Lycra bike shorts flicker be-neath swirling skirts in dainty designs.
Loosely clasped hands and unabashed eye contact connect a man whose forehead glistens to a freshly powdered partner with velvety red lips. Seduction slips through the dance floor crowds without bumping, grinding or hugging curves.
The band has begun “Reelin” and Rockin” ” just after 9 on a Thursday night at Liquid on Clybourn Avenue. The sights and sounds supply almost as much contradiction as perspiration.
On this, one of the club”s more rollicking nights, the liquid of choice is not Absolut or Amstel, but ice water. Two-toned spectator shoes call attention to the most frenetic feet in the group. And though the droves on the dance floor are in their 20s and 30s, the music and movements that propel them into mascara-smearing ecstasy echo the heydays of Glenn Miller, Cab Calloway and Count Basie.
Swing dancing is bedazzling a new generation in Chicago since being coaxed from coastal locales over the last year. A smattering of city and suburban clubs, makeshift dance halls and lakefront areas are filling with young people eager for 1930s- and “40s-style enlightenment.
“I don”t know if it”s a backlash against the disorganization of the grunge vibe, or the nostalgia of something our grandparents did, or that you don”t have to have a skirt that crawls up your backside to look good,” said Nicole Wood, 28, a muralist and swing dance teacher.
“I think it”s one of the greatest things to happen to my generation.””
The swing dancing revival follows on the heels of such local bands as the Mighty Blue Kings, who turned masses on to the jump vibes of the 1940s and ’50s. Snippets from films such as “Swingers” inspired many youthful Midwesterners to commit to dance lessons. A combo called the Big Swing — replete with a five-piece horn section — formed around last Christmas and soon became so hep it was booking midweek gigs.
“A friend told me about this bar. I didn’t want to stay — till I heard the band playing,” said Chicagoan Alexis Kolpak, 21, as she mopped her face in the Green Mill’s bathroom on a Tuesday night. She had joined hands with a stranger and jitterbugged the way her father taught her.
“It’s amazing — you think you’re the only one who knows how to dance this way,” she said. “Then you come here.”
Swing may be hitting its stride again because it replaces in-your-face raciness with flirtation.
“How else can you grab someone you’ve never met before, have the close contact, smell each other’s body scent, then say, `Nice dancing with you,’ and walk away?” said Howard Bregman, 34, a pediatrician and a swing teacher who says he reached “the pinnacle” of his life a few years ago on the West Coast dance scene.
Of all the incarnations — West Coast swing, jive and jitterbug among them — an old eight-count circular hybrid called the lindy hop seems to dominate among a core of swing addicts who frequent Liquid, the Green Mill and Frankie’s Blue Room in Naperville. The dance’s maneuvers include the Tacky Annie (executed with knees wide), Texas Tommy (a spin) and Jersey Jump (one of the less obtrusive aerial maneuvers). Charleston footwork fits into the lindy, too, along with such moves as the cuddle and tuck turn.
Chicago catches fire
A few clubs and outdoor locales such as Navy Pier and the Chicago Summer Dance festival at Grant Park are offering instruction this summer. The teachers extol swing’s virtues and demonstrate steps for a hodgepodge of students. The lessons often are free of charge and are followed by a live band performance and a chance for students to display their progress.
Acrobatics, though closely associated with the lindy, aren’t essential. In fact, they are forbidden in some West Coast venues because of their potential for injury and litigation. “Aerials,” Wood and her compatriots insist, “never were and still are not the meat and potatoes of the dance.”
Respect and role-playing are. “If the man leads, everyone can dance,” said George Matavulj, 67, of Wilmette, who translated Latin dance skills to swing at the Green Mill on a recent Tuesday. “The problem with young men is that they can’t lead, by and large. It’s because they were raised on disco. They can’t dance with a woman as one.”
Part of swing’s power, apparently, is that it intimidates young men less than other forms of social dancing. It provides the reassurance of structure but the freedom to improvise wildly.
“The thing about swing is you can take a real awkward man and teach him how to do these moves, because the dance itself is kind of awkward,” said Kaaren Brauner, 26, of Chicago, who takes lessons at Liquid.
Working together
The classes are rarely short of those wanting to lead, organizers say. This, even though the man is summarily blamed for missteps.
“If a move is executed incorrectly, sorry, it’s the man’s fault,” Wood said. “He goes beyond the woman’s abilities? His fault. When people clobber each other on the dance floor — boom, it’s him.”
Conversely, if a woman fails to submit to the man’s direction, she earns scorn.
“One of the worst things a woman can do is back-lead,” said Chandler Smith, 34, of North Hollywood, Calif., a producer of “Swing TV,” a show proposed for national weekly broadcast. “If a woman tells me: `Don’t do it that way, do it this way,’ I nod politely and never dance with her again.”
