Swing lesson 9 | Werribee

(Wednesday nights at the Werribee Kindergarden Community room, Werribee)

And ya don’t stop…
Swing-dancing is a drug. It’s addictive, it’s fun, and you just want to keep doing it more and more without stopping. It’s like an awesome drug that doesn’t have a come-down except for returning to normal-life that doesn’t include dancing, and it gets you fit, grooving and pulling off cool moves. Right now I would really rather be dancing than doing anything else. I just want to start a Swing lesson that never ends, learning more and more moves and practicing them endlessly without stopping!

This actually is the most continuous and repeating fun I’ve ever had in my life, other than being in love and listening to music…
and eating really great food…
and talking for hours and hours with my intimate friends…
Alright, it’s one of the things that gives me the most fun I’ve ever had, but seriously, it really is that good.

Tonight we continued our 6-beat, tripple-step journey with a swing-out. After normal 6-beat phrases in closed position, follows actually front-replace meaning girls and guys are moving in two separate directions on beats one and two, then we fling the follow out, giving a firm push with our right hands and pulling with our left, while the follow does her first tripple-step out into her own right-arm. She then uses her second tripple-step on beats five and six to turn around and face the lead in open position. From here we went into the sugar-pushes we learnt last week, and on the second phrase of sugar-pushes, we did a block-turn. The leads pull follows towards them as per normal, then raise the left hand on beat three. On beat five (the start of the second tripple-step), we push with our left hand and guide the follows’ bodies around with our right, eventually releasing it while they spin, which brings us back to open position.
Very nice indeed.

Afterwards we got to dance around a bit to some groovy tunes, and Celia our teacher came and danced with me which was awesome fun! She also briefly taught me a bit of styling after a turn-around which involves both dancers leaning out on the tension of our joined hands.
Extra-cool.

Celia and Daniel are two awesome teachers and we got the chance to have another chat with them before we left. Werribee is a smaller group, but tonight we were actually perfectly matched with leads and follows with seven couples dancing on the floor, eight if you include Celia and Daniel. It’s a great vibe and we always have a lot of floor-space to practice on, with almost all of the follows dancing competently and with style. As Celia taught me the lean on beats five and six, a few dots started to join in my head as to how this will eventually start looking like Lindy, and that was one of the coolest things about it.

Just can’t get enough swing!