Haley Vecchiarelli
Swinging Out of Style
saving the last dance
Print“It’s vintage… which is another word for obsolete,” explained swing dance instructor Nathan Bugh.
Despite Bugh’s flippant protestations that swing is a thing of the past, at Columbia, the 80-year-old dance form continues to thrive.
This is due in large part to the efforts of the Columbia University Swing Dance Club. Every Wednesday, students gather in Alfred Lerner Hall for dance lessons arranged by the club, which, says president Alexa Petrelli, a sophomore in CC, currently has about 100 paying members—some of whom will perform Thursday, Feb. 4, as part of Glass House Rocks.
Since becoming the leader of the group, Petrelli has tried to make the club more beginner-friendly, and it seems her efforts have paid off: Juliet Savits, sophomore in CC, who discovered the club at the Activities Fair in the fall, says that swing dancing “looked like so much fun” that she had to try it.
Students find out about the club in a variety of ways: some are dragged along to their first class by their friends; others eagerly sign up upon hearing about it. Petrelli says that everyone in the club is “energetic and outgoing” and that she “loves the community within the group.”
In order to foster this sense of community, Petrelli and others also work to arrange events that reach out to the rest of Columbia. For example, the club organizes a semi-formal every semester. The last one was held in Roone Arledge Auditorium and featured the music of The George Gee Swing Orchestra. And in addition to performing and attending weekly classes with swing dancers Bugh and Emily Vanston, who perform and compete professionally, many members of the club head downtown on Thursday evenings to Frim Fram Jam to jitterbug with dancers from around the city.
What is it about the dance form, though, that makes it so enduring? Swing—also known as Lindy Hop and Jitterbug—took off in the depression era. It served as a distraction from hard times for some, a way to earn money for others; some WPA initiatives even built dance halls. Swing became an international phenomenon during World War II, when soldiers from the United States brought the dance form to England, where it became known as Jive. The dance was intertwined with the cultural, social, and economic changes of the times. For instance, many dance halls set aside one night for non-white dancers, while Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, where the Lindy Hop allegedly was invented, was one of the few dance venues that was not segregated.
In its prime, swing was popular among teenagers and young adults, who gathered at dance halls around the country, excited by the new sound of swing music. While clearly not the most popular genre today, Vanston still cites the “timeless music” as a reason swing dancing continues to be so well-loved on campus. Of course, many of these young dancers were drawn to swing because of its novelty; it was a way to react against that time’s social constraints. In 2009, unsurprisingly, swing doesn’t draw the crowd it once did.
Still, swing was chiefly enjoyed, then as now, because of its social nature. Vanston attributes the continued appeal of swing dancing among college students to its “high energy,” and says that she believes that “young people now have the same sort of energy as those in the ’30s.” Compared with other types of social dance, swing allows for more individuality and improvisation: at the Savoy Ballroom, for example, Lindy-Hoppers in the ’30s and ’40s invented acrobatic movements, called aerials, and complex lifts and jumps. Dancers were known for their youthful exuberance: in an issue of Life from 1938, one writer described “jitterbugs” as those “who get so excited by its music that they cannot stand or be still.” Larry Clinton, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote, “Swing is the voice of youth striving to be heard in this fast-moving world of ours,” he continued, “the tempo of our time.”
Swing died out after World War II, but has since experienced a revival. In the 1980s and ’90s, over 350 swing dancing societies cropped up in the United States and in Europe, designed to bring back the dance form. In the city, several dance clubs have swing nights, and professional dancers like Bugh and Vanston perform and compete internationally—Vanston has traveled to Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Canada, among other places, as part of her career.
At Columbia, too, the more advanced Lindy-Hoppers enjoy swing dancing not only as a social activity, but as a craft; some have even performed in competitions. Last year, the group finished second in the American Lindy-Hop Championships in Stamford, CT.
For most students, though, swing dancing remains a fun and social activity. At the first class of the semester last Wednesday, the high energy Vanston mentioned was on display. Students milled around the edges of the increasingly-crowded room until the music began. Veteran dancers then grabbed the hands of their partners, slipped through the dense clusters of new students looking on, and made their way to the center of the floor. Soon everyone was dancing, laughter and banter peppering the air as Vanston and Bugh passed on sage advice. This can be profound, but the most valuable lesson for new dancers, Vanston says, is learning the difference between left and right.
4 February 2010
vol. 8, issue 2
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