Balboa Swing Dance History

Series Summary

Swing dancing began in the 1920's in response to the swing music produced at the time. Most forms of swing dancing developed by African Americans, but some forms like Balboa originated in Anglo communities. The syncopated timing associated with swinging and dixieland jazz recalls both African American and West African music. Among the many types of swing music are: Lindy Hop, Charelston, Jitterbig, East Coast Swing, Collegiate Shag, Boogie-Woogie, and Jive.

In this free video series, our expert Nathan Bugh will tell you about the history of Balboa swing dance, and explain the dance itself. Nathan will teach you how to lead and follow the basic balboa swing step, how to hold your partner, and how to do a break. He will also show you how to do a Charleston step, a kick, and how to bounce. Nathan will teach about the mush position, the V shape, the skip up, and sic count swing. Finally Mr. Bugh will give you a full demonstration of Balboa swing dance.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village I'm Nathan Bugh and my talented student Shannon Sheroni. Were here at Dance Manhattan studios in New York City to teach you Balboa and other swing era dances. In this series of video clips were going to talk about Balboa and other swing forms and how they fit together. Balboa was one of many of the dances done in the swing era, which basically means between 1920 and 1950 when swing music was all the rage. Balboa is a dance that has single steps; a lot of the other dances have special footwork like tripled steps, double time steps, kicks which are sometimes incorporated in Balboa. The other dances that we will look at are Lindy Hop, Six-count Swing and a little bit of Charleston and then we will try and put all those dances together. All the dances are related in origin. The Charleston was the first dance and it gave birth to almost every American popular dance form."