I've been dancing the ECS Swing for about 9 months now, and it's sinking in rather well. My only problem is sometimes I shift ECS to WCS and Hustle.

I've recently noticed that some of my patterns and my foot work looks exactly like a jive video that I recently watched on another "dance website." In fact, the jive video looks almost like some of my own videos of myself.

So, now I'm curious . . . what's the difference between the two dances.

Twnkltoz . . . I know you the answer for me???

Vince A

The difference between east coast swing (typically just called "swing") and jive? Well, typically jive is faster than swing so faster music will lend itself to jive better than a triple time swing (though a single time swing might work fine). Jive tends to be more upright and bouncy while swing tends to be more grounded, relaxed, and swingy. It's a little hard to explain what I mean there, but if you look at people dancing jive and people dancing swing, you should be able to see what I mean. Those are some of the main differences I can think of besides any difference in syllabus figures that is. But a lot of figures in swing can work in jive and vice versa, so that's not a particularly good indicator of difference. I don't dance swing or jive all that much these days, so maybe someone a little more familiar with the dances can give you more or better descriptions of the differences between them. I hope this helps though.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

That's an interesting question. In some respects they are the same dance (or at least very similar) but with different music tempos. In American Rhythm competition, I have seen two different basic stylistic approaches to ECS. One is to dance ECS like a slow jive and the other bears more similarity to WCS. My open level ECS competition routine has the latter style, it has a distinct WC flavour to it. (but it is definitely not WCS).

Blair

gas, that's correct...that's what I was trying to describe in my post below.

Uh oh, I hope I can live up to your expectations!

Jive music is faster. I don't have the recommended tempos at hand, but it's fast.

There is some choreography that's unique to each style syllabus-wise, but they're all certainly interchangeable.

Style-wise, jive tends to have higher knees and feet coming up higher off the floor, while ECS tends to be a bit lower (although some people dance it with the higher knees). In addition, the footwork is slightly different: in ECS, the triple steps are side-together-side, while jive is in place-in place-side.

In short, they're similar but different!

Thanks again . . .

I just checked the tempo of the song that I competed in at World's last January . . . 154 bpm . . . no wonder I was whipped before I reached the end of the routine - especially after the previous 6 dances . . . and I still had a WCS to go!

twnkltoz and gas,

So, to us non-ballroom dancers, what you are saying is, that both dances are:

For the leaders basic footwork -
Starting with the LF: triple-step, triple-step, rock-step . . . no "jump-like technique," but high knees are in???

Isn't Jive actually the international ECS style?

"Dancing is a contact sport; football is a hitting sport" - Vince Lombardi