Swing Expansion

Let’s get you turned Upside Down! Don’t expect a typical lindy hop class. Expand your dancing skills through unexpected forms. Don’t forget to add the Pick ‘n’ Mix Track to your registration if you want to attend any Swing Expansion classes!

Briana Ashley Stuart – Stepping

This Stepping, technique, and choreography workshop immerses us in the rich and powerful culture of Stepping, an African-American form of body percussion. Steppers utilize their bodies as instruments to create intricate rhythms with one’s hands, feet and voice. They are both musicians and dancers combining movement, intensity, strength, and rhythm in performance to challenge the mind, body, and spirit. Strong emphasis will be placed on stepping technique, movement execution as a group, and the cultural expression of stepping. Overall, the workshop will emphasize moving and creating music together, and the importance of the emergence of stepping within African American history and culture.

Kelly Isaac – Tap Dance Introduction

This class will literally put some swing in your step. Tap dance is an African-American oral tradition that passes on not only vocabulary and phrasing but also a rich and vibrant cultural history. So many familiar swing steps are derived from tap dance, the notorious shim sham being a prime example. In class, your agility, endurance, and musicality will be pushed. Tap shoes and soft shoes are both welcome.

Helena Kanini Kiiru – Feeling Blue

We recognize Blues as a musical genre and a dance, but Blues is a feeling above all. Join this class if you’re ready to take part in a powerful creation of open and vulnerable space where Blues is expressed through movement. (Class is focused on solo movement, and no partner is required)

– Rhythm is our business

Jazz is a huge celebration of rhythm, so in this class, we’ll bring back rhythm into everything that we do. In our footwork, movement, gestures, and especially in the space of imagination and intention that comes before any movement action.

Samu & Ana – Partnered dance without roles

How do we dance with others while actively breaking the binary from within? In this class, Ana & Samu will work on understanding the dance as a fluent and evolving conversation between two bodies self-expressing to the music through groove, without talking about leading, following, switch dancing or backleading. They will approach our time together in class as an experience of the dance as an expressive and free-flowing experience, breaking out of the binary roles in the dance and allowing your partner dance to be focused on the individual experience with another dancer rather than the perpetuation of steps and connections that might constrict us to a specific role.

Roser & Marcos – Let’s switch roles with comfort and dynamism.

If you already know the basics of both roles, come to this class to learn and practice how to switch without breaking the flow of the dance. You will work on your conversation skills, learning to be a better listener, while compromising with your rhythm.