I've been swing dancing, and specifically lindy hopping, for just over a decade. I went out regularly when I was in grad school, but then I got a real job and suddenly felt all kinds of guilty not spending all my time marking or planning exciting things for my students to do. After a while, I just got out of the habit of going out.
Part of my problem was that after the regular Wednesday nights at Barcode stopped, the scene sort of fractured. We tried to find a new "regular" night -- you can dance pretty much every night of the week in Toronto, but Wednesday was the night you could definitely expect to see more than a few people you knew. For the past few years when I have gone out, I didn't know if my lindy friends would be there. I didn't really know that many people anymore, "and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball-room."
Anyway, last year I didn't have any of that guilt hanging over me, and I went out a lot more. My natural shyness wore off as I started to see some "new" people more often, and I had old friends to introduce me. I didn't want to fall back into old, hermit-like habits when I went back to work this year, so I signed up for a choreography class with Bees' Knees Dance. It's been kicking my butt for the past few months.
All that build-up to say that we performed our first routine at Swing Out to Victory in Hamilton last Saturday. It was a lot of fun. I even attempted a victory roll.
Video credit: Arthur Lulu
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