The Charleston can bring a different energy to Strictly Come Dancing: a sense of play, angular movement and a close conversation with musical rhythm. Understanding where that character comes from makes the dance more interesting than its familiar association with 1920s clothes and party imagery.
This historical viewer guide connects the programme’s use of the style with a longer jazz tradition. It draws on the National Jazz Archive, Lincoln Center’s research, an account of Strictly’s changing dance roster and a BBC archive record. The suggested viewing questions are editorial interpretation, while the historical claims are attributed to their sources.
A television arrival within a much older tradition
A September 2018 Evening Standard report, discussing the introduction of Couple’s Choice, looked back to the Charleston joining Strictly’s roster in 2009. BBC’s archive preserves Chris Hollins and Ola Jordan’s 2009 final Charleston.
That distinction between the show’s history and the dance’s history is useful. A television programme can introduce a style to a new audience, but the tradition already has its own creators, communities and changes. The 2009 date explains its place in Strictly, rather than its invention.
Black American musicians and dancers shaped the form
Writing for Lincoln Center in July 2026, jazz researcher Scott E. Brown traces the Charleston’s development through African American cultural traditions and migration from the southeastern United States to New York. His account places pianist and composer James P. Johnson within that exchange.
Brown describes Johnson responding to dances he encountered and developing music that reached a much wider public through the 1923 Broadway show Runnin’ Wild. Elisabeth Welch featured as a singer, while the Dancing Redcaps performed a dance number choreographed by Elida Webb.
Those details help recover a network of contributors from an image often reduced to an anonymous decade. Song, rhythm and movement travelled together, but they were made and performed by particular people. Remembering that creative work gives the style a more precise history.
The rhythm helps explain the movement
Nikki Santilli’s National Jazz Archive account describes authentic jazz dance as a physical response to music, with African American originators and innovators at its foundation. She explains that Charleston could be danced solo, in pairs and in groups, rather than always following one fixed partnership arrangement.
She also identifies a walk-and-tap pattern in the Double Basic and describes the angular body positions associated with 1920s Charleston. Later forms developed alongside changes in jazz and swing music. These are historical distinctions within a varied dance tradition.
For a television viewer, the useful consequence is to look for how a movement relates to the music. A sharp change of shape can be more than a comic pose. It may emphasise a rhythmic event, create a reply to the accompaniment or prepare the next phrase.
What to watch beyond the period styling
Our viewing suggestion is to start with one short musical phrase. Notice which movements arrive together with the sound and which seem to play around it. Then look at how the partners respond to one another: do they share an idea, take turns or briefly create a visual surprise?
These questions encourage attention to timing and interaction, without assuming every televised routine reproduces a particular historical social dance. A choreographed performance for cameras has its own demands, including clear presentation within a short duration.
Costumes and scenery can establish a period quickly. The more revealing question is what remains when your attention moves back to the dancers and music. Rhythm, changes of shape and exchanges between partners can communicate character even without an elaborate setting.
The Charleston’s appeal on Strictly becomes richer when those layers are considered together. Its television history is relatively recent; its musical and social roots reach much further back. Knowing both helps viewers appreciate a performance while recognising the creative tradition that made the style possible.