Swing lesson 17 | Brunswick

(Monday nights at Bridie O’Rielly’s, Brunswick)

It seems it’s the season for Charleston as we round off this semester, and Brunswick joins the other two classes I go to in getting into Charleston. The good thing about last night was that we actually did Tandem rather than Jockey, so it was good to do something a little different.

From Tandem position, leads released left hands and spun follows with the right, returning to the normal position. From here we went into a 180 degree turn, but with the follows spinning one and a half times. Leads move the left hand over the left wrist of the follow, release the right hand and step around with the kick and double-kick to face the opposite direction. At the same time, follows are guided in a full turn plus a half turn on the double-kick, after which leads catch their hands back in Tandem position, but now facing the opposite direction to where we started.

The guy who taught the Swing Patrol teachers this move was called Fabrice, so the move was named after him. I must say that Fabrice turns are one of the more difficult ones for the beginners, so with that in mind, most of the follows did really well for their first time learning it, as well as those who were learning Swing for the very first time.