Forget about the disco revival, post-modern abstraction and techno funk. As the planet gets ready to step into a brand-new millennium, a ballroom style of the 1930s and ’40s is shaking up the dance world.
Swing is in, and the craze is so big that Dance Chicago ’99, the diverse dance festival continuing through Dec. 5 at the Athenaeum Theatre, is devoting much of its “Jazz Rhythms” program to swing dancing. The show features such companies as Big City Swing, Minnie’s Moochers, the Chicago Swing Half Breeds, Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, the Joel Hall Dancers, Swing-Out Chicago and Jump Rhythm Jazz Project. The program debuts Sunday and will be repeated four times before the festival wraps up Dec. 5.
Seeing the promise of swing as concert dance, Dance Chicago co-directors John Schmitz and Fred Solari have worked with local swing-dance teachers to create choreography that would jump and jive on stage as well as on the dance floor. That collaborative effort is in its second year.
“We saw this phenomenon in social dance and wanted to tap into that market,” said Schmitz. “We worked to help them cross the line into concert dance.”
Being on the same program with such well-established jazz troupes as the Giordano and Hall companies has boosted the self-esteem of the nouveau bobbysoxers, Schmitz said. The result is that the newly stage-savvy swing dancers are drawing as much applause as the old pros — and Schmitz and Solari feel they are helping blaze new trails for Chicago dance.
The Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, led by Billy Siegenfeld, incorporates swing moves into jazz dance. Watching Siegenfeld’s choreography is like viewing a classic Gene Kelly movie — the natural grace, easy balance and joy of movement evoke the gentleness of another era.
“I like to call it urban folk dance,” Siegenfeld said of swing. “It’s the dance of the people. It’s a movement that has a ring of truthfulness about it. The audience feels invited in, empathetic. Dancers are in their street clothes, doing movement based on simple walking patterns.”
Still, don’t expect to duplicate the Jump Rhythm moves in your living room. While deceptively simple, the dances require years of training to master — and that’s why, Siegenfeld and Schmitz agree, swing deserves as much appreciation as classical ballet.
“It’s an art form in itself,” Schmitz said. “The nature of swing means that it doesn’t have the lines of ballet. But when it’s good, it moves well. You can say that some of the people who perform it aren’t professional dancers, but when it’s good it moves well. So you just have to accept it for what it is.”
Siegenfeld, a professor of dance at Northwestern University in Evanston who has worked for 15 years to develop an academic basis for swing dance, admits that swing is often misunderstood.
“It’s as complex to master as any type of dance,” he said. “It’s as difficult to switch between the upbeat and the downbeat as it is to do a complex batterie (beats of legs and feet) in ballet. There are the anti-gravity patterns of academic dancing, and those are wonderful; I have nothing against them. But swing is very grounded. It’s articulated downward.”
The result is an earthy dance pattern, one that recalls tribal movement and accentuates the rhythmic structure of the music — usually jazz and big band.
“Swing is a metaphor for life,” said Siegenfeld. “There’s that syncopated, offbeat state and people trying to balance themselves. Swing has sort of formalized this tension, which is a life tension. (Swing) challenges us to try to balance, not just rhythmically but emotionally.”
There’s one other little plus: After audiences get a taste of stage swing dance, they often want to try it themselves. And that can put yet more couples cheek to cheek on the dance floor. Things in the 21st Century could be worse.
For more information about Dance Chicago ’99, call 773- 935-6860.
