Swing Dance Influences History is constant. The universe continually creates a story that affects the present and the future. I would like to focus on one aspect of history that has and will always influence America today. Swing and dancing are a crucial element in the development of American culture. Swing dancing is a style that could only have developed in America in the 1920s and had the impact that it did. Without swing dancing in America, American culture would be different in every way. Everything we know to be true today would not have existed without Swing dancing in America. Swing to dance is defined as a group of dances that developed with the swing style of jazz music in the 1920s-1940s, with the origins of each dance preparing for the popular "swing era". Both jazz music and swing dancing stem from African-American influences. At the time, the Civil War was over and World War 11 was on the horizon. From this depression in America, a surplus of creativity bubbled up. "So there was this balance in the American mentality: we had to keep a positive attitude about the fact that we couldn't really get rid of our fears or ignore the reality of war." America in the 1940s (p 8). Because America was trying to stay positive, people turned to music and dance to stay positive during this tumultuous time. African Americans brought their African cultures to America, including their dance styles, and because music and dance were booming, African dance styles took on an American allure and gave rise to a new form of dance that we know as swing dancing. African American dances were based on movements that were intended for their gods. That's the element that they brought to America, the religious sense of non-religious dancing. Africans were inspired by a European foot pattern, now known as the shuffle. The dance then had a fixed structure which included