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The St Louis Shag is a dance that evolved from the Charleston in St Louis, Missouri. As the movements of the dance primarily involve staying in one place and performing kicks, it is well suited to faster tempo music. Most of the patterns for the dance are mirrored, with the dancers positioned side by side, using opposite feet to perform the same steps. The core rhythm structure of the dance is the same as the Charleston Rhythm, but with a distinguishing characteristic: the stomp of the dancers' outside feet (leader's left, follower's right) on beat 8. The St Louis Shag is almost identical to the Side Charleston; moves can be seamlessly transferred between the two, and some of the moves described in this section are basically renamings of Side Charleston moves. Because St Louis Shag sticks to an eight-beat rhythm throughout the dance, the moves of the dance typically align with the phrasing of the music in the same way. Exactly what this alignment is depends on when the first move starts; the counts in this section are all given on the assumption that the move starts with the rock-step aligned with beats 1 and 2 of the music. This alignment results in the characteristic stomp falling on beat 8, which works well with a lot of swing music. |
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