Swing Kids
Thursday, August 30, 2007
A friend had to drag Virginia Volzke to a new swing dancing society in Emporia last year. Injured leg and all.
“I was in a knee brace at the time,” remembered Volzke as other dancers stepped and spun around the floor of Emporia State University’s Colonial Ballroom on Wednesday night. “But she said ‘You can still dance. If you can walk and ride horses, you can dance.’”
Now she’s hooked. And she’s got a lot of company. The ESU Swing Society, which started its second season last week, now has more than 40 people showing up each Wednesday to swing, swing, swing.
That’s about double the attendance the group had when it first started. And maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. The old Big Band dance style underwent a revival in the 1990s thanks to groups like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and now television shows like “Dancing With the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” have brought it and other ballroom dances back into the spotlight.
“I don’t know if it’s having another revival, but it’s building on the last one,” said ESU sophomore Kris Swearingen, the society’s president. “It’s a lot more out in the open.”
Swearingen discovered swing dancing in high school, from a choreographer who directed him in a school production of “West Side Story.” For a while, he was dancing three to four times a week in Kansas City. But when he came to Emporia as a freshman, he couldn’t find anything.
“I came down here, scoured all through this city and there was nothing swing-like anywhere,” he said.
Eventually he and a friend, Wendy Casebier, decided that if they couldn’t find a swing group, they’d start their own. Wednesdays would be “swing night,” with basic lessons at 7 p.m. and an open dance floor from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. to try out the moves.
The group first met at MyPlace Too. Jill Ferrell, now the society’s vice-president, was one of the people in that first class.
“I had been on the dance team my junior and senior year of high school,” she said. “But I had never done any swing dancing or any kind of partner dancing.”
It didn’t take long for her to realize she liked it. In traditional swing dancing, the man leads and the woman responds, a partnership she hadn’t encountered before on the dance floor.
“You have a partner and you’re supposed to follow his lead,” Ferrell said . “I just kind of fell in love with it. ... It was fun and I wanted to learn more. I still do.”
“The thing that hooked me was just how it looked and felt,” Swearingen said. “Even if you have some trouble, you still feel like you were doing amazing.. It’s a very comfortable atmosphere.”
It’s a dance style with a lot of levels (see sidebar). Swearingen and Ferrell teach East Coast Swing, a smooth, basic style based on a three-step pattern and a circular motion.
But both prefer West Coast Swing, where partners move together in a straight line, moving back and forth along a narrow axis. Among other things, West Coast is a very flexible style and can be danced to almost any kind of music from Big Band to hip-hop.
“I prefer West Coast, but I’m not better at West Coast,” Ferrell said. “East Coast I think is easier, but it’s also what I learned first.”
Some society members, meanwhile, gravitate to the more athletic forms such as jive or the Lindy hop, high-tempo dances with plenty of flashy moves.
For the first couple of weeks, Swearingen was the only male in a class full of women. (“That made for interesting times,” he said.). But after a couple of months, the gender balance started to become a little more even. And the group kept going.
One night, Swearingen realized the dance floor at MySpace Too was full. So were the benches where people waited to dance. So were the tables. The Swing Society had a hit.
Some time afterward, the group moved on campus and into the Memorial Union’s ballroom. But nobody has to be a student to join. Nobody needs to bring a partner. All that’s needed is a little confidence, a little energy and a willingness to learn.
“It’s fun,” said April Robbs, who just started this year after her roommate brought her to a session. “It’s different. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
And Volzke? She’s now a regular, and also goes to Kansas City on a regular basis to do more ballroom dancing.
“It makes me happy,” she said. “I’m not very good at freestyle, so I love it when someone like Doug (Doug Bray, a student at Johnson County Community College) or Kris leads me across the floor.”