The smile was the lure. Nalla Kim, a computer programmer, noticed the joyful expressions in the social media post of a fellow programmer whom he had never seen smiling at work. Curious, Kim asked his usually serious colleague what had made him so visibly happy. The answer: swing dancing.
Kim had never heard of the dance form — which is not surprising, considering that swing was created by Black Americans in the 1920s and ’30s, and Kim is a Korean man who discovered it when coming of age in Seoul in the early 2000s.
But Kim got hooked. He started attending swing dance events in the United States, and after a few years entered international competitions. He traveled to dance, but he didn’t have to. In the past two decades, the swing dance scene in his hometown has grown into the largest in the world.
For a vintage American cultural practice to spread overseas and thrive there more robustly than at home is a story at least as old as jazz. Not in every case, though, does the transplanted form evolve into a local variant. That’s what has happened in Korea.
In Seoul these days, there are around 10 clubs dedicated full-time to swing and its core partnering form, Lindy Hop. “In New York, where Lindy Hop was born, we have zero,” said Caleb Teicher, a prominent American Lindy Hop and tap dancer.
Those Seoul clubs are filled with dancers of high skill. “I’ve heard it joked among the New York dancers who’ve gone there that a bad dancer in Korea is a great dancer in New York,” Teicher said.
What’s more, in the jazz tradition that artists honor by developing their own voices and style, Korean dancers have worked out their own fresh approaches to the form. “When I go there to teach, I feel like I’m their student now,” Teicher said.
Wanting to display these developments to New York, Teicher has organized a mini-festival. On Saturday, K-Swing Wave, a group of eight all-star Korean swing dancers, will perform a free show at Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City. On Sunday, the group will appear at the Korean Cultural Center New York and at a swing dance party at 92NY.
There's more at the link. The article has many photographs, and some short moving clips (without soung).
The video below was choreographed by Andy Seo, one of the central figures in the article and artistic director for K-Swing Wave, who will be performing at Lincoln Center and the Koren Cultural Center in New York. From the article:
“The first piece by Andy I saw was made for students,” Teicher said. “And when you looked at the dancers individually, they were not the strongest. But the choreography — it was genius. I had never seen a team jazz piece that good before.”
YouTube:
Authentic Jazz Weekend 2020 January 17-19, 2020 @ Seoul, South Korea
Instructors:
- Ramona Staffeld
- Nathan Bugh
- Pamela Gaizutyte
- Rikard Ekstrand
- Caleb Teicher
- Video brought to you by JACKPARK VIDEOGRAPHY (www.facebook.com/jackparkswing)
- Event organized by THE SWEET HEART
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