The US Swing Dance Server [home][new][events][styles][technique][steps][literature][terms][music][videos][clubs][links] The US Swing Dance Server [home][new][events][styles][technique][steps][literature][terms][music][videos][clubs][links]In Finland we do not really dance swing at all. We have about 10 competing Boogie-Woogie couples and about 80 Boogie-Woogie couples that belong to dance clubs. These Boogie-Woogie evenings is the closest thing to swing that we have.
One thing that might interest you is that I participated in a workshop in Zurich two weeks ago where the World Rock'n'Roll Confederation decided on judging criterias for international championships in Boogie-Woogie. A few years ago WRRC got the international rights from IDO to organize all international Boogie-Woogie competitions.
Rock'n'Roll, standard and latin will propably make it to the Olympic games be the year 2000 or 2004. And who knows what happens to Boogie-Woogie as it belongs to WRRC?
The problem is that dances from Lindy to Rock have evolved differently in different European countries. It all started when entertaining groups and soldiers from the US came here and it is fun to see how the national characteristics change the dances.
After a two day meeting we finally decided to limit the music to be played in international championships instead of trying to force everybody to dance in the same style. For the judges this will be a problem as you have to compare apples with oranges.
The pure Lindy-Hop music from the 20's will not be used and not modern Rock'n'Roll either. But music like "She's Hot to Go", "Wanna wanna", "I don't wanna Boogie alone" will be used. We will try to select 50 named tracks and press them on CD. Later the number of valid tracks should go up to about 200 or 600 or something like that in order to allow for variation in competitions.
We judged the European Boogie-Woogie Championships in Neuhausen by this workshop and everybody agreen on places 1, 2, 6 and 7 in the finals. The differences came with the Italian couple that had a pre-defined choreography and a German couple that had an extremely complex foot-technique.
The presidium decides on the new judging criterias in December and they will be presented to the general meeting in March.
So if people from the US want to participate or perhaps even influence in how these America-based dances should be danced in the World Championships then it might be a good idea to follow what is going on here :-)
Frank Manning (old timer from the US) has influenced people here a lot. He has even been teaching the top Finnish couples during his visit to Sweden last year.
Then about the situation in Finland:
We have a lot Rock'n'Roll dancing couples and about 6000 standard (ballroom) and latin-dancing couples.
These numbers are only couples that belong to the Finnish Sport Dance Union.
Social dancing is very popular and we even have a newsgroup sfnet.harrastus.tanssi where people talk about coming events and etiquette on the dance floor. There is also a www server at http://www.utu.fi/harrastus/tanssi where we have information of where different dance bands will play. Finland is the only place I know of that has public dance-floors open all year around all around the country. We even have a special name for these "lava" which could be translated as platform.
Regards,
Karri
PS. Most of these activities are run by amateurs in Finland. We only have about 50 professionals in this country and they are mainly teaching social dances
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