Pauline L {and others interested in this subject},
I apologize. I'm just seeing this post more than two years later. I found this thread while searching for threads on another subject.
I'm not sure what is meant by the "non-ball room position that is African American".
Perhaps a partial answer to the question of European and African American {or African} roots of swing and other American social dances can be found in this excerpt:
..."Some dancers nicknamed [Katherine] Dunham "Anthropological Katie" because of her extensive background in anthropology, which informed her company's dance. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, she spent a year in the Caribbean filming and documenting Afro-Caribbean dance, and some of her original footage is featured in Free to Dance. Dunham's technical mastery and high-voltage stage presence might have helped make her a star, but it was the didactic component of her dance that made it acceptable to a wide American audience. Context was important in her performances; the ballets often reflected a mixture of regional dancing, drumming, costuming, and speech, and she insisted that her dancers understand the social and religious underpinnings of each dance.
Dunham, now in her nineties, is the recipient of many national and international honors for her contributions to modern dance. She says it is "foolish" to present any cultural phenomenon as growing in total isolation, even classical ballet. Some of Dunham's contributions are clearly delineated. It is impossible to think of modern dance without the articulation of the shoulders or the pelvis--but these seemed revolutionary when first introduced as part of the Dunham method. Her influence, and that of African and Afro-Caribbean dance, are traced in Free to Dance, and so is the influx of other influences fresh from Africa.
The documentary makes extensive use of archival dance footage, recreations of historic dances, and interviews with African American artists--some well-known, some almost unknown. The film demonstrates what has been called the Africanization of American movement, showing how American dance of many types--concert, folk, theatrical, ballroom--has combined the European ideals of movement with those brought from Africa. European dance, whether it is ballet, flamenco, or Irish step dance, has as an aesthetic ideal of the upright torso and the extended leg. Once that aesthetic was transplanted to the United States, it became something else because it blended with African influences. In many African cultures, a bent knee symbolizes life--and a straight leg symbolizes death. Thanks to African movement, the bent knee and the articulated torso became important features in modern dance"...
I'd be interested in hearing from others on the subject of the aesthetics of African American social dancing and non-African [American} social dancing.