03/28/06

West Coast Swing and Fusion Dancing
By Marc Imlay


As fusion partner dancing continues to flourish all around the world, we have received varied reactions. Some say "Way to go. That’s cool!" Others think it’s a joke. Others take exception to our fusing dances and try to discourage us. Others just ask us "Why?"

In the WCS community, several prominent members have expressed sincere concern over losing the "purity" of WCS by its becoming "contaminated" with other dance forms.

To these people, I respond, "West Coast Swing is a Fusion Dance!" It is the fusion of East Coast Swing (6 count patterns) with Lindy Hop (8 count patterns). Both these dance forms predated WCS and it takes only a moment’s reflection to see how these 2 forms are reflected in WCS. Of course, once WCS became its own entity, it evolved unique characteristics, like dancing in a rectangular floor space. But this fusion was its birth.

Moreover, WCS itself has not remained static over the years. On one of Skippy Blair’s visits to Seattle, she stated that, over the years, WCS had incorporated elements of various other dance forms like country, disco, hustle and hip hop. So WCS was born from a fusion and evolved by incorporating elements of still other dance forms.

Furthermore, anyone who has followed the top WCS competitors over the past few years will have noticed them incorporating elements of shag, tango, samba and cha cha into their routines. So Latin/WCS Fusion dancing has already arrived. We’re just systematizing it to help the social dancer get a start at it.

Hopefully this insight will set the "Fundamentalist WCSers" at rest. Both ECS and Lindy Hop have survived in their own right in spite of their fusion spawning a new dance form (WCS). Also, WCS is a wonderful dance in its own right, so maybe a new dance form resulting from the fusion of WCS and another dance will also be wonderful.

Whether Swango, Swamba or Jango survive the test of time is unknowable at present. But that doesn’t mean that these fusions should not be experimented with. If no one ever tried something new, there would never be any progress. So lighten up guys and let us have our fun. Expressing the creative impulse is joyful and invigorating and I invite all of you to have an open mind and maybe even give it a try before dismissing it.

Fusers, please share your discoveries with us. Our mission is to disseminate cross fusion dance info world wide. Join with us in promoting the Cross Fusion dance movement.


In my next article, I will further address the question, "Why do dance fusion?"

Marc
www.swingdancefusion.com
Do you Swamba?
© March 22, 2006