He Just Can’t Swing the New Dance Style

I’ve never been ahead of trends, but I can safely say I’ve been in the swing of this swing craze for quite awhile.

All these teenage hep cats with the zoot suits and spats have nothing on me. I was swinging in a blue blazer and khakis when they were still learning the hokeypokey.

Back home in Richmond, Va., a lot of us middle-schoolers spent our weekend nights at cotillion, a combination dance and manners school. The boys slicked their cowlicks and the girls wore white gloves to sop sweaty palms.

From sixth through eighth grades, I cha-cha’d, waltzed, tangoed and merengued. But while those steps will hold me in good stead when I retire and begin frequenting cruise ships, for now the only thing worth remembering from my cotillion years is the pretzel.

The pretzel is dancing’s double-edged sword: It looks impressive, but it ain’t that hard. Guy and girl pump their arms, then join hands behind guy’s back and turn. Now they are back to back. Guy twists his arm over girl’s head, then does the same with the other arm. There is an optional dip, an optional reverse and then a quick unraveling. Throughout this upright game of Twister, the girl does a lot of spinning and the guy a lot of grinning.

Combine the pretzel with the jitterbug (a basic rocking step) and you have a powerful dancing combination that makes for a very convincing “swing.”

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That combo got me through middle school and beyond. In fact, my model behavior, exemplary attendance and lack of social life in high school earned me a spot among Town & Country Cotillion’s “helpers,” a not-so-elite corps of junior dance instructors and arbiters of decorum--SPIT THAT GUM OUT NOW! YES, IN MY HAND!

When I went off to college in New Jersey my pretzel prowess gave me new cachet. In Virginia, mastering the pretzel is a rite of passage like learning to drive, so you must be especially good to impress. But in the Garden State, my signature dance suddenly became a novelty--I guess you just can’t pretzel to Bon Jovi.

There were times when you would have thought I was Prometheus showing them Yankees fire for the first time. Rarely did a night go by that my footwork did not attract admirers.

In fact, I still have a few gals back in Jersey pining for a little pretzel. Nothing else, I’m sorry to say. Just the pretzel.

But since swing fever has set in, I have discovered that the fun of being a trendsetter ends when the trend begins.

With everyone swinging--from 11-year-olds to yuppies and beyond--my skills aren’t appreciated. In fact, next to Ventura County’s famous Flying Lindy Hoppers, my moves look like I’m still in cotillion, doing the teenage two-step: Nervous guy with rigid arms on girl’s shoulder, eyes wandering to the ceiling.

In a cruel twist, my pretzel now looks stale. It lacks the Johnny-comes-marching-home exuberance of the Lindy Hoppers and their like, who resemble pro wrestlers in poodle skirts with saddle shoes flying every which way.

How can I compete with that, in a city that produced Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, the fathers of ‘90s swing? If I try to lift a girl up, an old capture-the-flag injury makes my shoulder pop out. And if my weakling arms try to hurl her through my legs, I’m afraid she will drag on the ground like a potato sack.

Look at me dance today and you would never think I once had the ladies competing for slots on my dance card. The repetitiveness and rigidity of my steps, which were more than adequate for so long, now resemble some guy in night school trying to catch up with the latest trend so he can look cool and with it.

One of my Times colleagues, a fad follower herself, scoffs at my form of swing, calling it “soooo East Coast.” Even after we pretzeled in the office recently, I failed to convince her I was the real deal.

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“You’re just doing the shag,” she sniffed, dismissing my dancing as the relaxed Carolina step designed more for drinking beer on the beach than martinis in the lounge.

Still, it’s great to see kids swinging. It’s a healthy activity that I hope will keep them from whatever path directed their older siblings to piercing, tattooing and wearing Halloween costumes year-round.

And I suppose I should be relieved that of all the dance moves out there, the ‘40s wholesomeness of swing is where it’s at.

It could have been the lambada.

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Massie Ritsch is a Times Community News reporter.