Swing Dancing Club

Last Tuesday, Jessi and I joined our friends Matt and Ondene at the Swing Dancing Club. It was a two hour meeting and Jessi couldn't make the first hour, so I went alone. It was very typical of a club's first meeting. There was only me, Matt and Ondene. Which did not make for a very rousing dance session. We however discussed how to attain more members, apparently the club ran last semester and there was a girl who joined who was really good about kidnapping people.

Other than that there wasn't a whole lot done to round up members other than word of mouth, so said Matt. I have been a little disappointed that there hasn't been any sort of club rush event put on by the school, but I've been a little more disappointed in how little effort clubs have put into recruitment. Ondene put up posters, which is a really good start, but there's a lot more you can do. Anyway I digress.

We ended up recruiting some girls who were passng by to join us, they had never done swing before, so it was a good chance to start with the basics. The guys were sort of passed around, and a lot was done without a partner. They taught a style of swing that was different from both Jessi's and my style of swing dancing that they had learned from Ondene's mom. They called it west coast swing, but they did a whole lot of one handed tricks and a three step as opposed to my two step style. The tricks were basically the same though, except they used a lot of "tells"

A tell in swing dancing is some motion, hand movement, or eye contact that signals to a girl that your about to do a specific kind of trick. I never learned any tells, and I've seldom seen couples use the same kind of tells for similar tricks. The whole thing's a little confusing, so far I can't tell what anybodies really talking about in terms of different styles of swing.
Feel free to check it out though. http://www.swingcraze.com/ussds/other_swing_dance_styles.html

Later on though a few more people came, and Jessi came, we learned basic stuff and I got a good refreser/practice on how to keep to the beat while dancing. We're doing the same thing next tuesday. I'll see if I can't get video.

-Mack