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Have you ever been out social dancing and wondered what the partner you’re dancing with is thinking? Toronto Swing Dance instructors, Phil Bourassa and Mandi Gould, are going to let you in on some of their thoughts. Each has addressed a note to the many follows and leads that they dance with.

DEAR FOLLOWS,

A lot of people who enter the wonderful world of Lindy Hop catch the Lindy bug and want to improve their dancing as fast as they can. When I started, all I wanted to be was “awesome, like right now!” For eager follows who put themselves in this category the best piece of advice I can give you is to relax and have fun. Yes, this statement might seem like common sense but believe me, on many occasions I’ve seen a look of such raw intensity and concentration on the faces of the follows I’m dancing with. While it’s beneficial to focus on something you’ve learnt in class, too much thinking can be counter-productive and make the experience a lot less enjoyable for you and your partner.

From a learning perspective, try focusing on only one thing at a time while you dance. Your brain can more easily handle one item, allowing you to focus on both your partner and the music, which are just as important if not more important. For roughly three minutes you and your partner are telling a unique story together, based on your relationship with the music and your relationship with each other. If one of you isn’t at least trying to enjoy that physical and emotional connection, the experience becomes less enjoyable for both dancers. And from my personal experience, learning new moves or concepts is facilitated when you’re enjoying yourself, rather than taking things too seriously and getting frustrated. Furthermore, while in a positive state of mind, you’ll find that you’re more creative and will discover new things about your dancing. No matter how many moves you learn in class or from your peers, I believe the most impressive ones are those born out of personal inspiration.

Key points for Followers to remember: relax, drop the weight of your arm, let your body respond to the momentum and shape of the movements that the Leader creates for you, think less and enjoy more! Have fun!

DEAR LEADS,

Shall we dance? Lindy Hop is such a terrific dance because you have the opportunity to dance with all sorts of people; big, small, short, tall, the very young and the young at heart. You might not even learn the person’s name before you’re sweeping them off their feet, or being swept off yourself! Once that music starts you get to scoop up that follower in your arms and it’s your responsibility and privilege to take care of them for the duration of about 3 to 4 minutes depending on the song.

The King of Lindy Hop himself, Mr. Frankie Manning, always used to teach the men that for that one song, the follower in front of you is your Queen. The more that you can remove yourself from the distractions of everyday life and step into that moment and truly take care of the Queen at the end of your left arm, the better the dance will be. Take care of her, create direction for her, pay attention to what she does, ensure that she doesn’t crash, make the dance as special as possible and appreciate your time with her! This is a frame of mind more than anything else, and you can assume that role by opening your awareness and enjoying the moment.

That said, it’s not only about enjoying your partner and taking care of her. While that’s very important, as is listening to the music, the leader has an added responsibility and one that takes some consideration off of the dance floor as well as on. Lindy Hop is a historic dance, and it’s made up of classic Lindy Hop moves. While Lindy Hop isn’t a rigid dance and is extremely encouraging of creativity and personal expression, it’s also important that the leader learns, respects and incorporates a certain quota of recognizable, classic Lindy Hop repertoire.

Learning Lindy Hop is like learning a language. And you can’t learn a new language without ingraining a certain amount of the basic vocabulary. The dance is the same way. However, it’s the leader who must always start the conversation. For the follower to really be able to participate in the dance, she must recognize the language that you’re speaking. If you don’t offer her a certain amount of basic language, she isn’t able to contribute to the conversation. That doesn’t mean that you need to dozens of moves. On the contrary! You can start out with just 3 to 6 dance moves and do so much with them! Swingout from closed, Swingout, Circle… From there, you can decorate the dance with anything else that comes to mind, but never forget your partner or those roots. Good music + a follow to make your queen + a handful of basic moves = the perfect recipe! It’s kind of like Gershwin wrote: I’ve got Swingouts, I’ve got music, I’ve got my Gal, who could ask for anything more? 🙂

Key points for Leaders to remember: relax, your partner is your Queen so take care of her and enjoy her, create direction for her with classic Lindy Hop vocabulary, it only takes a few basic moves to speak the language of Lindy Hop, have fun!

