"Count out loud," he exhorts them. "I can’t hear you."

Slowly, as the students get the hang of it, the dance takes shape. The quirky, syncopated bounce step is the basis of hand dancing, D.C.’s own evolution of the Lindy hop and the swing. Though they’re dancing the steps as a sort of un-cool version of the electric slide, a brief demonstration by the instructor shows the students what they’re shooting for. He takes a more advanced student and runs her through a series of dizzyingly quick spins and twirls, their hands releasing and re-connecting, all the while their feet going kick-two-three, one, two, three, four.

With The Gap’s television commercials teaching today’s kids how to jump and wail, the swing revival has already taken those first treacherous steps down the slope of becoming just another 18-month fad, like the ‘50s revival of the ‘70s. But throughout the District, hand dancing has remained a mainstay of clubs and ballrooms. And Monday nights at Taft Recreation Center in North-east Washington, Houston "Buster" Jenkins teaches it from the very basics.

Hand dancing is part of the larger style know as swing dancing, which originated from the Lindy hop. Regional variations include east and west coast swing, the Chicago stomp and the Philly hop. And while hand dancing is practiced from Baltimore to Richmond, the epicenter is the District, Jenkins said.

D.C.’s version of swing is less flashy than most of its cousins. The basic step is less hoppy than the Lindy hop and there are none of the lifts and vertical pyrotechnics that are in The Gap commercials. But what hand dancing lacks in flash it makes up for in precision. Turns are executed accurately and everyone’s hands and bodies are where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. And keeping the rhythm is paramount.

"If you’re off beat, everyone on the dance floor’s going to know it," Jenkins warns his students. "They won’t say anything, but they’ll know it."

Jenkins, who said he’s been hand dancing since he was 9 years old, said he noticed a revival in hand dancing that started about two years ago, roughly coinciding with the rise of the national swing trend. He said he’s been teaching hand dancing for about 10 years, at first just as a hobby and then professionally for the past four or five years.

He said hand dancing remains popular at clubs throughout the District, and rattled off a list of places from the top of his head, clubs with appropriately retro names like the Chateau, the Tradewinds and Club Elite.

The 10-week course he’s teaching at Taft Recreation Center, which is sponsored by the D.C. Department of Recreation and Parks, will finish at the end of the year and the next course will begin in January.

Jenkins also teaches hand dancing at Bolling and Andrews Air Force bases. At Bolling, he also teaches airmen how to dance the bop, a dance Jenkins describes as similar to swing and hand dancing but slower and "more romantic."

"We always said if you can’t bop, you ain’t a true hand dancer," he said.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator