Swing, face-to-face stuff?

[jdavidb]

Ballet partnering is my main area of experience where I'm almost always looking at the back of the girl's head. I love the face-to-face aspect of partnering in swing, but it sure is something I know almost nothing about. So, what are some of the main common/social face-to-face swing routines? We just want common stuff for now. We're not wanting to start making things up yet. Mainly, what are some names of steps we can do as we break a Lindy Hop Swingout? So far, I know we can Balboa Basic or do some sort of low kicking out-to-the-sides Charleston variations. I'd like to get a quick start on what else we could work on. I've seen this one cool one where the girl swivels side to side while the guy slides. What's that one called? Here's another angle for this question: how much face-to-face "Lindy Hop" stuff is there to do without doing Balboa, Collegiate Shag, Jitterbug steps & so on?

When I say "face-to-face" I mean anything promenade, fan, open position, anything where partners are front to front.

[suek]

Ballet partnering is my main area of experience where I'm almost always looking at the back of the girl's head. I love the face-to-face aspect of partnering in swing, but it sure is something I know almost nothing about. Are you taking classes with a honest-to-god lindy hopper? If not, why not? I can tell you that it has made all the diff to me. So, what are some of the main common/social face-to-face swing routines? We just want common stuff for now. We're not wanting to start making things up yet. Mainly, what are some names of steps we can do as we break a Lindy Hop Swingout? So far, I know we can Balboa Basic or do some sort of low kicking out-to-the-sides Charleston variations. I'd like to get a quick start on what else we could work on. I've seen this one cool one where the girl swivels side to side while the guy slides. What's that one called? Here's another angle for this question: how much face-to-face "Lindy Hop" stuff is there to do without doing Balboa, Collegiate Shag, Jitterbug steps & so on? When I say "face-to-face" I mean anything promenade, fan, open position, anything where partners are front to front.Phew! I'm gonna pull one answer out of your many questions: The quantity of f2f LH stuff is limited by the number of dance moves you have learned and are comfortable leading (I'm assuming you're leading from your first sentence). LH incorporates vernacular jazz which gave birth to charleston, which...NO. Please see for yourself the more erudite and researched histories of LH elsewhere in the Swing forums. What I want to say to you is that any six- or eight-count swing dance move can be done inside your LH. Get a good teacher and take classes and then go out and social dance and when you're sitting one out watch other dancers and when you see something that looks cool either flatout steal the move or ask the person who did it to show it to you and if they can remember what they did (if it wasn't pure inspiration that moved through them and is now gone) chances are they will.

Rant over. For now.

[jdavidb]

I watch pretty much every video of swing dancing I can find on the 'net. I'm mimicing lots of what people do. It's easier to learn it since I can view these videos frame by frame, unlike watching dancers in person. I just don't know the names of these moves. Much of it is common stuff I see many different couples doing. They're even doing it in those competition routines. I also know a lot of the names, yet I don't know what names go with what moves.

Prior to writing this thread, I read the thread called Suzy Q and the other one that was Carolina Shag and a few others. I still couldn't figure out what was what. I have since found instruction videos which indicate teaching such things, so we'll buy some of those.