SwingFest 2025 - Schedule

Showing: Bands, DJs & dancing

Dance styles

Here's a useful guide to swing & related styles...

Lindy hop

Also known as "Jitterbug" or "Jive", Lindy hop was born in the dance halls of late 1920s Harlem, New York City, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. As hot jazz music gave way to swing in the 1930s, Lindy hop evolved rapidly, especially at the legendary Savoy Ballroom, where the opportunity for the best dancers to entertain the tourists helped it become both a social dance craze and an exciting performance style! The music is happy and the dance is immense fun - a chance to relax and forget about other things in life!

Whether you've just started out with Lindy hop or are well-and-truly hooked, SwingFest is for you!

Solo Jazz

Jazz steps are an intrinsic part of Lindy hop - and great fun whilst providing a healthy challenge, whatever your level! Steps like the Suzie Q, Boogie, Apple Jacks and Shorty George are essential knowledge for Lindy hoppers - but there are many many more.

Challenge yourself and improve your dancing skills!

Balboa

Balboa is a swing dance that originated in Southern California during the 1920s (though it may have started as early as 1915) and enjoyed huge popularity during the 1930s and 1940s. Balboa is a dance characterized by its close embrace and full body connection, emphasising rhythmic weight shifts and lead-follow partnership.

Balboa is a popular style today - have a go now, and get connected!

Charleston

Lindy hop has many of its roots in the Charleston dance craze of the 1920s - the Roaring Twenties, also known as the Jazz Age, and the era of the flapper. Many steps characteristic of Lindy hop are clearly derived from the earlier dance. With the move from hot jazz to swing music, dancers changed from a choppy, up-and-down style to a more fluid, horizontal style with a gentle bounce, so the steps can look very different.

Related to the Charleston, but not the same, is the Black Bottom, which also became popular in the 1920s. It was danced solo or by couples. Originating among African Americans in the rural South, the black bottom was adopted by mainstream American culture and soon became a national craze.

Look out for elements of the Charleston and the Black Bottom in some of the workshops!

Tap dance

Tap dance is an indigenous American dance genre that evolved over a period of some three hundred years. Initially a fusion of British and West African musical and step-dance traditions in America, tap emerged in the southern United States in the 1700s.

Tap dancing can be done for show, or just for the personal challenge and enjoyment!

Shim Sham

The Shim Sham is a fun routine made up of simple jazz steps, generally done in a line, but often also in a circle. Originally the Shim Sham (Shimmy) was a tap dance routine choreographed by Leonard Reed - which was adopted universally by stage performers so that they could do a whole company encore at the end of a show rather than each act do individual encores. The Lindy hoppers of the 1930s and 40s took the dance and made it their own.

The Shim Sham steps are fundamental to both tap and jazz dance - look out for some elements of the Shim Sham in the various workshops!

Strolls

Strolls are solo dances done in lines - with a particular twist. Every so often the stroll changes direction (usually a quarter-turn) and repeats. This can catch you out - especially as some the time you might be at the "front".

Strolls are great fun - have a go!