In the year 1900, ballroom dancing consisted of mainly the Waltz, the Polka, and a few other folk dances that had lasted since the late seventeenth century. For over a century, the Waltz had been the favorite dance of ballroom dancers, who typically consisted of the upper class white society. Religious organizations were very much apposed to the Waltz and all ballroom dances, claiming that ballroom dancing was the work of the devil. At the beginning of the twentieth century, ballroom dancing began to change dramatically as Americans found themselves intrigued by other cultures, especially African trance and folk dancers in the Americas. Now, one century later, ballroom dancing consists of over thirteen dances that are highly defined and have many roots in the African culture. In this thesis, I show that ballroom dancing has traditionally been a mostly white (and historically elite white) style of dance whose roots lie deep within the African slave trade and the traditions, rituals, and music that Africans brought with them across the Atlantic. Despite the historically white-dominated society in the Americas, ballroom dancing would not be what it is today had it not been for elements of African culture transcending racial lines and being incorporated into white culture. I hope to demonstrate that ballroom dancing was an exercise of taking many elements of African music and dance and blending them with the conservative mannerisms of the elite white class, thus creating what the latter would consider "civilized dancing."

This thesis examines the social factors surrounding the development of Lindy Hop in Harlem, New York during the 1920s and 30s from a sociocultural perspective, applying the findings to an instance of contemporary Lindy Hop practice at Jazz Attack, a Lindy Hop venue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in order to ascertain where elements of Black culture are present or absent. As Lindy Hop practice has transitioned from its point of origin in the Black space of the Savoy Ballroom to primarily white spaces today, questions arise about cultural preservation and erasure in this historically Black dance.Using historical methodologies, this research examines the human experience of historical Lindy Hop participants to analyze the culture that developed within the dance. Ethnographic methodologies, including the use of participant observation and interviews, are then used in a cross-cultural comparison to examine where elements of historical Black Lindy Hop culture are present or absent in an instance of contemporary Lindy Hop practice. The findings argue that, while the reasons for engagement in Lindy Hop are intrinsically different between historical and contemporary participants, elements of emotional or spiritual release and an emphasis on community are present today. Other historical Black cultural elements surrounding the approach to movement source creation and bodily aesthetics are minimal or absent. / Dance

My work focuses on taking a single person as input and predicting the intentional movement of one dance partner based on the other dance partner's movement. Human pose estimation has been applied to dance and computer vision, but many existing applications focus on a single individual or multiple individuals performing. Currently there are very few works that focus specifically on dance couples combined with pose prediction. This thesis is applicable to the entertainment and gaming industry by training people to dance with a virtual dance partner. Many existing interactive or virtual dance partners require a motion capture system, multiple cameras or a robot which creates an expensive cost. This thesis does not use a motion capture system and combines OpenPose with swing dance YouTube videos to create a virtual dance partner. By taking in the current dancer's moves as input, the system predicts the dance partner's corresponding moves in the video frames. In order to create a virtual dance partner, datasets that contain information about the skeleton keypoints are necessary to predict a dance partner's pose. There are existing dance datasets for a specific type of dance, but these datasets do not cover swing dance. Furthermore, the dance datasets that do include swing have a limited number of videos. The contribution of this thesis is a large swing dataset that contains three different types of swing dance: East Coast, Lindy Hop and West Coast. I also provide a basic framework to extend the work to create a real-time and interactive dance partner.

Syftet med denna studie är att belysa dansformen Lindy hop som immateriellt kulturarv och presentera de konflikter som finns kring förmedling och förvaltning i förhållande till dansen idag. Frågeställningarna redogör för vilka attityder som uppfattas bland utövare och experter när det gäller utövanderätten av ett immateriellt kulturarv och bevarandestrategier av en dansform i förändring. Förhållningssätten som redovisats genom intervjuer och enkätsvar kan visa på en kulturell förskjutning av samtida dans som gått från ett afroamerikanskt ursprung till ett västerländskt perspektiv. Studien belyser maktstrukturer i förhållande till en kulturell performance och vad det i sin tur säger om Lindy hop som immateriellt kulturarv i dagens Sverige. / The aim of this study is to shed light to a swing dance called Lindy hop, as intangible cultural heritage and also to present the conflicts that exist around the practice and management in the relation to the dance today. The questions sets out which attitudes are perceived among the practitioners and experts regarding to the rights to practise an intangible cultural heritage, and the conservation strategies to a dance form in constante change. The attitudes reported through interviews andsurvey responses may indicate a cultural shift in contemporary dance that has gone from an African-American origin to a western perspective and practise. The study highlights the structures of power in relation to cultural performance and what that says about Lindy hop as an intangible cultural heritage in sweden today.