Written by Dylan Martin

The DalKing's Swing Dance Society has been doing its best to bring life to the local dance scene for over ten years, and with great success. Its consistent membership of approximately 60-80 people has kept it alive and thriving. And though it’s a student society of Dalhousie and King's University, its mission is to make swing dancing accessible to everyone in Halifax. Gaby, a local dance instructor for the society, was interviewed for her thoughts on what dancing is really all about and why everyone should give it a chance.

GABY: This dance stems from the African-American culture of the 1930s . . . and it's still really about connecting with everyone in the community in a way that is so much further above what a lot of people now think of connecting with community . . . So it's this type of intimacy that really is — it goes through families, it goes through friends, it goes through your whole community. Social dancing in any way is really a way to do that, to connect with people in a way that we don't connect with them in any other way.

DYLAN: People really need that, too. Especially after two years of isolation.

G: It's one of those things where there's a lot of science around, like, people need to be hugged every day. You need a certain amount of minutes worth of hugs every day . . . And there is a point when you dance where, all of a sudden, you honestly feel like you're psychic. And you get to this point after you've done this enough — and it doesn't have to be with one person; this is with everybody — where you stop, and you think: Without actually telling me anything, this person has been communicating with me for three-and-half minutes. They've been telling me things and I've been responding to them and telling them things, and we've not said a single thing to each other for three-and-half minutes. We've only done it with our bodies, our energy, our movement . . . And that feeling is something you literally can't get anywhere else.

D: What would you say to someone who's never danced before? They don't know how, they're nervous about starting, they don't know what it's all about. They have that, kind of, trepidation or caution. What would you tell them?

G: Just show up. I mean, we know. That's who we want. That's who we love, is people who have never really tried this before who are just looking to try something new and break out of their comfort zone. Our introductory stuff is built for that. We're not expecting anybody to come in with any knowledge on anything. And we hope that they will find a love and a joy of it here.

The Lindy Hop, one of the most popular forms of swing dance, is great both for its skill ceiling and accessibility. The foundations of this dance are easy enough for a novice yet infallible for a professional dancer. It's also the focal point of many of DalKing's Swing's classes, with Lindy Hop 1 and Lindy Hop 2 giving people the tools to confidently swing-dance within weeks. However, one mistake many newcomers make is to look for online examples. A quick Google search will be nothing short of intimidating and a poor representation of what a beginner’s dance in Lindy Hop looks like.

GABY: If you look up Lindy Hop on YouTube . . . you're going to get professionals doing competitions, and you're going to go, Oh, my God. I can't do that. Well, they've been doing it for decades. Literally decades. But, really, my biggest thing is this is a very easy — I mean, not for everybody, but we try to make this as safe, as cushiony a landing spot as you jump out of your comfort zone. This is also something that I love about swing dancing: I think more than a lot of other social dances, at any level of experience, you can have a really good time. Like, you can learn for 20 minutes, and that's enough experience to have a really good experience for a whole night and to try things and to learn things, and you're having just as much fun as somebody who's been doing this for ten years or more.

D: Dancing also just makes people happy. Like, maybe that's just an obvious thing to say, but it's really important. The people here at swing have smiles on their faces.

G: Absolutely. I mean, swing dancing for me when I was in my undergrad was my stress relief. Like, in the middle of midterms, that's when I had to go dancing on a Saturday night, because I was so stressed. And being out with my friends and being able to really just move my body and get the energy and joy of the music and the joy and the energy of everybody around me, it was my biggest de-stressor.

D: That's how the music feels, too. That's the swing feel.

G: Exactly, yeah. Swing music is really meant to feel joyful, and so we dance really joyfully.

Impressively, DalKing's Swing is not only great for newcomers but the veterans as well. Staple annual events such as the Seaside Shimmy sees even out-of-province dancers visit and join to be a part of the big event. In the summer, lively dance socials are hosted on the Halifax Waterfront. And from roughly spring to fall, more dance socials are hosted at Pacifico, a classy restaurant in downtown Halifax that frequently boasts a live jazz band (stylishly named “Canary and the LoveCatz”). All of these events are thrilling and catered towards people of all levels of experience.

DYLAN: Can we run through the logistics of what DalKing's Swing does [with classes]? How much they cost, when they run, how long they run, et cetera.

GABY: Yep. So we run classes starting in September, and then [again] six weeks into the semester. And then we start them in January and run them again six weeks into January. So we have six weeks' worth of classes at a time, and these classes start from the bottom up, so no experience necessary. For students of any university, [it's] only $22.50 [total] for six weeks of classes. You cannot get cheaper classes anywhere else in the city. We'll teach you how to swing dance with absolutely no experience. [And] you don't need to bring someone else . . . We will find you people to dance with, we promise.

D: For the person who's still not sold, do they have anything to lose by giving it a try?

G: Absolutely nothing. Yeah, like, you lose half an hour of your life, maybe. You know? I don't know many people who come in and try it and don't like it, so you'd be in the minority. But yeah, you don't lose anything by trying.

Sometimes we’re missing something from our lives and we know what that something is. But other times . . . Well, we may have no idea what it is until we've found it. (Or in this case, danced it.) For the many of us adjusting to life after two years of isolation, that missing thing could be the art of social dance. With Lindy Hop being as beginner friendly as it is and with classes at Dalhousie being as affordable as they come, there's no reason not to give it a try. After all, who’s to say it won’t transform you in the way it has for the many of us who live for it?

DalKing's Swing: Breathing Life into Dance

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