Glenn Ball and Victoria Henk - Improv West Coast Swing dance in the Invitational Jack & Jill Show at Budafest 2019. Check out wcs-budafest.com and 5678.video/en/
Saw this on an IG reel last night. This is now the 27th video I’ve watched since jumping into this fantastic rabbit hole. Anyone know of somewhere in South Carolina that teaches west coast swing like this??
its been 4 years since this came out, views are still *169K* and I am waiting for it to hit *10 million* Beautiful chemistry and 1:25 and 2:08 were absolute gem of moments, the way they improvised!
I watch these videos and struggle so much how they are counting. Isn't West coast basic slow, slow, triple step, triple step? 1.2. 3 and 4, 5, and 6? I am struggling that he started with his right foot. Does someone do a youtube channel breaking Jack & Jill, and other competitions down to help people like me count the steps... I feel i would learn so much! Thanks in advance. Great performance :) love watching
It can also be 8 steps. It depends on what move you’re hoping to do but it’s a good mix between 6 and 8. But the fun thing about WCS is it really is a lot on the music and the improv and not as stringent in the steps like other dances may be.
WCS does not have any sort of basic step, but instead has several patterns that are considered to be the "basics" - as another comment pointed out, some of these moves cover 6 counts (the basic rhythm is walk walk, triple step, triple step with basic footwork) and 8 counts (basically just the whip, which is walk walk, triple step, walk walk, triple step). As you progress there will be more and more ways to connect different basics together and also extend them, for example any pattern can be extended by adding any number of walk walks' at the beginning or the end and patterns may also be shortened, for example by basically combining the last triple step of a pattern with the walk walk of the next pattern (it's called a Rock n' Go, though the explanation is pretty simplified) . The footwork in WCS also changes a lot at higher levels, people do all sorts of footwork syncopations and may for example replace a triple with a tap + step, a step or even a walk walk. Similarly walk walk's may be replaced with triple rhythms and what not. Of course, they still have to stay on time with the music :) There also isn't a fixed rule on which foot patterns have to start or end on, though most of the time people will still finish their patterns on the right foot and start with the left (actually there are some so-called inspirational Jack and Jills which add certain restrictions to make it more interesting, among which there is sometimes the rule that patterns have to be danced on the "wrong"/opposite foot). Generally I think it is a lot easier to comprehend what they're dancing by observing the respective positions of their body and the connection in their arms, rather than their footwork - though this still requires quite a bit of knowledge. It took me a year of learning WCS before I got a decent grasp of what they were actually doing and it does not help that the options for combining patterns and leveraging the connection are basically infinite though that's also what makes it so fun in my opinion.
That song is catchy as fuck, but I absolutely hate it. The more I watch the video the more I hate the music, but damn is it catchy. The dancing is just alright.
