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 & Musicality

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.

– Communication with Musicians

Knowing how to communicate and coordinate with musicians before performances and knowing how to organise your ideas during a performance with live music.

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.

Ana Maeso Arana & Samuel Gaudo Belarre – 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 Ros & Marcos Leon- 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.

Vassiliki Papadopoulou & Vassia Panayiotou – Dancers that inspire us

A social solo jazz dance class.

Tyedric Hill – Groove and Isolation

Take this class if you want to dive deeper into connecting your body to the music! Expect to explore, create and get weird!

Vassia Panayiotou & Sep Vermeersch – ‘All in’ how to commit to have more fun

During an exchange, Vassia & Sep explored what are the dance features they would love to see more on the dance floor. So in this class, we’ll explore how we can be more free, expressive, present, keep the beat and express whatever we feel related to our partner and the music. We’ll take ‘risks’ and find a balance with the responsibilities we perceive in jazz dancing. All in, let’s do this.

Belo Fanck – African Dance

This class will about body expression mixing different rhythms and dance styles such as Jazz, Funk, Kuduro, Kwaito, Samba…. Open for all levels, the idea is to share a good energy and to live in the present without worries.

Edwige Adjomale – Forget the steps, enjoy the dance

A class for those who think they don’t have enough steps to go by and improvise. During this class, we will try to not be in our heads so much but to let go, have fun, connect with the music, our bodies and each other.

Stephen Atemie & Helena Kanini Kiiru – Movin’ and Groovin

Working on finding rhythms in the music and using that to inspire movement and play both for ourselves and in partnered social dancing.

Vassiliki Papadopoulou & Alexandros Velentzas – Reborn through the Roots

Reborn through the roots is a Lindy-Hop based class to reconsider our ideas and reconnect with ourselves, to explore shiny new beginnings, your partner, and the music. We will discover new tools and approaches to jazz dance through its very roots. Expand your swing with this option in the Pick’n’Mix.