Shim Sham Shimmy
My intro to the Shim Sham was at Frankie Manning’s 85th birthday party in New York at the Roseland Ballroom. I was still quite a beginner in the world of dance and my exposure to swing was limited to what I could learn from going out to the Masquerade Swing nights in Atlanta. My eyes were popping out of my head upon entering Roseland. EVERYBODY in Swing at the time was there, and the dance energy was insane. In retrospect I probably should have felt intimidated but the Swing community has always had an egalitarian, welcoming feel, and I didn’t know any better.
Break!
The Shim Sham is a Swing line dance which is danced without a partner for the most part with an option to grab a partner in the fourth movement. That probably needed to be said before I went any further. So there I at Roseland trying to keep my eyes from some irreversible displacement when Stompin’ at the Savoy comes on and everyone starts facing the same direction by some unseen direction (basically they all knew what was up). For an earnest young fellow such as I was it was easy enough to catch on by the second movement. I completely missed some of the rhythm changes, but hey! It was my first time.
Once I finally got a chance to learn the steps in a bit more of a structured setting it was a blast. I even had a chance to through it into a show I toured with, annoying the hell out of the other dancers in the show. One of the main things that tripped them up was coming in on 8 rather than 1, as is typical for most Ballroom dancers. Learning to hit that back beat is a great way to develop feeling for the Swing rhythms and really key for being expressive in Swing (Ballroom Style) and Jive.
We’re looking forward to teaching the Shim Sham in March but in the meantime here is a breakdown of the steps taken from jitterbuzz.com.
First Movement ("With Full Breaks")
Shim Sham (3 Bars)
Side Push Suite (4 Bars)
Tacky Annie (3 Bars)
Full Break
Full Break
Half Breaks
Full Break
Second Movement ("Hold Full Breaks")
Shim Sham (3 Bars)
Side Push Suite (4 Bars)
Tacky Annie (3 Bars)
8 Count Hold
Half Breaks
8 Count Hold
Half Breaks
8 Count Hold
Third Movement ("Clap 'n Strut")
Clap Back
Boogie Forward
Clap Back
Clap Back
Shorty George
Fourth Movement: Grab Partners and Dance
This is one of the classic demonstrations of the Shim Sham as you can see by the zillions and zillions of views it has.