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Moscow Swing Dance Society teaches swing dances, of course. The word "Swing" has many meanings: a musical stream, a dance style and culture of the middle of the XX-th century. Swing as musical style started to develop as a part of jazz culture. Jazz had appeared and become popular in the USA about in 20-es - 30-es of the XX-th century. Later swing and partly rhythm'n'blues served as a basis for rockabilly, but that's a bit of a diferent story. Swing music was being changed, dances that people preferred to dance to that music changed too: the swing culture period lasted from 20-es to 50-es of the XXth century, during this time a huge lot of dance styles were invented, became popular and were forgotten. So as ballroom dances describes a group of diverse dances, "swing dances" also means a lot of different dance styles: Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, West Coast Swing, East Coast Swing, Balboa, Shag, Boogie Woogie, Shim Sham, Charleston, The Big Apple, The Jitterbug Stroll, Black Bottom. All these kinds of dances are mainly pair ones based on improvization. The same dance figures and techniques are very often used in several swing dances. That's why if you want to determine the kind of dance the couple is dancing right at the moment, you should pay attention to the way they dance, and not care about specific dance figures. Dance style matters a lot in swing dance. Presently the most popular and well-known swing dances are in the USA Lindy Hop (a lot of variations inside), and in Europe - boogie-woogie. Both of them are pair dances based on improvization. If you eager to start dancing, you need only:
1) casual dance or sports clothes, no special "swing-style" clothes;
2) light shoes with a soft, fexible sole and no high heel.
You can come to dance classes without having a partner! We use to constanly exchange partners during classes because one of our aims is to teach you to dance with any partner : )
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