I ran across an interesting article about teaching swing dancing in the streets of Vail during this year’s film festival. A little over midway through the article, the author asks an interesting question…

“So why did swing dancing fizzle out following the late-’90s rage?”

The instructor being interviewed responds with…

“I really couldn’t tell you,” Yannacone said. “I think it’s the popular media what determines what’s hot and not. And its not that it disappeared entirely, but to most people not in the swing dance world, yeah, it kind of was around then left.”

He is right, popular media has a lot to do with it. But why didn’t they latch on to it like they did with the current round of dance TV shows?  Having danced through the boom and decline, I think I can add some to his response. It’s really quite simple. Swing doesn’t “sell”.

In the late ’90s swing was briefly snatched up by nightclubs all across the nation. It wasn’t long before they realized that swing isn’t profitable as a format. You can’t drink alcohol and spin all around the dance floor. Let’s face it, profit margins are in bar sales, not cover charges. Swing brought in the crowds, but everyone was on or around the dance floor and not building up a bar tab. Most clubs changed format while crowds were still high, leaving many to wonder “what happened?”. While Salsa can occasionally bend the rules, in general, partner dancing and nightclubs don’t mix. That’s why you haven’t seen any clubs pick up on the latest ballroom dance craze… they learned their lesson in the ’90s.

But in reality, it goes much beyond bar sales. In small pockets around the nation, swing was was an underground movement before the Gap commercial launched it into the mainstream. It was a rebellion against… well, pop fads and pop culture. In a time where people were recovering from grunge and “freak dancing” was sweeping the country, swing (and the vintage lifestyle that surrounds it) was the counterculture to counterculture. This didn’t mesh well with mainstream media. While swing certainly caught people’s attention, it wasn’t… well… sexy enough… and we all know, sex sells.

Let’s not forget about the music. There was certainly mass interest in swing music during the boom. The neo-swing “daddy bands” rocketed in the charts and people where buying up Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman CDs at music stores. Again, this didn’t fit into the mold of mainstream media. Bands are now manufactured by record and media companies (anyone watch American Idol?). The facts are that swing bands are not easy to artificially manufacture and there was no way that big media was going back to the old way of doing things.

In many ways, the swing fad of the late 90′s paved the way for the dance show craze of today. The mainstream media learned by trail and error to find what they were looking for. The latest dance shows have a sexy side and offer a variety of dances, that can be conveniently danced to whatever song that needs promotion time. Is this a slam on the current dance shows? No, not at all. In some ways, they are just reinventing a format that started way back with American Bandstand. In fact, it is probably a great win/win situation. It gives dances some spotlight time, while still allowing individual dances scenes to thrive “underground”.

However, learning from the 90′s fad, I am concerned about the “post boom”. How about you? Feel free to leave a comment.