Hello!

I love Jazz and Blues dances, and I want to share them with you!

This is just a simple site to help you find my classes and events - if you can't find what you're looking for, just send me an email and I'll help you out :-)

Diese Webseite ist zurzeit nur auf Englisch verfügbar, da unsere Tanz-Community international ist. Falls etwas unklar ist, schick mir gerne eine E-Mail.

About Balboa

Here are some great dancers throwing down and showing off their musicality and style at a Balboa competition.

Balboa is a beautiful swing dance, typically (though not exclusively) danced to fast music. It's a dance of elegant shuffling feet, partnering mostly in closed position, often with dynamic turns and quick catches.

Balboa is named after its birthplace - Balboa, California. When teenagers in California started hearing the amazing swing music coming from the East Coast of the U.S. in the mid 1930s, they of course invented lots of ways to dance to it!

Bobby White has an excellent article about the history of this dance, please check it out.

About Blues

Here's just one example of what Blues dance can look like. Jamica & Maurice dance to "You Say You’re Leaving" by Fenton Robinson.

Blues is a family of social dances. It has deep roots in Black American culture, going back as far as slavery and all the way up to the present day.

And just like Blues music, Blues dance expresses a huge variety of emotions and styles. Blues dance can be slow and sultry, it can be raw and full of attitude, it can be fast and light.

Want to learn more? Take a look at this detailed overview by the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures: https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/exhibits/online/blues/

This video shows the "Venice Beach clip", perhaps the best-known original-era video of Balboa dance.

In this clip, Savoy Ballroom dancers from Harlem show off the style of dance they might have done at a rent party.

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