What Is Modern Jive?

What is Modern Jive?

You will probably get a different answer depending on whom you ask. The information below is just my opinion and not guaranteed to be accurate.

The way I usually explain it is:

In 1980 some clever people in London realised that they could get more people dancing a partner dance similar to jive if they didn't try to teach them any footwork.

So they devised simple moves which could be taught quickly and only involved the dancers walking to the beat - not worrying about which foot was which.

This developed into a range of styles involving hundreds of moves ranging from simple to complex and danced by hundreds of thousands of people across the world.

A generic name for these new styles is Modern Jive, but most people learn it at a club and use the name of the club to refer to the dance. One of the biggest and most successful chains of franchised clubs is Ceroc UK. There are also Ceroc organizations in Australia and New Zealand. Another name dating back to the eighties LeRoc - many clubs use the word LeRoc in their name, and there is also the LeRoc Federation which is a federation of indpedent Modern Jive teachers. New groups are breaking away or forming all the time, some of the ones that started in the 1990s include Swing Roc, Swing Jive, Just Jivin', mo'jive and Blitz.

Modern Jive is often called "French Jive" in the UK, but I have danced quite a lot in France and I still haven't found anyone over there who dances Modern Jive the way it is done in the UK!

Most clubs have a standard evening format something like:

start around 8pm with a Beginners' lesson for 30-45 minutes - you don't need your own partner as the teacher moves everyone around every couple of minutes so that you get lots of practice with lots of partners
a short freestyle - just dance with anyone you like
an Intermediate lesson (same format as the Beginners' lesson) for 30-45 minutes
freestyle dancing for an hour or two to finish off the night

"Freestyle" dancing just means the man (or "leader") leads the lady (or "follower") through a sequence of moves selected randomly by the man. Most people change partners after every track or two so you get plenty of variety.

As far as I am concerned Modern Jive is wonderful because:

You can dance to all the great hits of the last 100 years - Modern Jive clubs usually play a wide variety of music and don't stick to specific genres
As it is so free-form you can steal moves easily from virtually any other dance style
There are clubs everywhere so I can dance wherever I am working
The people at the clubs are always very friendly and happy to dance with strangers
There are always new moves to learn
It keeps me fit!

Actually, to be quite honest, you can't easily dance Modern Jive to ALL the great hits - some of them are too slow and some of them too fast. Modern Jivers tend to like music which is between 120 and 160 beats per minute, but the better ones can cope with other speeds.

Most Modern Jive clubs teach a standard range of Beginner and Intermediate moves at their normal club nights. If you want to learn more then there are lots of opportunities:

attend weekend workshops run by your local club
attend the big "events" around the country which involve workshops all day and dancing all night
visit lots of different clubs
get videos of championships and other weekend events and study them frame by frame

Related Styles

When Modern Jive was created it borrowed heavily from French jive styles and older influences such as Lindy Hop, Swing and Rock 'n' Roll. Many people find that once they have mastered the basics of Modern Jive and have discovered that they CAN make their feet do what they want, they would like to try some of these other styles.

I have included lots of links to such clubs and events so that you can explore them. I hope you find them useful.

Whatever you try, I wish you good luck and hope you enjoy it!
Happy dancing,
John