Erin Rehberg
DANCE APPRECIATION – DANCE 1000-D01
December 4, 2014
What Do You Dance?
After the Swing Era and World War II, American social dancing cooled down in the late 1940s, in a shift from dance bands to concerts in night clubs. In Michigan I was a teenager that was used to my parent’s country music and dancing. Throughout the years of me growing up to listening and dancing to country music and some rock music my uncle listened to that was all I was use to until I became 14yrs old and began junior high school. When I began attending junior high there were many different types of people and music. I got introduced to boogie-woogie first and liked it even though about a week later I was told that it was rock n roll. After I as a teen was introduced to boogie-woogie me and my little sister didn't want to dance like our parents who were lightly disapproving of this dance style, so my parents tried to show me a wide range of step and style replacements of boogie-woogie. When my father tried to show me the dances in country dance and then in boogie-woogie dance he noticed some relation. Another motivation for change was the music. Rock n roll simply called for different styles of dancing, some of which mirrored the strong backbeat of rock of course our rock music was the fifties type not like todays. Even though the schools and our parents were strict about us dancing in school, home or in the public to have manners we still tried to dance to boogie-woogie and rock. My friends and I would dance in the barn, by trying to do the steps that many different older students showed us at school. So me, my little sister, cousins and friends wound up dancing with country dance, boogie-woogie and rock n roll dance moves together for about a month until my uncle notice us dancing. When he noticed us dancing and watched then asked what type of dance is that and the words boogie-woogie and rock n roll came out.
Then he began explaining what boogie-woogie and rock n