How is it social?

Come alone, come with a friend, or come with a whole crew in tow – anybody can join and find lots of people to dance and hang out with. The lindy hop scene is warm and welcoming, with lots of people from different walks of life.

In classes, we change partners regularly, so you automatically get to know lots of new people – frequently in class you’ll hear the teachers say “high-five and rotate!”, then everybody raises their hands to give each other a celebratory high-five and hop over to the next person to have a dance and to get to know a new person.

And at social dances you might realize that you actually already know lots of people, because you spent time dancing together in class. Plus, with such a welcoming scene you don’t have to stop there – as a lindy hopper you can walk up to anyone and ask for a dance. In fact this is a big part of the lindy hop scene: we like to dance with lots of different people during a dance night. The atmosphere is very casual so it’s easy to ask someone or take up an invitation; people at a swing dance party are there to dance – no strings attached. No matter your dance experience – from a beginner who just started learning to the most experienced teachers, and no matter your gender – anyone can have fun together on the social dance floor. 

How is it empowering?

Even though we have classic partner-dance concepts where there is a leader and a follower, the relationship is close to 50/50.

We each have the power to decide what movements we want to do and how we want to do them, while still being fully connected to each other. It’s really a choice that you can express in the dance.

Sometimes you might feel you want to be perfectly synchronized and match one another to the smallest micro-movements, and you can derive tremendous pleasure from feeling so connected to another person.

And sometimes you might feel the music differently, or you simply want to explore your own creativity a bit more, and you can create and communicate a much more open and independent dance.

Very often the dance falls somewhere in between – a great balance of connection and freedom, both dancers having an influence of how the dance is expressed and where it’s going.

How is it adaptive?

In classes you learn the basic techniques to communicate with your partner.  Part of what we teach is how to adapt to different situations within the dance – different lead-follow communications skills to use for different partnerships, skills to match your dance to the music, and to adapt to the dance floor around you.

Another great adaptive aspect of this dance is that there are so many different ways to express yourself. Lindy Hop can be soft and easy, or it can be high power and energetic.  Do you want to have a relaxed soft dance while chatting a bit, or do you want to turn this into a workout and go for extreme movements that will make you sweat?  It’s up to you!