Jitterbug

Jitterbug is a basic name used to describe swing dancing. It is most related with the lindy hop dance but might add things from the jive, east coast swing, collegiate shag, charleston, balboa and other swing dances.

Swing dancing origins come from the African-American groups of New York City in the early 20th century. a lot of nightclubs had a whites-only or blacks-only policy due to racial segregation, though the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem had a rule which allowed whites and blacks to dance together and it was there that the lindy hop dance thrived, started by dancers such as George Snowden and Frank Manning. The term jitterbug was originally an insult used by african-americans to describe white people who started to dance the lindy hop, as they were dancing faster and jumpier than was intended, like "jittering bugs", although it quickly lost its bad reputation as the more fluid version caught on. Both the lindy hop and the "jitterbug" became popular outside New York City when the dance was featured in Hollywood movies.

Jitterbug Media

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  Dancing the jitterbug, Los Angeles, 1939

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  Large group, mostly men, surrounds couples jitterbug dancing on a dance floor, with a photographer in the foreground and the audience in raised seating on the left / photo by Alan Fisher.