Women delude and endanger themselves if they think following means slack bodies and spaghetti arms.
Dips serve as an example.
“A woman always holds her own weight,” Wood said, “because if he, in the heat of the moment, goes beyond his ability, she’s down.”
That partnership — whether among strangers or couples — can be the attraction.
“My wife and I decided we were tired of dancing at each other. We wanted to dance with each other,” said Tom Karounos, 26, of Homewood, who was learning with his wife one Thursday at Liquid. “And where else can you go and find something that spans the generations?”
His mom, Barbara Karounos, and his dad, who live in Orland Park, accompanied the couple to Liquid, tapping toes from the sidelines.
“My father–who’s 80 years old–used to do this,” said Barbara Karounos, 55. “It’s so good to see dancing where you’re touching again.”
National folk dance
The lindy hop was born in Harlem, taking its name from Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 trans-Atlantic triumph. By 1942, Life Magazine had declared the lindy a “true national folk dance.”
“It may be that the lindy hop 25 years from now will be as intricate and stylized as the ballet,” the magazine reported.
But dancers were distracted from the lindy and other forms of partner dancing in the years of Chubby Checker and the twist.
Ironically, swing developed into an alternative scene about 12 years ago, when a few groups of devotees converged in New York to rekindle the past and learn from lindy masters, such as Frankie Manning, now in his 80s. From there, Lucky Lindy’s hop headed West.
“People are tired of the anger and ugliness of Gen X culture,” Smith said from California. “We get people who have been in a mosh pit, pierced every part of their body, have tattoos up and down their arms. Now they’re rebelling by going back to something that’s worthwhile.”
The swing era, from 1935 to 1945, intrigues many with its extremes. Still staggering from the Depression, the country was confronted with a world war. Yet the kids danced with abandon.
The Big Swing’s mingling of quaint song titles — “Mr. Watch Chain” and “Geraldine” — with contemporary sentiment — “This one’s for all you having a bad hair day” — reflects a match made of contrasts even today.
“I don’t think it’s longing for a simpler time,” Brauner said of swing’s appeal. “I think it’s that we’ve gotten some of our issues out of the way. We’re more comfortable with ourselves. A decade or so ago, we had the battle of the sexes. And when we were growing up, if a man could dance, (everyone assumed) he was gay.”
Now, a man who can dance gets the girls.
Swing was the theme for Chicago Summer Dance’s debut night Aug. 14, planned for Grant Park but driven indoors to the Chicago Cultural Center by the gray, drizzly day. Experienced dancers sat out the lessons, serenely skimming newspapers or sipping refreshments. Across the parquet a congregation of teenagers fidgeted.
Among them was Won Yup Kim, 17, who with his cohorts rode the train in from the northwest suburbs. “She’s responsible for dragging — I mean taking — us,” Kim said, teasingly pointing to one of his companions. “If I want to be humiliated, I’ll tell my other friends I was here.”
Maybe the movement hasn’t swept up everyone. But Riff Menza, 35, manager of the Big Swing, said many of the Wednesday lesson-seekers at his club, Frankie’s Blue Room, are young enough to require stamped hands that prohibit drinking.
“That to me is very exciting,” Menza said. “It means there’s a future beyond the fad.”
Dancers, who consume little liquor, say their high derives from the music. Any other kind comes at the expense of hydration.
“Some guys have been conditioned to bring an extra shirt because they’re soaked straight through. It’s just so physical,” Wood said.
One pompadour-sporting fellow given to shark-skin suits said his dad’s Vitalis helps guard his hair from implosion in the humidity.
Women, of course, sweat too. But indecent exposure is a particularly feminine peril. For that reason, Smith said, many West Coast women opt for knee-length, cling-free frocks along with their seamed stockings and chunky heels.
“You do not do this dance in a regular skirt with just panties,” Smith said. “That would cause such a scandal on the dance floor.”
On the upswing
Few of their peers were around to enforce any etiquette a year and a half ago when Wood, Bregman and a handful of others began swing dancing around the Chicago area.
Now, on some Sunday afternoons, a swath of lakeshore near the North Avenue Beach chess pavilion often doubles as a dance arena for clusters of bobby soxers swinging to CDs among the inline skaters.
More formally, the Old Town School of Folk Music will begin its first-ever session of swing instruction on Sept. 2.
Since opening about two months ago, Liquid (formerly Whiskey River) has watched attendance at its lessons grow from 30 or so to nearly 100.
“Even if you can’t hold a conversation with someone, you can dance with them,” Bregman said. “Our grandparents knew that. Now, some of us know that.”
