DISCO DANCE

Disco is a genre of dance music that originated in African American, psychedelic, and gay communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. While disco was a form of black commercial pop music and a craze among black gay men especially, it did not catch mainstream attention until it was picked up by the predominantly white gay clubs of New York. Latinos and women embraced disco as well, and the music eventually expanded to several other popular groups of the time.

Most Disco dances have strong roots in Swing, Samba, Cha Cha, Mambo, Merengue, Fox Trot and Tango. The Hustle is believed to have originated in New York in 1970. It went through many variations in the seventies, with line dances for groups of people, solo movements that came and went, and partnership dances. These partnership dances included The Basic Hustle, Latin, Spanish and Tango Hustle, and the most popular Street, Three-Count or Swing Hustle that originated in California as the street Hustle by skaters in Venice and Malibu. John Travolta and "Saturday Night Fever" made dancing the "in" thing for many people, especially men.

Hustle is danced to the contemporary pop dance music of the last 20 years. It is a fast, smooth dance, with the lady spinning almost constantly, while her partner draws her close and sends her away.

None-the-less, disco as a music, a dance or a club had not died out completely, and probably never will, it has just transformed with the times. It fits any society's pocketbook and a society's want for the many varied artist's songs which are made available by the DJ's, unlike the bands who usually don't know any other style of music except what they play as well as charging extremely high fees to play a nightclub are easily replaced by a DJ. The dances, mainly the couples dance today known as the Hustle, is still being danced by a handfull of people, mainly in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Philly and Los Angeles. The main disco dance styles today are the faster and more energetic L.A. Hustle, the simpler Street or Sling Hustle, and the slower, smoother New York Hustle.