Kategori: ARTICLES & REVIEWS

Jenny Shirar is a dynamic dancer, teacher, competitor and performer, ercely fond of Shag, especially the version from her hometown, St. Louis. This is what she reckons everyone should know about the Shag, why you should learn it and why she loves it. – I love shag because it’s fast, highly rhythmic, and I like to move! But St. Louis shag is so much about the stories and the people who grew up in St. Louis. The stories people tell about dancing are stories of their lives, their families, their upbringings, and the history of the city. Shag has always...

Balboa. To some, it means boring. To some, it means confining freedom. To some, an excuse for not being able to dance Lindy fast. To others, however, it means a dance you often taste more than you see. It means freedom by framework. And it means dancing comfortably to fast swing music all night long, all life long. by: Bobby White To me, it’s a poem. A subtle poem, one that might sit with you a while before you realize how much you like it—how well it puts a thousand possible words into one, how beautiful the white space around it...

Good to knows before you visit Smokey Feet next year. Swedish Lindy hopper Johanna Lindblom went to the 7th edition of Smokey Feet in may 2017. Five days later she returned to Stockholm with new guidelines for swing, strong legs and a renewed love for the dance and music. This is her experience. cover photo: Light eX Machina 2017 DANCE IN TO A NEW LEVEL – Going to Amsterdam for Lindy Hop workshop/parties seemed like the perfect kind of vacation. I managed to involve a dancing friend so we signed up as a couple in “BASS” level for dancers “confident in leading/following...

Americans are people of the now, birthing new art and ideas everyday. ”We are fundamentally individualistic. We are not preservationist like our European and Asian lindy hop family.” Jamin Jackson look upon swing dancings practitioners. – European and Asian lindy hop histories are much older than the USA and they have more sensitivity for knowing the origins of artistic moments in their unique cultures. This may be one of the reasons why Americans with brown skin don’t have swing dancing on their radar. We don’t celebrate our historic dances. In the states, we consider swing “some old dance” for everyone else...

You are a good person, you know what is right and what is wrong, right? Most of us do. Despite that upsetting stories of sexual assaults have hit the swing dance scene. ”We don’t have any swing community problems, we have individual problems”, Jamin Jackson says and argues that we all should: …recognize that we are recipients of swing culture not the originators. This means we have to hold ourselves accountable to “their” standard, the people who created it. We don’t have the right to change fundamental social ethics if we don’t like them, no matter how outdated we project...