West Coast Swing
[6] Western swing, country boogie, and, with a smaller audience, jump blues were popular on the West Coast throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s when they were renamed and marketed as rock and roll in 1954.
[citation needed] Dancers danced "a 'swingier' more smooth and subdued" form of jitterbug to Western swing music.
[7] Dean Collins, a lindy hop dancer who arrived in the Los Angeles area around 1937, was influential in developing the style of swing dance on the West Coast of the United States as both a performer and teacher.
[10] Lessons in "The New West Coast Swing" were offered at the Arthur Murray Dance Studios in San Bernardino and Riverside, California in December 1948.
[15][16] Arthur Murray Dance Studios developed a syllabus for West Coast Swing from her notes.
The Arthur Murray style taught Western Swing beginning from a closed position and the possibility of dancing single, double, or triple rhythm.
[19] Blair credits Jim Bannister, editor of the Herald American newspaper in Downey, California, for suggesting the name West Coast Swing.
[30] When Disco fell out of favor, West Coast Swing was one of the dances done in country western bars in Los Angeles.
According to one version, it was an invention of Hollywood film makers who wanted "dancers to stay in the same plane, to avoid going in and out of focus".
"[46] West Coast Swing dancers have adopted music genres such as hip hop and blues, both of which often range well below 100 bpm.
A dance's character is typically defined by a basic philosophy, principles of movement, and traditional steps and figures.
[48] Movement is based on a principle borrowed from ballroom and Latin dance in which the dancer moves their center of gravity immediately over the foot when a weight transfer is desired.
[49] West Coast Swing is also a fundamentally improvised dance, and thus such defined figures are simply starting points for the skilled dancer.
Additionally, West Coast Swing can be said to rely on the leader creating and redirecting the momentum of the follower in order to communicate how they wish to lead the dance.
[57] Internationally, West Coast Swing is popular in France,[58][59] Russia,[60] Germany,[61][62][63] Switzerland,[64] Israel,[65] Iceland,[66] New Zealand,[67][68][69] Australia,[70][71][72] Austria,[73][74][75] Poland,[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83] Singapore,[84] Hungary,[85][86][87] Romania,[88] Latvia, Spain,[89] [90] Sweden, Norway, Netherlands,[91] Finland, Belarus, Panama City,[92] and the United Kingdom.
