Terry Lee, Single Swing, and Zydeco

Sounds like a stew, huh? It is. Dance stew.

Gary and I saw our fave band Terry Lee and the Rockaboogie Band Friday at Mike’s Dance Barn in Nashville, IN. As always, they did their usual great show. This time they added in some waltzes, 50’s rock and roll, and even some surf music. Very cool. Especially the surf music. Maybe next time some Dick Dale. But anyway, a good time. We even did our cross step waltz.

We’ve realized…again…that for the lightening fast numbers there really isn’t any substitute for single time swing. Unfortunately, I’ve never liked STS…to me the basic is bonky, and for the really quick tunes lindy timing becomes, well, too fast for me. But…if you take out lindy timing, double turns, and intricate triple step moves, what have you got? Not much, in our case.

So. I’ve been doing some trolling around on Youtube and found Zydeco dances. As with most dance genres, Zydeco dancing covers a whole lot of territory…there’s even a Zydeco waltz. These dances, like the Cajun culture, reflect French and Afro-Latin influences. We found two styles we really like. The first is fast…very fast. See the video below. What we’re going to do with this variety is take some of the moves and put them into single swing. This Zydeco dance is meant to be fast, and so depends more on fancy footwork, free spins, and non-led bling.



But…we also found another Zydeco style we liked. This one is slower and groovier…you can really see the French courtly dance influence in this one. We’re taking the bows and the beautiful arm stylings and putting some of that into our WCS. Take a look…really pretty.



And maybe at some point we can make it down to Louisiana for some true gator stomping. The Zydeco community seems free, spirited, and a whole lot of fun.