Charleston Dance History

Video Transcript

"So Charleston is one of the original American dances. It started from jazz dance and African dance and some kinds of tap and other kinds of vernacular dance, and in the twenties, it developed into a very bouncy, upright kind of Charleston that looks like this. Very cheerful, you can picture all the flappers doing this. It can be done solo as well as partnered. But then in the thirties, it go a little bit grittier. So you can see now this is a little bit lower, we're kind of digging into the ground. And this is the kind of Charleston that we're going to be focusing on in this clip. Sometimes called Lindy Charleston or thirties Charleston. And it's called Lindy Charleston because it eventually evolved into Lindy hop which looks like this. So you can see you can go seamlessly from one to the other and back again. But we're going to be focusing on all the Charleston for this part and so we're kicking."