Swing lesson 7 | The Fun Pit

(Every second Friday at The Fun Pit, Richmond)

What a fantastic night!
One of the best things about Fun Pit on Fridays is that we actually break away from 6-beat and do Charleston. Not only are we focussing on Charleston, but tandem Charleston at that! Taught by the magnificent Brad and Kate, this week saw the lead bring the right hand over the follow’s head to settle in the side-by-side position with hands connected in hand-shake holds. From here we learnt Dorothies; after our first back-replace (or rock-step), instead of swinging our left legs forward in a normal kick, we swing it around over our right, then back-replace the right and swing it back over our left.
Very cool indeed.

The other really cool thing about Fun Pit is that Level 1s are the last class to dance before the social, and I think this is intentional to get us newbies up and dancing with people who have a lot to teach us. A really cool young lady named Cat who we regularly Swing with at Brunswick happily took the floor with each one of our crew to help us practice our level 1 moves. Cat is a great level 2 dancer and a wonderful person to be with, so dancing with her really was fun! One of our crew, Asha, also came last night for her second ever official Swing lesson, but I’ve been teaching her pretty much every move I’ve been taught during the week when we see each-other, so tonight on the social floor I taught her what we learnt at Werribee, albeit not always with tripple-steps as the music was often too fast for our level of skill! Still though, Asha learns hell-fast, and by the third and fourth song, we were happily swinging away with our basic 6-beat moves, and it actually looked like dancing!
Brilliant!