Jamming in dance culture is a kind of informal show-off during a social dance party. Dancers clear a circle (jam circle) and proficient dancers or dance couples take turns showing their best tricks while the remaining dancers take a break and cheer the jammers. Jam circles are often formed spontaneously when among the dancers a proficient or famous couple appears and starts doing their top-notch dance. For other uses, see Dance (disambiguation). ... Social dance is a major category or classification of danceforms or dance styles, where sociability and socializing are the primary focuses of the dancing. ...
The term originated during the Swing Era of dancing, probably borrowed or appeared in parallel with the expression "jam session" in music. Scenes with jamming may be seen in movies and musicals, such as Hellzapoppin. At the same time, this kind of dance behavior is not unusual in folk dances in various cultures all over the world and is often included in scenic performances when a group dance is interleaved with several solos. The Swing Era was the period of time (1935-1946) when big band swing music was the most popular music in America. ... A jam session is a musical act where musicians gather and play (or jam) without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. ... The art of singing and dancing in a prepared fictional play has been a time-honored tradition ranging to the early days of civilization. ... Hellzapoppin was a musical revue which was a Broadway hit, running from 22 September 1938 to 17 December 1941, and was at the time the longest-running Broadway musical with 1,404 performances—one of only three plays to run more than 500 performances in the 1930s. ... Folk dance is a term used to describe a large number of dances that tend to share the following attributes: They were originally danced in about the 19th century or earlier (or are, in any case, not currently copyrighted); Their performance is dominated by an inherited tradition rather than by...
A variant of jamming is when dancers within the jam circle swap partners from the outside. This kind of jam circle may be organized when a dancer from the local dance community celebrates a birthday. In this case the "newborn" dances in the circle swapping many partners "on the fly": the volunteers form a line and "break in" in turn grabbing the hero of the occasion without disturbing the dance flow. Such birthday jams are common in swing dance and hustle communities in the United States. Swing is a group of related street dances, that evolved from Lindy Hop. ... The Hustle is a catchall name for many disco or nightclub partner social dances which were extremely popular in the 1970s. ...
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