HOW DID IT ALL START
According to Dancing USA magazine (Kerchmar, NOV.1994 P.3), traditional closed couple dancing began in the United States after 1860, when young people moved from the rural environments to cities looking for employment. Because the newer dances, the waltz (Vienna) and polka (Czech), allowed closer-than-usual spacing between partners, large segments of the public condemned this behavior.
Closed couple dancing became acceptable after 1912 when the dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle began performing the waltz, the one-step, the tango, and other dances. Among the Castle's many pupils was a young entrepreneur named Author Murray.
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MUSIC
Another major influence to social dance was a new style of music (ragtime), emphasizing syncopation in melody line. The early jazz sounds originated as a result of Irish and African-American music forms, much of which originated from the Louisiana bayous and New Orleans. Harry Fox fashioned a dance called the fox trot in 1912, which lead to the development of the Charleston in the Roaring 1920's. The music evolved into swing-jazz during the 1930's, and attracted big bands, large dance halls, and acrobatic dancers called jitterbugs, lindy-hoppers (named after pilot Charles Lindbergh), and swingers. By 1936 the swing was popular throughout the United States.
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Swing dancing continued to grow, but took on unique styles of each geographic areas. The diversity in the evolution of swing dancing is reflected in its names: Jive, Jitterbug, Lindy, Push, Whip, Shag, East coast swing, West coast swing, Imperial, Jamaican, Bop, etc.
When the Lindy hop became popular in 1927, the "American Society of Teachers of Dancing" (A.S.T.D.) and the Dance Teachers Business Association (D.T.B.A.) denounced the Lindy as: "a fad and would not last out the winter, and its devotees were victims of economic instability.
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