Round One: get your gloves on and make sure you’re ready. Adrenaline pumping? Then you’re ready for swing dancing – or at least the Summer Swing Smackdown, in Perth for the second consecutive year.
Extreme dance as you’ve never seen it before, each round consists of exhibition dances by the colour-coded, six-member dance teams: Purple, Gold, Green and Red. Most importantly, the bands that these colours represent were also hitting their swing stride. And if you thought swing was sedate, then the Swing Smackdown will confound your expectations. Part performance, part music and part theatre, and featuring considerable crowd interaction, this show has something for everybody.
Magnus Danger Magnus, the MC whose waaarmit uuup routines ramp up ever higher over the evening, welcomes all the bands, particularly Sydney-based guests, Pia Anderson and the Lonesome Playboys, whom Magnus hails as the sexiest band present this evening. Pia confirms his claim: ‘There’s one thing Sydney’s good at, and that’s sex!’
Today’s audience is mostly aged in their 20’s and 30’s, and the 300+ crowd is well turned out, with men dressed in zoot suits and the women in tight skirts and high heels. There’s plenty of Victory Roll hairstyles on show, along with brilliantined blokes in wide legged trousers.
Round Two: Swing has been undergoing a revival since the late 1980’s thanks to bands such as Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and it’s easy to see why, with people smiling like mad, jiving those hips, and seemingly magical steps happening on the dance floor. The dance styles stem from Harlem in the late 1920’s – the only non-segregated dance arena – and is characterised by bent knees, joyful kicks, leaps, and improvisation that black dancers excelled in – helping to break down the colour barrier..
As we listen to the four bands compete, with their various renditions of Big Band-era songs like ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)’, ‘Well Alright, Okay, You Win’, ‘I Ain‘t Got Nobody to Love’ and ‘As Long as I’m Moving’, the dips, flips, jumps and lifts continue. The famous Lindy Hop, with its acrobatic steps where the female partner is thrown over the dancer’s head, is characterised by improvisation, just like jazz music. The red team’s ‘Darling Buds of May’ acquire female singers (in matching red outfits) for a sweet Andrews Sisters-style harmony, and there’s more theatrics, with to-ing and fro-ing between members of each band.
Milling amongst the crowd, the smoke machine blowing, and purple, red and gold spotlights sweeping, we could almost be in a 1940’s speakeasy. The exaggerated prize-fighting mood with boxing ring, cigarette girls with placards for each round, boxing gloves, and fighters all add to the mood, while the MC’s brash character keeps everything flowing smoothly. The audience of swing dancers – in between fantastic exhibition sets – are doing everything from the Cakewalk to the Charleston, the Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug, the high kicks and jumps of the Collegiate Shag (distinguished by the hops, kicks, jumps and very fast footwork with little movement from the waist up), breakaways and various swingouts. Some are even trying their foot at the ‘dancers dance’ of balboa, a more compact and subtle dance style designed for those crowded dance floors.
The final round firmly cements the crowd favourite – Darling Buds of May – as the overall winner. Our donation boxes (with the highest amount indicating the winner) will go to the Heart Foundation charity. HMS PopUp Productions is to be congratulated on bringing this high quality, well organised, fun event to Perth audiences – it wasn’t just the swing set who enjoyed themselves!
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Summer Swing Smackdown
Presented by HMS PopUp Productions
Bands: Darling Buds of May, Mama Red’s Malt Licker Minstrels, The Libby Hammer Quintet, Pia Anderson and her Lonesome Playboys
MC: Magnus D Magnus
State Theatre Centre Courtyard, Perth
19 January
