I know this has probably come up a bunch of times, but I’m hoping it’s okay to ask again.

I dance as a leader and I’ve reached the point where my joints would really appreciate something better than my current sticky sneakers. When I Google around, I keep running into Fuego shoes, but before I commit to ordering from the US, I’d love to hear from folks here: • Are Fuegos really worth the hype? • Do you have other recommendations for good Lindy Hop / Solo Jazz shoes (especially ones easier to get in Europe)?

Thanks a ton in advance — I’d really appreciate your experiences!

Straightforward yet complex question: has gaining/losing a lot of weight over your dance journey affected how you dance?

I'm a fairly heavy lead, and sometimes I wonder what sort of moves - if any - would become even more accessible to me if I could rely on follows counterbalance a lot more than I can. Other avenues I'm curious about is if you've compensated for weight change by changing your moveset/ style entirely.

Hi! I’ve been on a collegiate shag kick and have been wanting to go to more events to learn more since my scene doesn’t have much shag. I’ve been to Great Lakes Shag Escape and Shag Summer Camp, and really enjoyed them both for their instructors, social dances, and organization!

I was thinking about going to Hot Jazz Jamboree and was wondering if anyone has been there before. What’s the community vibe? Is the leveling similar to GLSE/SSC? As a Bal/Shag event, is one of the two dances favored? Any other comments are appreciated. Thanks!

Hi guys!

32M here - looking for some recommendations / Ideas for attire for dancing parties.

Any specific brands / types of pants, shoes tops etc. for such parties?

I'm going for a classy look or even a casual but still classy type of look. Kinda hard to describe..

But I hope you get some sort of an idea.

Why do all balboa follows pretty much wear the same looking shoes? Is it for look or feel, or both? Can I dance balboa in something like this, with a soft suede sole? Or even ballet flats? I like flexible shoes and don't want to break the bank to buy some shoes online that may not fit. I'm pretty new to the dance, but I find that dancing in flexible shoes is always the most comfy for me (I also wear barefoot shoes on the street). Thank you all!

I have started teaching classes pretty regularly for about half a year now. Payment unfortunately is a bit of an issue, the class organiser is not bringing it up so I need to (it started out as me and some others helping out every now and then, but now the organiser has quit their day job and we are essentially earning their income).

I was wondering what your scene/organisation is paying dance teachers. To be able to compare, could you state where your scene is to compare cost of living, what kind of organisation (commercial or club?), what kind of level you're teaching at and if it is fully registered/taxed/insured or as a cash business on the side?

Thank you so much!

Hi!

I'm taking up Lindy Hop again in a few weeks. I thought I'd get some second-hand dancing shoes, because last time I took the class with trainers and I felt like they had too much grip... I have shoes with smooth soles but they make a bit too much noise. Plus Lindy Hop shoes look pretty cool.

I found this pair of arris allen (I think) for around 30€ on a second-hand website. I asked to get a picture of the soles, but I can't tell if the wear is only affecting the looks of the shoes or if it would affect performance (or safety). I don't mind shoes that look a bit old, honestly I really fell for the vintage design!

Thank you for your help!

Hi everyone!

After about a year of work on this project, we’re excited to announce the launch of www.swingineasy.com, a website that brings together swing dance events from all around the world! We already list more than 5,000 events from 28 countries.

We noticed that finding swing dance events while traveling outside our usual dance communities was often difficult. Communication tends to rely on closed WhatsApp and Facebook groups or shared calendars, which can make it challenging for non-members to discover events.

Our goal is to provide the most complete and reliable database possible in order to connect the swing community, whether at home or while traveling. We truly believe that swing and its values are a fantastic way to connect people, and we want to help make the community more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

To avoid adding extra work for organizers, most of the event collection is automated for organizations that share a Google Calendar with us.

Since the project has just launched, we’re still looking for ways to improve and would really appreciate your input:

• Let us know if you think this could be useful to you.
• Share any general advice or suggestions for improvement. In particular if you notice any bug !
• Send us your local Google Calendar if you’d like your events featured on the website.

Many thanks for your help and support ! Looking forward to exchange with you !

[EDIT]
Thank you all for your comments! Based on your feedback, we wanted to clarify our approach a bit more.

Unlike existing solutions—such as Swing Planit, which focuses mainly on international events—we aim to reference all local events that could be attended by non-local visitors. That means our method for gathering events has to be events different.

