Swing Lessons

    It was 1926, and the Savoy Ballroom in New York City's Harlem was the place to be. With its block long dance floor, the Savoy attracted the city's best dancers and the best black bands playing an upbeat swinging jazz style of music. George "Shorty" Snowden was watching the bouncy dancing and glanced down to see a newspaper headline of the day which read, "Lindy Hops The Atlantic," a reference to the flight of Charles Lindberg. George dubbed what he was watching the "Lindy Hop" and the name stuck.

    With the advent of the Lindy Hop and a dance called the Jitterbug, people began dancing to the swing and jazz music they were hearing from big band greats like Calloway and Benny Goodman. Through the 1930's and 40's these dances became popularized through countless Hollywood movies and dance competitions and this style of dancing swept the U.S. being danced everywhere from night clubs to the streets.

    The reaction of most traditional dance instructors and studios was less than enthusiastic, with their spokespeople predicting the quick demise of the unruly style of dancing. By the 1940's, however, the popularity of the Swing style dances couldn't be ignored and dance studios began refining the style to suit their clientele and a crowded dance floor. Music, of course, was changing all the time from the 1920's to the 1990's, and the original Lindy Hop, Jitterbug and Swing evolved across the county into a wide variety of regional styles of dance.

    As the Lindy Hop, Jitterbug and various Swing styles were adapted by dance studios for the general public there developed a ballroom East Coast Swing and a ballroom West Coast Swing. TC Dance Club provides instruction in both East and West Coast Swing. Both dances are not only very popular with our students, but just a tremendous amount of fun.