I'm all about getting jiggy in everyday spaces.

I feel quite strongly that dance and teaching dance should be free. Not only because it's good for people and good plain old common sense to get more people dancing, because it makes for a nicer world, but also because it makes sense in terms of dance culture. Lindy hop and swing dances are revived dancers. On top of that, they're also vernacular dances. So to really truly get closer to actually reviving the original dance (not that that's actually possible, but let's pretend), we need to get closer to making the dance vernacular. That means taking it out of studios and dance schools and formal classes and dancer-run events with lots of rules and ettiquette, and putting it back into everyday life. That means doing dance and dance movement everyday in everday spaces. That means working on dance stuff with friends and family and even strangers in ordinary, everyday spaces. That means just getting used to moving and trying out new ways of moving in the company of other people, feeling comfortable with other people seeing something that a lot of westerners - Australians - think of as private, or embarassing or shameful. Man, can you believe that we feel like that? That so many of us are ashamed of the way we look and feel when we dance? That's just absolutely INSANE! How can we possibly move naturally if we're panicking about other people's opinions of us? My favourite dancers at night clubs have always been the people who go and just dance and don't give a shit about other people. Who are just there to get down. THAT is the shit.
So yeah, I'm all about getting jiggy in everyday spaces.

For me, with lindy hop, that means working on dance with my friends in my own home, in their homes, in all sorts of places. That also means combining dance stuff with everyday stuff like eating together, talking, gardening, working, whatever.
I actually feel, in regards to my own dancing, that I can never ever get enough dancing. That I just can't dance enough to get my dancing to the point where I've made up for so many years of not dancing. So I dance a lot. I dance in all sorts of ways. In our house we do silly dances for each other to make each other laugh: the just-woken-up dance. The dance-of-extreme-exitement. All sorts of dances. And I think these sorts of dances are the types of dances that help us get comfortable with our bodies and with other people seeing us move about, and really feeling the music (because that seems to be most people's worry: that people will laugh at them for really getting into the music and surrendering to it).

So yeah, i'm totally swing socialist. I think we should do our very best to supplement - or replace - formal classes with fun working-together sessions. I also think we should do more getting out and dancing to bands in melbourne (because that seems to be a big stumbling block for melbourne lindy hoppers). And I'm also quite keen on dancing at house parties.
Not just lindy hop or 'proper' swing dancing. All sorts of dancing. That's the shit.