National Dance Day is Coming ... July 27th!

 Whether on the dance floor or in your living room, celebrate National Dance Day and get moving!

 

WHAT'S IN A NAME? The words "dance" and "dancing" come from an old German word "danson," which means "to stretch." All dancing is made up of stretching and relaxing. The muscles are tensed for leaping and then relaxed as we make what we hope will be a gentle and graceful landing. Dancing must be organized; it is not enough to jump around the floor with anger or excitement. Dancing is a way of expressing one's emotions through a succession of movements disciplined by rhythm.

ANCIENT ROUND DANCES: In ancient round dances, the dancers formed a circle around something or someone believed to hold special magical power -- a stone, a wooden object, or a witch doctor (modern-day Cuers?). As the dancers move in a ring, power is believed to flow from the object outward to the ring and back again. The dance becomes so absorbing that often dancers felt neither fatigue nor pain. As they whirl around, the performers believe that they themselves have become spirits. These round dances date from earliest times and are found almost worldwide. They flourish wherever people believe that power can leave one object and enter another object by magic (kind of like that helpless look some dancers give the Cuer before a routine to help them remember what was in that new routine taught the week before). Long after their ritual origins had been forgotten, the round dances continued on. Round dances invaded the ballrooms of the 18th-Century Europe. Original "Round Dances" are still popular with the country people of eastern Europe, and survive today in the children's game of "Ring A Round the Rosie."

North American Dances

Did you ever wonder where dance rhythms originated? Though many of the current Round Dancing rhythms originated int the Caribbean, South America, and Europe, several have their true origins in North America. A few "North American Originals" are below.

• BARN DANCE: A nineteenth-century American couple dance in 4/4 time, taking its name from the rural custom of dancing to celebrate the completion of a new barn. Known also as the pas de quatre and the military schottische, the steps involved walking, hopping, sliding, turning, and foot stamping, which shocked many who believed all dancing should be decorous.
• BIG APPLE: A party dance that appeared around 1935 in New York, taking its name from the Big Apple Club of Columbia, South Carolina. Couples arranged themselves in a large circle and performed figures according to the instructions of a caller.
• BLACK BOTTOM: A dance employing strong African- and Caribbean-style hip movements, which first appeared on Broadway in 1926, and which scandalized older dancers on both sides of the Atlantic because of its gliding, skipping, leaping, and stamping -- not to mention its flaunting of the backside.
• BOP: American solo dance popular in the mid-1950s, consisting of a sort of marching in place to music that emphasized the upbeat. Variations were the scooter, the flea hop, the swister, and the rock and around.
• BOSSA NOVA: A combination of American jazz rhythms and Brazilian samba, popular in the USA in the early 1960s.
• CHARLESTON: Originated in Charleston, South Carolina, where black dockworkers danced to amuse themselves. Transported to New York, it became a hit in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923, and was quickly adopted by the flappers.
• CONTRA: Contra is an American form of country-dance perfected in the late 17th century. Sets of couples faced each other, usually in a square or rectangular pattern, and exchanged positions using various figures. The name also refers to the fact that the dancers performed counter to, or opposite each other. May have originated from Court Dances.
• FOXTROT: Foxtrot was originally a Ragtime dance best credited to Harry Fox, a music-hall entertainer who performed a fast trotting dance that electrified the Ziegfeld Follies of 1914. Tamed by dancing teachers, it became a popular ballroom dance to ragtime music. The English smoothed out its jerks and originally called it the saunter; it is now termed the Slow Foxtrot (also called English or International Foxtrot). Today, Social Foxtrot (also called American Foxtrot or Rhythm Dancing) closely resembles slow quickstep, due to the influence of Arthur Murray. It involves various combinations of short, quick steps.
• JITTERBUG: In the jitterbug (another name for lindy) athletic couples moved energetically, alone and together to a rapid beat, originally to 1930's boogie-woogie and swing music. There are two types of basic steps, those in which the feet stay on the ground, and the "air steps" in which the dancer leaves the floor entirely.
• JIVE: Jive is a tamed version of the jitterbug that came into fashion in the 1950s.
• ONE-STEP: Also known as the turkey trot,the most ubiquitous ragtime dance. It was universally popular among the young during the early twentieth century. The one-step simply required a single step per beat.
• RAGTIME: Dances performed to syncopated, jazzy music of ragtime, popular in the late 19th century. Ragtime also includes the mimic/animal dances (e.g., black bottom, bunny hug, cakewalk, turkey trot) popular in the first two decades of the 20th century.
• ROCK 'N' ROLL: Frenetic, solo or occasionally couple dances performed to the simple, compulsively rhythmic style of pop or rock music originating in the 1950s. These developed out of jive.
• ROUND DANCE (ancient definition): Prehistoric groups would dance around a central object or totem. In the 19th century, these became country dances in a round or circular formation (as opposed to a square), in which the couples exchanged positions. The term is also used for the 19th-century, couple dances such as the waltz or polka, which feature a constant turning of the partners.
• SQUARE DANCE: An American form of country dancing, developed from the early 19th-century contras and quadrilles. Couples face each other in a square formation and exchange places in relation to their partners and to the other couples. Another addition is that of a caller who announces the figures or floor patterns they are to perform.
• TWO-STEP: A dance requiring two steps per beat, first performed to John Philip Sousa's Washington Post March (1891), and rapidly applied to other dances of the period, until ousted by ragtime and the one-step. An ancestor of the foxtrot.
• TWIST: Solo rock dance that first appeared in 1961, performed by Chubby Checker.