West Coast Swing Was Danced in Hollywood Films Decades Before Anyone Called It "West Coast Swing." Dean Collins Brought It From Harlem. Nobody Gave Him Credit Until Decades Later.

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West Coast Swing Was Danced in Hollywood Films Decades Before Anyone Called It "West Coast Swing." Dean Collins Brought It From Harlem. Nobody Gave Him Credit Until Decades Later.

2026/08/05 Report

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West Coast Swing Was Danced in Hollywood Films Decades Before Anyone Called It "West Coast Swing." Dean Collins Brought It From Harlem. Nobody Gave Him Credit Until Decades Later.

Dean Collins was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1917. He learned Lindy Hop in Harlem — at the Savoy Ballroom, where the dance was developing in the late 1920s and 1930s under the influence of jazz music and the specific physical vocabulary of African American social dancing in New York.

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In the mid-1930s, he moved to Los Angeles.

What he brought with him was a smoother, more linear version of the Harlem Lindy Hop — a style built for the specific dynamics of the West Coast dance scene, which favored smaller venues, closer partners, and music that was beginning to move toward the slower, bluesier end of the swing spectrum.

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Six UCWDC World Championship titles. 35 years of training in over 60 different dance styles. CrossFit instructor. One of the most respected chief judges in WCS. And on his body: a tattoo that reads "Technique prevents the body from limiting the soul's expression." He got it because he kept trying to explain his teaching philosophy in words — and that sentence was the only one that got it right. #WestCoastSwing #MylesMunroe #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #Philosophy

Bachelor of Kinesiology from UBC. National Coaching Certification. An Olympic-track competitive swimming coaching career that was already underway. And simultaneously: Premier League soccer referee, part of an elite program training officials for the FIFA Women's World Cup. Then she found West Coast Swing — and went back to school to get a second degree. She has since used both of them to build something that has changed how WCS is taught worldwide. 😮 #WestCoastSwing #TessaCunningham #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #Origin

The WCS Competitive Circuit Has Only One Rule That Has Never Changed in 45 Years. Every Other Rule Has Been Revised, Debated, or Abandoned. This One Has Not.

2am. Myles Munroe and Tessa Cunningham are at a WCS event across the country from their student — in bed, in pajamas, at a dance weekend that ran late. Their student called because they had a teaching challenge the next morning and didn't know how to solve it. Myles and Tessa answered. They stayed on the call until the student had what they needed. This is apparently not unusual for them. 🥹 #WestCoastSwing #MylesMunroe #TessaCunningham #SwingLiteracy #Teaching

40+ weekends a year, for over 20 consecutive years. That's the competitive calendar Myles Munroe and Tessa Cunningham Munroe have maintained since 2002. Their daughter grew up on airplanes, in hotel ballrooms, in the specific permanent-temporary community of the WCS circuit. She has been to more countries than most adults. She did not choose this life. She was born into it. 🌍 #WestCoastSwing #MylesTessa #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #DanceFamily

Partners since 2002. Married. Canadian Champions. Ranked #1 in Canada and 2nd in the world. 40+ events per year for over 20 years. And then: a teaching methodology so comprehensive that students fly from other countries to take it. One student wrote: "I have been honored with their full-service mentorship. I cannot imagine this level of dedication is common." It is apparently not common at all. #WestCoastSwing #MylesTessa #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #Teaching

The WCS Community Has a Word for the Feeling You Get When a Dance Goes Perfectly. The Word Doesn't Exist in English. It Was Created by a WCS Dancer Who Couldn't Find Another Way to Describe It.

Laureen Baldovi won eight US Open titles with Robert Royston. Then she stepped away from competitive WCS for nearly two decades — injury, life changes, the distance that accumulates between a person and something they used to be. When she came back to compete again in 2010, the room watched with the specific attention that only comes from watching someone return to something they had once been the best in the world at. 🥲 #WestCoastSwing #LaureenBaldovi #RobertRoyston #SwingDance #ReturnStory

Every week, Robert Royston teaches a beginner group class. Every week, he says the exact same sentence to explain what dancing is. He has been saying it for 32 years. Most beginners nod and don't understand it yet. The ones who eventually become champions all say the same thing: the sentence didn't make sense until years later — and then suddenly it made sense about everything. 🤯 #WestCoastSwing #RobertRoyston #SwingDance #DancePhilosophy #Teaching

