Ballroomin' Blues

Ballroomin' is the grouping of blues idiom dances that developed where there was room to travel: the large public ballrooms of Northern cities that Black Americans filled during and after the Great Migration. Where juke joint dancing stays put, ballroomin' progresses counter-clockwise around the floor, and the posture is comparatively upright and extended, borrowing line and carriage from the swing and vernacular jazz danced in the same halls to faster numbers. The Spurlock Museum exhibit documents three named idioms in this family. The Savoy Walk is danced in close embrace to slow jazz-blues on a slow-quick-quick pattern, broken by turns and embellishments. The Stride sends partners across the floor in long, forward-driving reaching steps. The Strut, associated with New Orleans jazz-blues, keeps the close embrace but adds a showy rolling motion through the upper torso and flowing turns. Music was typically what a big band played when it chose to slow down, so ballroomin' sits at the seam between blues and jazz rather than squarely in either. The traveling emphasis makes it the most legible blues idiom to dancers arriving from Lindy Hop or ballroom backgrounds.