Swing Swing Swing

I think High School shortchanged me by not having a swing club. So far it's pretty much the best thing about my college experience.

What I like about it is that it's a dance club, so you get to dance, but the dancing is not athletic and you don't have to have dancing skills to get good at it. Mostly good dancing comes from being confident and feeling the beat to the music, whereas in other, more technical dances you have to get the moves right, the posture right... etc. Although I may be oversimplifying things a bit because I'm a follow. I don't have to come up with the moves and get another person to do them.

I also like the social aspect of it. It's very easy to find someone to dance with, and you can dance with good dancers and bad dancers alike while having fun and looking good doing it. Guys typically ask girls to dance, but girls can ask guys as well, and usually people say yes (unless they're exhausted and sweating buckets). The annoying thing about that is that there are more girls than guys usually (because guys think swing dancing is stupid at this age, I guess) so some girls get left on the sidelines, especially if they sit down and glare at everyone. I saw a few girls at the swingout on Saturday sitting together, their legs and arms crossed, pouting at everyone they saw. Then they complained that no one was asking them to dance. Well duh.

Last saturday our swing club had a Charleston (a type of swing dance) workshop followed by a dance followed by a blues party. I attended the workshop from 12 to 5, and then danced almost the entire time during the swingout. For that we had to drive into town, as the dance was held at a swanky (haha, love that word) bohemian type ballroom. There was a live swing band that played a few songs I recognized from my brother's marching band.

The most interesting dances I had were 1. with someone who was so good at dancing that he made up moves, 2. a really really tall guy that took gigantic steps, so by the time the song was over I was way out of breath, and 3. a guy that seemed reluctant to dance with anyone, but when I got him to dance with me, it turned out that he was pretty good.

After 3 hours of that, I went to the blues party.

Dancing blues is the best because you can make up whatever moves you want (provided you're the lead) and the follows can embellish whatever they do to make it blues-y. At the party, the lights were literally blue and there were couches along the edges of the dance floor so we could rest when we weren't dancing. At the party, there was one guy from Spain who had been dancing his entire life who was I think the best dancer of the night. He had a pretty accent too.

Eventually, at 3 in the morning, we ventured back to campus and went to bed.

The point is that swing dancing is fun, it teaches social skills, and it creates an open community that will dance as long as you want. I highly recommend it.