Kids Get In the Swing

Ventura County kids are flocking to the dance floor in droves, jumpin’ and jivin’ to the big band sounds of Big Bad VooDoo Daddy, the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

Many are high school age--or younger.

“It’s so in style,” gushes 11-year-old Jessica Ansel, a Westlake Elementary School student who says she has been dancing for three weeks. “It’s fast, and it’s incredible to watch. By next year everyone will be doing it.”

Already trendy for hip twenty- and thirtysomethings, the swing-dancing craze is now catching on with high school, junior high and even elementary school students.

A problem is most places that offer swing dance classes and feature swing bands are drinking establishments off-limits to anyone younger than 21.

One of the few places in the county where kids can dance is the Borderline in Thousand Oaks.

On a recent Tuesday night at the hottest country-western bar in town, 36 couples stood on the dance floor under a rhinestone saddle learning to swing dance.

The strains of “Zoot Suit Riot” kick in, and the couples bounce into motion.

*

“Five, six, seven, eight, step, step, rock, step,” calls out instructor Tammy Finocchiaro. “Roll her in. Send her out . . . switch partners. From the top.”

The itch to “cut a rug” has reached such a fever pitch in recent months that clubs and dance teachers across Ventura County are scrambling to cash in on the swing craze among kids.

The Borderline offers East Coast swing classes on Tuesday nights, for example.

The Thousand Oaks Teen Center started a swing and Lindy Hop class for 12- to 17-year-olds in September and had to limit the class to 60 because so many enrolled.

*

And the Ventura Theater recently held an all-age swing night with a swing band from Los Angeles to see how many kids would turn out on a school night.

In addition, a number of high schools around the county--such as Camarillo High School--have started swing clubs.

“Swing is as popular in the ‘90s as the hustle was in the ‘70s,” said Gail Arias, a world-class swing dancer who teaches at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center. “From what older folks tell me, it is closely approaching the popularity it had in the ‘40s.”

Among no age group is the craze more fevered now than teenagers, Arias said.

’ It’s so in style. It’s fast and it’s incredible to watch. By next year, everyone will be doing it.’

Jessica Ansel, 11 Finocchiaro’s twin sister, Terry Moore, who teaches East Coast swing and Lindy Hop with her at Nicholby’s in Ventura, agrees.

“It’s huge,” Moore says, adding that she and Finocchiaro are deluged with phone calls and e-mail from young people asking where they can learn to dance.

*

“We get a ton of kids who want to come to Nicholby’s and they can’t,” she said.

Finocchiaro, Moore and her husband, Lee, perform across the state with their dance troupe, the Flying Lindy Hoppers. Sometimes the enthusiastic reaction from young people makes them feel guilty.

“We do our shows and all we do is pump the kids up and get them all excited and they run up and say, ‘Where can we go?’ ” said Finocchiaro. “We feel really cruel. We’ve motivated them, and then we tell them, ‘Well you have to age six years before you can get in anywhere.’ ”

Finocchiaro and Moore attribute the current mania mostly to pop culture. There is The Gap’s new swing commercial. The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies pop hit, “Zoot Suit Riot.” And the increasingly popular Brian Setzer Orchestra, which recently came out with a swinging video on VH-1.

Between numbers at the Borderline. a cluster of kids stands in the corner earnestly counting off, peering down at their toes and practicing their moves.

Jessica and 13-year-old Mark Cowart--looking debonair in a vest and newsboy cap--demonstrate the “flirt kick” they just learned.

*

“You see kids doing it, and they are ahead of their time,” said Mark, who attends Colina Middle School in Thousand Oaks. “There’s a kid here who’s been dancing a week and he leads his mother. It’s the coolest thing you’d ever see.”

And it’s not just the kids who are inspired. Some look on with envy as their offspring boogie down with ease.

Tom DeLuca, who brought his 13-year-old niece to the Borderline to dance, said his father was a great dancer, but that when he was growing up dancing was not cool for guys.

“To see kids from this MTV generation out there dancing--to me, its mind-boggling,” DeLuca said. “But it’s cool. Now I realize I missed a step somewhere. So I’m going to try to catch up.”

*

He looks on incredulously as freckle-faced David Cowart, 11, looking spiffy in a dapper cap and tiny wingtips from the Salvation Army, leads a woman 2 feet taller than he is out to the dance floor and guides her confidently into an intricate Charleston step.

One mother whispers that David could be on television.

The younger kids understand why they can’t do their dancing at local bars.

“There are people there who are drinking and smoking, which is not appropriate,” Jessica said. “I just wish there was a place where kids could swing.”

High school students feel more frustrated.

Seventeen-year-old Ryan Merillat, a senior at Grace Brethren in Simi Valley, is a self-proclaimed swing fanatic. He claims swing changed his life and prides himself on his good taste: He prefers the classic swing sound of Benny Goodman to the looser, faster sound of Big Bad VooDoo Daddy.

*

“It’s kind of hard because of the drinking thing,” he said, adding that he and his friends have basically taught themselves.

But Finocchiaro says that swing kids already have more options than they used to--they just have to drive a little.

The Hollywood Athletic Club began to admit anyone older than 18 (although it is now closed for renovations), and a number of venues in Santa Barbara welcome younger dancers.

In Ventura, though, the options are still limited.

“It’s cute,” says Terry Moore. “Kids who just turn 21 are dying to come to Nicholby’s. But they’re not coming to get drunk. They’re coming to dance.”