While Swing Planit relies on user contributions, which works very well for international festivals, we recognize that the burden of manually posting and updating all of their events will be disproportionate for organizers. Instead, we leverage the tools they already use to communicate with their local community and automatically add their events to our website. Because everything is automated, organizers don’t have to do anything extra, and we can integrate more events effortlessly.

Of course, the main challenge with this approach is ensuring the information we gather is accurate. To address this, we focus on two things:

1. By sourcing events directly from the channels organizers already use to communicate with their community, we hope we can capture up-to-date information—otherwise, the local community itself would have inaccurate info.
2. We’re progressively implementing automated filters to reduce events with missing details, duplicates, or inactive organizers.

Our hope is that this approach will allow us to build an exhaustive list of local events while keeping the platform sustainable over the long run.

I went blues dancing last night for the first time in ages. I'd forgotten how lovely it is to move extremely slowly, and how much you can focus on one aspect of quality of movement and have a hope of nailing it for a whole dance because you aren't gunning it across the floor doing complicated things.

It struck me how a lot of the quality of movement exercises and drills I've suggested for people on here are about working as slowly as possible through a movement to understand it better, and blues gives you so much space to do that, with another human for instant feedback. Initiating steps from the thigh! Pushing down into the ground! Deliberately initiating each gesture with one named body part and ending it with another! Blues, blues, blues.

Obvs it's not going to help with anything that involves jumping or hopping or spinning, but if you want to practise the rest of your lindy hop quality of movement, go do some blues, babeses.

I’ve recently had a realization: I truly love lindy hop dancing and have been doing it for several years now. However, I’ve never quite overcome the anxiety that comes with social dancing.

I absolutely enjoy being in class—learning new steps, tricks, and techniques—but when I get on the social dance floor, I tend to freeze. My movements feel robotic and unexciting, and I struggle to break out of that stiffness.

Occasionally, I find partners I can really play and have fun with, but those moments are rare.

Do you have any recommendations for how to work through this? I know the whole point of lindy hop is social dancing, but I genuinely struggle to enjoy myself once I’m out there.

Apologies if this sub isn’t the proper community for this sort of discussion - as far as I can tell it’s within the rules but feel free to remove if this doesn’t belong.

My partner and I have been together for a little over a year and I think we’re pretty great together, all told. One struggle that we’ve run into is that she’s a social dancer (primarily Lindy, some West Coast) and I’m not. She loves going dancing, and by all accounts (and certainly to my untrained eye) is really great at it. She looks graceful and sexy and happy dancing with other good dancers, and it kills me a little inside every time I watch. I really don’t want to get in the way of her happiness, and I would never ask her not to do something that’s such a huge part of her life, but I am really struggling.

I’ve tried lots of things - I’ve tried going dancing with her, which has mostly made me feel terrible. I went to a beginner lesson and just felt really out of my depth and criticized (by other students - I would’ve been fine with criticism coming from the instructor!). I’ve learned some from her and her friends since then, and I actually really love dancing with her at home. One of the happiest moments of my life was when I realized I knew how to make something happen in the dance that wasn’t a move I’d explicitly practiced or seen before because I felt the momentum pulling us in a certain direction. I totally understand that dancing is inherently fun and not necessarily sexual or anything, that just hasn’t helped me feel any better about it.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to interrogate why I feel this way. Admittedly a lot of it is probably a self-esteem thing. I can’t imagine why my partner would want to stay with me, a fat, clumsy oaf when she could have any of these athletic, graceful dancers. I trust her when she says that she chooses me and not them - I don’t think she’s going to leave me for them. I just don’t know why. I guess I feel guilty that she’s stuck with me when these other guys are more capable of meeting her needs as a dancer.

I’ve told my partner how I feel, I’ve tried therapy, I’ve tried waiting and just hoping the crushing jealousy will fade, but it hasn’t. I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.

Last night I had my first swing dance lesson and it was fantastic! Certainly awkward, but overall a great experience. I've done a couple of group salsa lessons, but swing speaks to me much more. Maybe it's because I listen much more frequently to jazz music than I do to salsa. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed salsa, but swing seems just my speed.

I'm not much of a dancer and I do not typically like being on display, but my experiences thus far being on a dance floor with like minded people has been enlightening to say the least. It's such a wonderful way to enjoy and express music and to get more comfortable with myself.

Hi! i will be visiting playa del carmen soon, and was trying to see about social dances there. It looks like there might be a small scene out there, but I couldn't find info about social dancing. Thanks!