1999–2001: Robert Royston is a principal dancer in "Swing!" on Broadway, performing 461 shows. During the same period, he is competing and winning at the championship level of West Coast Swing. He didn't tell his Broadway castmates he was a multiple US Open champion. He didn't announce the Broadway show to the WCS community. Both worlds ran in parallel. Neither knew about the other until later. #WestCoastSwing #RobertRoyston #Broadway #SwingDance #DoubleLIfe

1995. The US Open Classic Division. Robert Royston & Laureen Baldovi. This performance has been broken down in WCS workshops more times than any other single routine in the history of the dance form. 30 years later, instructors are still finding things in it. Watch it once and you'll see why. Watch it twice and you'll see something you missed the first time. 🎬 #WestCoastSwing #RobertRoyston #LaureenBaldovi #USOpen1995 #SwingDance

They came together 14 years ago with one goal: create a routine for one night. One hour of choreography. No intention of forming a lasting partnership. The next night they placed 2nd in Classic. They kept going. Then they got married. They are still competing. The "one night" plan is now a 14-year marriage. #WestCoastSwing #BAMEO #BenCameoMcHenry #SwingDance #PartnershipStory

Michael Cross: California Swing Dance Hall of Fame. Amber Cross: California Swing Dance Hall of Fame. Cameo Cross McHenry: California Swing Dance Hall of Fame. The only family in the history of the honor to hold it across three members. Her parents pioneered the dance. She inherited it, left it for ballet, came back to it, and built something that earned her the same recognition they had. 🏅 #WestCoastSwing #CameoCross #SwingDance #LegacyFamily #HallOfFame

"Hit the Road Jack" — Ray Charles, 1961. An uptempo, familiar, apparently uncomplicated song. Ben Morris and Cameo McHenry used it to win the 2022 US Open Classic Division in a performance that judges and observers described as "the most joyful 4 minutes in recent WCS competition memory." Joy is harder to score than precision. The judges scored it first. #WestCoastSwing #BenMorris #CameoCross #USOpen2022 #SwingDance

Ben Morris discovered swing dancing at 12. The first form he learned was Lindy Hop — the older, more historically rooted style that preceded WCS by decades. He could have stayed a Lindy Hop dancer. He is, in fact, a Champion Lindy Hop dancer. But he stayed in WCS. In 27 years of interviews, he has never fully explained what WCS gave him that Lindy Hop didn't. 🤔 #WestCoastSwing #BenMorris #LindyHop #SwingDance #Origin

In June 2018, Cameo McHenry won a local Northern California Emmy Award — for her work in a dance film called "BaseBallet II: Into the Game." She mentioned it in a workshop several months later. The people in the room had no idea she had an Emmy. Neither did most of the WCS community. She had not announced it. #WestCoastSwing #CameoCross #Emmy #SwingDance #DancerLife

Maxime Zzaoui and Torri Smith met at SwingDiego 2013. They were both in other relationships. They danced all night. They went home. He called his dad. His dad said "GO FOR IT." She called her mom. Her mom said nothing useful. They got together anyway. In 2016, they got married on a French hillside. In 2018, they made a video to "Nice 'N' Easy" by Frank Sinatra that has since been watched more than any other WCS video in history. #WestCoastSwing #MaximeAndTorri #ZzaouiCouple #SwingDance #LoveStory

2010. US Open Swing Dance Championships. Torri Smith won the Classic Division. Then the Showcase Division. In the same year. With two different partners. No one had ever done it before. No one has done it since. What she said when someone asked how — in 2024, fourteen years later — is something the WCS community is still thinking about. 🏆 #WestCoastSwing #TorriZzaoui #USOpen2010 #SwingDance #History

Zola Zzaoui is the daughter of two WCS World Champions. She has attended competitions on multiple continents. She is 7 years old. She has strong opinions about which songs are good for dancing and will tell you, directly, if a DJ has made a poor choice. The WCS community considers her a co-ambassador. 😂💜 #WestCoastSwing #MaximeAndTorri #ZolaZzaoui #DancingFamily #SwingDance

Eight years of competitive orienteering — navigating forests with a compass, training long-distance endurance, winning regional championships in the Czech Republic. Then, at a university event in 2009, Jakub Jakoubek watched someone dance. He went home. He did not go to the next orienteering training. He has never explained exactly what he saw that made him quit. 🧭💃 #WestCoastSwing #JakubJakoubek #JEm #SwingDance #Origin