Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew  Why is modern Jive so unkown amongst non dancers. If you stopped people in the street and asked them to name a type of dance you would get Salsa, Ballroom, Tango, Foxtrot, Ballet etc |
Most of the dances you mentioned are
also forms of music. Salsa, tango and foxtrot became well known because of the popular music that they represented. This is true also for hip-hop, waltz, polka, cha cha, rock n roll, all dances almost everyone has heard of, but rarely practise.
Social dances that do not share their name with a specific musical form are rarely famous. Hustle, west coast swing and ceroc share this disadvantage. They did not ride the wave of popularity by being linked to a famous style of music. It is mainly music that gets press coverage, in movies, magazines etc, and the dance lives on in public memory for as long as the music does. In fact, you don't even need a genre of music for a dance to become famous. Just one song is enough, like The Twist, Macarena, or the hokey pokey.
If a dance has a
different name to it's music it is more likely to be un-famous. Most non dancers don't know what lindy hop is, even though it's music was huge at its time. But at least Lindy appears sometimes in period movies, music videos, adverts etc, which is not as true as for Ceroc.
Exceptions to the 'if it doesn't share the name it doesn't get famous' rule are dances that have been incorporated into theatre, display or show dancing. Examples include Charleston, Tap, Can Can, Breakdancing and Ballet, even though its been about 300 years since this was a 'social' dance.
Lastly, Modern Jive is not famous because it is overlooked by the media...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew Also why is MJ overlooked in the media and on programs like Strictly Come Dancing? |
For a full answer we would have to go through each program and explain why MJ is overlooked in that particular case.
Personally I don’t think MJ would work on SCD at all, for too many reasons to mention now. (Lack of unified rules by which to judge it, the fact that the pros hired for the series don't actually know the dance...)
Many other programes with dance exploit the fact that the dancers are either young and trendy, in great shape, do amazing dancing, or are ruthless, ambitious and wear short skirts. The average modern jive crowd doesn't fit that bill, except Andy McGregor so thats just a matter of time.
But in general, remember that MJ is not integrated with either the commercial dance world (there haven’t been Ceroc classes at places like Pineapple studios for example for a long time) or with the Ballroom World. So the non-dancing researchers or producers are unlikely to come across it in their first ports of call.
Second, and probably most importantly, what in the modern jive world do you think would make good TV - interesting to non modern jive dancers too? When a modern jive dancer or organiser calls a producer to get exposure, what do they have to offer that isn't better served up by other dance scenes?
Lastly, if I think about it,
most dance scenes feel like they are overlooked or wildly mis-represented by the media. So its not surprising that MJ, which isn’t even a famous dance, (for reasons mentioned in first half of post) is even more overlooked than most.