Take swing dance lessons

They start beginning classes at the Y

I know if I were doing this it would be one way to experience more play and joy. My heart would be freer, I happier and therefore more able to deal with stressful situations better because I was actually exercising my right to have fun and be playful as an adult.

I said earlier I wanted to take swing lessons, but lindy is pretty darn similar. Kim and I are loving the class through the UW Experimental College taught by Travis Whetman and Lorraine. Kim and I had seen lindy once before at the Century Ballroom, but with only a 1/2 hour intro to it, we really didn’t get it. However, even that one night of just trying it helped a lot, because there’s these weird triple steps all over that just take a lot of getting used to. Kim said I’m probably the best lead in the class, which is something I’m not used to at all. However, that’s not saying much, especially as we’ve gone out dancing recently and watched some really good dancers that just blow me away. It’s like watching a gap commercial with people jitterbugging all over and jumping and being thrown.

Anyway, it seems like learning to lead is really hard to start, and not all that fun and just awkward for the first few dance classes, but once you get some basic leading down, it applies all over the place and makes classes really fun.

I took swing dance lessons back during the Gap-inspired swing craze of 1998. It was fun, but it wasn’t worth the money because I never had any occasion to use it. Even when I would go to swing shows, in order to dance I would need to make sure that I had one of my fellow swing dancing friends with me, and even more, it would have to be one who knew how to lead, because I never did that part.

My husband and I took lessons in preparation for our wedding. It’s awesome fun, though we never got all that good at it. A word of caution, however: it’s really hard to swing dance in a wedding gown.