And just for fun, here’s a link to the Rules of Social Dance that’s worth having a look at. Happy dancing!

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Lindy Hop in Korea is a force to be reckoned with. Wow. Last night I had a pretty spectacular night of social dancing and it was just a normal Monday night of Lindy Hop in Seoul. Well, maybe a normal Monday night for one of the biggest social swing dancing scenes in the world, but as someone who has traveled extensively for Lindy Hop, I was pretty impressed. I would rank the quality of the dancing that I had last night as akin to the level of swing dancing in Herrang, an exchange or a special event dance weekend.

There are several Lindy Hop clubs in Seoul. Monday nights, The Big Apple seemed to be the place to go so that’s where Zhenya Demchenko and myself went to check out. We’re here teaching dance workshops for the second time. The first time, we taught solo Vintage Jazz and Charleston workshops as well as special workshops for the Rock n’ Roll dance community here. At that time, we had a chance to dance at a different Lindy Hop club called the Sky Bar. But as we were performing that night I didn’t really have a chance to relax and really get into the social dancing.

This year, we’re back to teach more workshops, all for the Rock n’ Roll community. But on our nights off, we’ve been able to go out for some Lindy Hop, strictly for fun. And WHAT FUN! On Thursday we went dancing at the Boogie Woogie club and I had an absolute blast. Since we were caucasion, we obviously stuck out from the moment that we arrived, and some people recognized us from our previous workshops there. The Lindy Hop community isn’t really connected to the Rock n’ Roll community that’s hosting us, so our attendance was quite a surprise. I danced the first couple of songs with Zhenya, and then after that I was bombarded with a slew of dozens of Korean men, all of them excellent leaders. Every one of them was of at least a high intermediate level ranging right up to really very advanced. What was interesting was that the variety of styles, technique, connection and repertoire; they were really pretty diverse. Overall, the dancers are obviously very influenced by their workshops with the Silver Shadows and obsessive YouTube watching, especially Skye and Todd, but compared to my observations here twelve months ago, they’ve really moved on from the copy cat stage and are creating something fresh here.

After having so much fun on Thursday at Boogie Woogie, I wasn’t sure that I’d be lucky enough to have a second great dance night so soon after. At the beginning of the night we avoided the “Cat’s Coner” for at the front of the club (despite a couple of the girls from my workshops trying to push me in that direction) because neither Zhenya or myself wanted to put ourselves on display. We just wanted to dance and have a good time, not put on a show. He and I danced a bit more discreetly, first with each other and then with some of our students in the far corner. Before long we were discovered (we weren’t hiding, just laying low) and a stream of leaders and followers came over to dance with us.

Well, the great dance night of social dancing I had on Thursday was repeated and outdone.  What a terrific time! I think that I liked the DJing on Thursday night a tiny bit better than on Monday (the Thursday night DJ was really my style) but it was still really great. I should mention that one of the first songs that was played when we arrived was actually Alex Pangman‘s band from Toronto which was very cool and a total surprise.

We danced danced danced until we couldn’t dance anymore. Then we took a little break to chit chat, but before long we started all over again and danced some more. Zhenya and I ended up closing the place out, dancing with the last one or two people with terrific dances right up until the very last song. The quality of the wooden dance floor both at The Big Apple and Boogie Woogie were also terrific. Just the perfect kind of wood with enough slide but not too fast. I could honestly have kept going for another hour or more, and for people who know me these days, you’ll know that the dancing MUST have been good for me to stay up so late after my bed time!

With all this said and done, I would consider Seoul to be one of the ultimate Lindy Hop vacation spots. Seoul is a really great place to visit anyway, last year I did all of the tourist stuff with the exception of the DMZ (I’m going tomorrow) and we had a great time. Combine that with the incredible social dancing and I’d say that this is one of the best places in the world for a Lindy Hopper to visit.

Go swing dancing in Korea!