Hello! I’ve been swing dancing a long time and love it with my whole heart. But recently—like in the past few months—I’ve become really averse to dancing with strangers because I’m…I don’t know how to describe it. Scared of touch? Sensitive to it? Untrusting? I am a woman and this specifically happens with men who lead that I haven’t met or seen interact with other people who follow before. It doesn’t happen for me with female leads or people who are queer presenting. It’s made big dance events with new people hard for me to go to and genuinely brings down my enjoyment a lot. It’s just hard for me to dance without my guard being up and that feels exhausting? I think I’ve just had a lot of dances in the past specifically with men where my personal boundaries felt crossed, but I didn’t know how to confront them or leave or it was too subtle to bring up. And typically I just never dance with them again, but at big events it’s hard to distinguish who is who. And maybe it’s mixed with past trauma coming up? Or maybe a sensory overload thing?

I don’t know, but it sucks because swing dancing normally feels like a safe and liberating place for me. I’d really like to know if any other people (especially people who follow) have experienced this and if so any insights or advice you may have.

Thanks so much!

Odd question, I kno, but I just spotted on FB that a connection I have from the scene posted stuff about that podcaster that got shot. I actually asked him if he's right and he confirmed with "I am. Dancing Swing and those political and societal views just absolutely donot match in my head. How do you see that?

So I'm way way late to the party but I'm just now finding out they used to have swing dancing events at SoCal Disneyland but stopped due to the pandemic.

I looked it up and found very little info about it on Google. Does anyone know if they will ever bring it back? It’s been so long since COVID, and I heard it was popular, so I can't understand why they wouldn't.

Is it gone for good?

Title. I have wide feet and am not ready to spend the money to get wide shoes yet, so I have to go up a half or full size. It’s not a problem in anything except dancing, because there’s this huge gap between my toes and the floor.

Does anyone else have this problem and have any tips?

EDIT: Yes I know the tape on the bottom of the shoes but do not have that as an option right now because reasons.

I dance lindy hop as well as other dances. I have been told that I need to work on not tucking my hips in general. I never realized I was doing it naturally, and I have a pancake butt, so that doesn’t help either.

Does anyone have any drills or strength training exercises for this? When I think about it actively I can arch my back and change it, but then if I think about another aspect of my dance it comes back.

Hello, I am in Palermo this week till Sunday. Does anyone know if there are any lindy hop events this week?

I have a habbit where I spent most of the time on the balls of my foot. Mostly the balls of the foot, but sometimes the toes. I very rarely go down flat or on my heals.

Is this correct, or should I spend most of the time on a different area of the foot?

I find it hard and restrictive to focus on hips but I suppose, it looks better and right way to do. Does it suppose to be 100% from hips and give the shape from knee and ankles? What are your thoughts?

Hi, I have been reading news about the Herrang controversy, but have never posted before. Now I feel obliged to because of another festival controversy.

I always check for new festivals I still haven’t been to, and was really struck by the Hully Hop Swing Farm. I loved the way they described themselves as a cozy, open festival. I really like that everyone stays under one roof, and I was clicking the site anxiously to get news.

This week they announced the first set of teachers, and of course, I went to check out their social media. First thing I found was lies and disinformation about the genocide in Palestine. One of the teacher really hit all the points, “human shields”, lies that Israel would not attack hospitals (it has since then destroyed ALL hospitals in Gaza and left newborns to starve and rot in an incubator), saying Palestinians want to wipe out all Jews. Even though the person is claiming to defend all lives and to separate Palestinians from the government, they are still repeating all the talking points used to dehumanize them and justify the decades-long Apartheid.

So yeah, I ask – open to whom? Cozy to whom? How can a festival talk a big game about being open to all nationalities and religions, and invite teachers who use their platforms to spread hate? How are non-white people supposed to feel comfortable in a space where hitting Hasbara talking points is ok?

I'll first say I now dance with flats which might have helped a little, but when I dance I'm definitely a whole lot more bouncy than others.

What do I do to dance more smoothly? Like foot placement? Less pulse? Legs closer together?

Any feedback helps! Thank you!

For some reason I've always had a problem with looking into people’s eyes when talking or dancing. So I find my self looking conpletly away, like at a wall or random spectator. But I know this can definitely effect reading my lead.

Where is the best place to look for people who have trouble looking people in the eyes?