swing variation that has a six count basic (step, step, rock-step). And pretty much all the moves are done in six-counts.

Some of my friends have heard my claim (and I've also written about it here that I'm really an East Coast Swing dancer deep inside, disguised as a [Balboa|Lindy|Shag] dancer.

And I am a fairly heavy six-count dancer as well (even though Lindy "includes" six count moves, when I do them they still pretty much originate from my East Coast days). In fact, many of the first lessons we taught were from people wanting to know how to transition from East Coast to Lindy.

So anyway, I have had East Coast on the brain lately. And I miss it a lot.

The first reason is purely sentimental. I was raised an East Coast dancer. I struggled to learn it and was able to finally dance pretty well with it for about 6 months before my friends and I started noticing all this "Lindy Hop" stuff going on. Finally, I started learning Lindy (and that took me even LONGER to learn). From that point on, the days of East Coast were pretty much gone in the swing dance community. So thinking back to the days of East Coast and learning it really brings back good memories.

The second reason delves a bit more into the social consciousness of the swing community.

At the beginning of this year worries arose again of the decline of the swing dance scene. There were a few discussions and forums held to see what could be done to keep the scene going strong. A lot of the discussion centered around how to continuously bring in new dancers.

To me, the "problem" (which I don't think is that big anyhow, but just to go with it) was never really bringing in new dancers. I see lots of new dancers come in all the time, especially at LindyGroove where Lance does an awesome job of bringing new folks in ... most notably his promotions for people to hold their birthday party at LindyGroove.

I've always thought the problem was more with retaining the people brought in. And to retain people, it has to be fun for them. I started thinking about why I continued to dance (or how I got retained) and came up with two factors which made dancing more, and sometimes less, fun for me.

The first is the welcoming or non-welcoming factor (or the cliquey factor). I'm sure I'm not the first to have noticed that the swing dancing community can resemble a high school community with its crowds, groups, etc. Though this is a discussion definitely for another day, I will say that for a new dancer, if there is a perceived clique-ish-ness or feeling of unwelcome-ness (like my use of hyphens in the English language?) , of course it won't be fun.

The second factor, and the more prominent one in my opinion, is the learning factor or the "get-it" factor. I think there has to be some sort of instant gratification in learning to encourage the person to continue to come out dancing and to continue to want to learn more. If the person is just not "getting it", then the chances of retaining them will be less.

And that's where I miss East Coast. I would say Lindy is probably 3 to 4 times as difficult to learn. You could take a few weeks of beginning lessons and still find it challenging to dance Lindy socially (and to the music). With East Coast, you can probably take two or three of the free venue lessons and you are good to go! You can probably 1) dance socially, 2) with a partner, 3) to music, and 4) have a blast! In fact, Sheri and I usually teach East Coast Swing at special events (forums, weddings, etc.) and people are usually up and dancing to music by the end of the lesson and definitely having fun.

Anyway, I'm not sure right now if I miss it more because of the social community reasons as outlined above, or just because for me it's like remembering my roots.

Either way, I definitely miss it.

Though, as I mentioned, I still dance with a heavy East Coast influence. Next time you see me out dancing and you have the time, watch for it ... you might be surprised how much of it you can actually see when you're looking for it.

Cheers!