3/11/2012

Foxtrot History: Where and How It All Began

By Susan Todd


There are a number of different and unique ballroom dances. Foxtrot is one of the more latest additions to the ballroom dance lineup. This is an American dance that all started in N. Y by Harry Fox in 1914. Harry Fox was a vaudeville performer, and he and his partner began performing "trot" steps to Ragtime music. New Yorkers started calling it "Fox's Trot" and the foxtrot was born.

Harry Fox was at first asked to work for by the New York theatre. The theatre was a movie-house and the management had vaudeville acts in between the shows. They initially employed Harry Fox and his "Dancing Beauties" to put on a dancing show for a month.

Fox's trot was an unusual style of movement and some of those in the dancing elite were soon trying to capture the dance's style. The foxtrot changed into a legitimate ballroom dance when the American G.K. Anderson won various competitions in London. This set the style of the foxtrot in the professional dancing world.

The music and the dance have changed through the years. The trotting steps were difficult to do for quite some time. The dancers would get tired and the steps were mostly difficult for the ladies to carry on. As a result of this, the trotting steps were replaced with gliding or 'sauntering'. This made it an on-the-spot hit in America.

The foxtrot today is a smooth and sauntering dance. It has fast and slow steps and is very versatile. Most social dance orchestras play foxtrot music, so it's a great dance to learn for ballroom dances.

There are a bunch of variances of the Foxtrot and the Lindy and the Hustle both came from the foxtrot. It's got a high popularity around the world today in social dance circles.

Foxtrot music is mostly jazz or Big Band type music. Frequently, jazz and Big Band music is employed for swing dancing. The difference is the speed of the tune, where swing is danced to more rapid music and foxtrot to slower music. The steps in foxtrot and swing can be interchanged and makes the dance a lot of fun.

Other than jazz and Big Band music, the foxtrot rhythm has been employed by Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Michael Buble, Stevie Wonder, Harry Connick, Jr., and others. As a result of this, the foxtrot can be danced to more recent music other than jazz and Big Band music.

The fundamental steps of the foxtrot are easy to learn. As dancers get a grip on the dance, a large number of steps can be added for a large variety in the dance. The foxtrot is a travelling dance which moves around the room and also has steps to keep the dancers in place on a crowded dance floor. Because of this, it makes for a dramatic first dance for a bride and groom and can then be used, too, for social dancing with a crowd of loved ones.




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