It was a little hard to hear him over the sound of “In the Mood,” but Mark Nelson had an explanation of why a big crowd is drawn to Concord every two months to dance to music that’s nearly a century old.

“I think people are looking for a low-pressure way to meet people,” said Nelson, a student at NHTI, during a Swing Dance Night show by the New Hampshire Jazz Orchestra at the BNH Stage on Nov. 16.

Nelson became a fan of the music by accident – “I just happened to go to a swing dance in Boston and liked it” – and was drawn to the energy and openness of the community, where anybody can ask anybody else to dance with no judgment. “I don’t drink so I don’t go to bars much. This is a way to get out and interact with people.”

There was certainly a lot of interaction on the BNH Stage dance floor that night. There was swing dancing, both East Coast and West Coast, and foxtrot and Charleston and Lindy hop and the occasional waltz, plus simple steps from many folks who received their first dance lesson right before the band started playing. The floor was never empty and often packed.

“We get at least 100 people for every show, sometimes 150 people,” said Salvatore Prizio, executive director of the Capitol Center for the Arts, which owns BNH Stage.

BNH Stage is the little sibling of the nearby Capitol Center. It opened in 2019 in the former Concord Theater movie house and has made good use of the ability to easily switch from theater-style seating to a wide-open floor watched over by a seated balcony, which lets it hold events from silent discos to Taylor Swift dance nights.

“The open floor is a net benefit – it was always part of the plan,” said Prizio. “At the CCA, it’s about trying to engage as many different communities as we can possibly serve. We’re always open to ideas.”

Swing resurgence

Swing is the general term for dancing styles that became popular during the Big Band era from the late 1920s through World War II. They were a creation of the African-American community in big cities before being adopted by the nation at large. Taking advantage of music from full bands featuring up to two dozen players, swing involves dances for couples that emphasize rhythmic athleticism in a spontaneous but not free-form style that uses a number of set moves as the urge arises.

Swing dancing largely disappeared after rock ‘n’ roll took over but saw a resurgence in the late 1990s. The rebirth was fueled in the U.S. by a 1998 commercial for Gap clothing stores which highlighted frenetic Lindy hopping and in Europe by a youthful rediscovery of the Harlem Renaissance, which raised dance pioneers like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller from obscurity to international fame.

Starting in the 2000s New Hampshire developed a small but eager swing dance community with regular dances playing to live bands, an offshoot of the bigger scene around Boston. Virtually all opened with a free group lesson to get people started, a reflection of the swing community’s tradition of openness, with newcomers and experienced dancers mingling together.

Then the pandemic hit.

“COVID lockdowns set everything back. At UNH, for example, their swing dance club dissolved,” said Mike Pelletier of Manchester, who runs the Facebook group Swing Dancing in Southern NH. Before that, college groups had been a major incubator of the swing revival.

Like much of the arts scene, swing dancing to live music has yet to fully recover from the pandemic but big bands have begun returning to places like Rockingham Ballroom and the American Legion Sweeney Post in Manchester. The Swing Dance Nights dances at BNH Stage, scheduled eight times a year with the next one in January, are part of this.

Pelletier and his wife, Joanne, got into swing dancing after he returned from his second deployment with the New Hampshire National Guard in 2011. “We said it’s time to learn how to dance; time to have some fun.”

Finding dances is a bit of a hassle, though. “Over the course of years, we found that there are dance opportunities in New Hampshire but there was no real method of learning where they were or who was doing what,” he said. Hence the Facebook page.

Being on Facebook isn’t the sexiest way to get the word out but it fits with New Hampshire’s aging demographic. This leads to a key point about swing: The appeal crosses generations.

Dances always feature folks of retirement age, who may remember their parents playing Big Band records, but people under 30 are usually well represented and in Boston will make up the majority of the couples on the floor.

“You hear people say ‘I’m a metalhead but I like this music. I was born at the wrong time!’” said Clayton “Skip” Poole, who leads the New Hampshire Jazz Orchestra.

NH Jazz Orchestra

Poole, 65, of Bow, is a financial advisor who has worked with big bands for 48 years; his first gig included singer/pianist Mel Torme. He is also music director for the Capital Jazz Orchestra, a fully professional big band that plays shows all over the country and will have a Holiday Pops show on Dec. 8. The N.H. Jazz Orchestra is somewhat different.

“I was asked to put together a group to feature more community players – including advanced high school students, semi-pros – to meet on a weekly basis,” he said.

Poole said he was interested because it’s a “chance to perform music that isn’t heard all that often anymore on a very high level.” He uses his own collection of some 8,000 charts – music for all the instruments in the band for a set arrangement – some dating back to original arrangements from the 1920s. “We can take this music and bring it back to life.”

“Most of the music we play is danceable. It’s different when you perform for dancers – Latin material, waltzes, whatever you play for dancing and not just for listening,” Poole said. “It’s much more exciting to have people there, dancing, to look out on the floor and see a sea of bobbing heads. … Even the most professional musicians who say they play for money – no, they play for the sound of applause.

“We’re fortunate to be at BNH, it’s sort of our home away from home, reaching out to swing dancers in the area.”

The NH Jazz Orchestra has five reed instruments such as saxophone and clarinet, four trombones and a tuba, five trumpets and four rhythm players including keyboard and guitar, and usually includes a vocalist. Poole is adamant that it avoids the “gazebo circuit” of playing free concerts outdoors to keep up the quality. “We only play if people buy a ticket,” he said.

Alternative to digital life

Despite the popularity of events like Swing Dance Night, there’s a problem, Pelletier said.

“We have over 1,000 members on (the Facebook) page but what we’ve noticed is that many people want to dance … but they don’t actually go,” he said. “I think it’s because they’re intimidated.

“This generation, people stopped partner dancing and they don’t know how, or they’re embarrassed to try in public. To go to a dance where people actually talk to each other, ask each other to dance, actually touch each other – that’s uncomfortable.”

Blame technology, blame the pandemic, blame generational change – whatever the reason this isn’t just a swing dance problem. Digital life, exacerbated by the imposed isolation of the COVID years, seems to be cutting into people’s connection with each other, which cuts into their willingness to attend public events. All sorts of music venues have seen crowds shrink in the past two years, even when there’s no dance floor, and one reason cited by a major survey was that people didn’t have a friend to go with.

Whether swing dancing’s openness and lack of judgment can overcome that reluctance is uncertain. But it will be entertaining to find out.

“The music is great, isn’t it?” said Pelletier.