Dance Styles

Named after the city of Charleston, South Carolina, this dance is generally not given as a separate subject at Swing in Utrecht, but rather as part of the Lindy Hop lessons. It’s snappy, quick, with kicks and twists and is likely what you’ve seen before in movies or cartoons. Usually danced slightly faster, it’s easily combined with Lindy, but characterized by the kicks. Just like Lindy has leads and follows. Just like the other dances, Charleston focuses on improvisation on the whim of the music.

Not strictly a Swing dance, but despite that a welcome addition to our family of dances. It does actually incorporate many similar characteristics to Swing Dancing like improvising, the partner roles and its roots in African-American dance. Blues can be much smoother and is danced to blues music at a generally lower tempo, allowing you to completely immerse yourself in the music together with your partner. Can also be wacky, can be sexy, can be light, can be heavy, there are really many ways to dance this dance.

The silliest of all of our swing dances. With high speed, reaching up to 250 bpm, this is another improvisational partner dance that gets the blood pumping fast. The Collegiate part just denotes that this was a dance danced by college students during the 1930s, while the Shag part denotes a rather large family of Jitterbug Swing dances. We dance the double-rhythm Shag, which uses a “slow, slow, quick-quick” rhythm and is danced in 6 counts, which will take some getting used to, but once you got it, you’re off!

Solo Jazz, also known as Vernacular Jazz, is improvisiation to the music without a partner, using a variety of different moves in your arsenal, plus your own imagination. This can be done in many forms, like Lindy, Charleston or Shag. It’s basically everything that’s Swing dancing, but on your own, dancing with your own vibe, your own personal interpretation of the music. During Solo Jazz classes you’ll usually learn many routines like the Shim Sham or the Tranky Doo to increase the variety in the moves you learn.

Balboa is a partner dance set to swing music with a tempo of 185 bpm or higher. Dancers maintain a close connection, sometimes in closed position (pure bal) and other times with more open figures (bal-swing). The dance originated in the 1920s when dance floors were limited in space, hence the close position. Taking up too much space while dancing was even forbidden! Balboa is the art of dancing subtly, with movements that may be invisible to the crowd but are felt by you and your partner, making it truly intimate and fun.