As someone who started lindy hop in high school, began a swing club (and organized workshops and taught the weekly lessons), and who for some time now has been in the 'adult world', I feel like I might be able have some perspective on this issue.

The scene where I started dancing 9 years ago was young, in terms of people and how long it had been around (Asheville, NC). Most people were college students or fresh out of college. Those who weren't were older contra dancers, which is a different can of worms entirely! At 17, I was the youngest person in the scene. There was absolutely no east coast swing, and no aeriels. It was straight up lindy hop, at least as much as was possible for 2001. Our isolated scene didn't have that normal college dance crap where people dance badly and throw each other around, so I was lucky to learn in such an environment.

When I went to college in Greensboro, NC, many people (primarily the organizers and their minions) within local swing scene were not so nice to me, or the others who soon began dancing. Their behavior toward us ranged from jealous (those who couldn't manage a swingout), to rude, to borderline malicious. It was NOT a nice environment to be in, and we were certainly not welcome. That is why I started up a college club, to create an environment where we could focus on lindy hop (the local scene was mainly people in their 30's to 60's who did arm yanky ECS). So, in the area, it was us, the college students, who were the 'serious lindy hoppers'. There were some students who were also at Guilford College who had started doing performancy ECS (as in, no lead or follow and entirely signal based), and wanted nothing to do with us since we wouldn't do ECS or throw each other around in a dangerous manner. Which was fine with me. If they wanted to dislocate their shoulders and potentially crack their heads open, I wasn't going to be associated with that.

If we would have done more of the former, and not straight up lindy hop (and charleston and balboa), we would have probably had a bigger club. But, since we were more old school, we had a relatively small core but of great dancers, and we had some really kickass workshops.

We didn't mingle so much with non-college students because the people who were over the age of 30 were mean to us. We were obviously not welcome at 'their' dances, so we banded together so that we could have some simblance of a good time, and be able to lindy hop.

After college, well, I haven't lived in places with dance scenes so much. And haven't had the energy to start scenes from scratch.

I think my high school/college dance experience wasn't the norm, because it was always more lindy focused than the non student scenes in those areas. However, I found that when you want to get younger folks to dance, it helps to be a younger person. If you can find a youngster to help recruit people and teach, that is ideal. They respond well to discounted student rates, free food, and after parties. They also (initially) often like dancing to music that seasoned lindy hoppers generally turn their noses up at. The key is to find something that swings that is still is kind of modern, isn't too fast, and has a clear beat. Another thing- if you talk down to a college student, you've lost them. They are usually trying really hard to become adults, or at least to not be a kid anymore, and they don't want to be treated like a child (even if they are acting like one).

Most college students won't be interested. They have their studies, friends, and other extra curriculars. If they are already in the 'ECS group' they are unlikely to change.

The key is to find freshmen in college at the beginning of their first term, or at the beginning of the second term at the latest. They are still trying to find their place, and after this point their schedules will be forever full. I never got anyone seriously interested after this point. They just get too busy. So basically, right NOW is the time to get them. Often at the beginning of semesters there are club fairs, or something similar, which is a good way to recruit people, or at least build up a mailing list that some people will eventually respond to.

It ain't easy, and college kids are definately a bit different from the general population. Hopefully this helps! Really, the most important thing is don't treat them like they are immature idiots, but welcome them as equals. They might surprise you.

Alain had blogged a while back that high school students tend to be shy towards their partner while dancing. I'm not a swing dance instructor, but my suspicion is that you're "teaching calculus before algebra", and not taking into account the need for teaching basic 6-count steps first. High schoolers and college students are generally not going to relate well to Charleston movements, that happens naturally later on in their 20s, so keeping it to simple 6-count swing probably would work best.

Another trick DJs have told me is that with the high school and early college set, to emphasize common 3-3 1/2 minute rock 'n' roll songs from the 50's and early 60's that they have heard before. (One very easy song to dance to, that everybody's heard, is Elvis' All Shook Up, for example.) They've never heard of Jimmie Lunceford or Erskine Hawkins before so they're not going to be able to immediately relate to that music. And it's also fun for newbies to dance to songs that they've heard before on the radio or Internet.

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spawned all of our amazing street dances (swing, hip hop, breaking) makes it hard for kids in a certain age bracket to have (IMO) the optimal social dance experience.

Be careful, a lot of what is called "dancing" is really just "gyrating". For example, in a nightclub where people are shaking back and forth to loud music--that is not dancing even though they may call it that--dancing involves a transfer of energy between partners, and your average high schoolers at a high school dance (as well as some of those amazing street "dances" that you refer to) are not dancing but just gyrating. When you're teaching (real) dancing, you're teaching applied physics, a concept which may be new for high schoolers or early college students.

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martial arts instructors love to bitch about how curricula need to be adjusted for Americans to give them an initial sense of accomplishment.

Another problem may be the anti-American references in your writing as well as references to us in the third person. I don't know if you're a foreigner who just needs to be shown the door or an American who's lives off whatever anti-American blogs. But I get the impression that you don't like Americans that much, which may also be a factor concerning your lack of success in teaching us.

I... what?? "High schoolers and college students are generally not going to relate well to Charleston movements, that happens naturally later on in their 20s"???? Young people LOVE Charleston! It's high energy and they get to kick! Similarly, I find getting them to use kicksteps/jigwalks tends to appeal to them.

I'm not even going to get into the 6 vs 8 discussion. I've expressed my opinion elsewhere on this forum and I don't believe it has any special relevance to age.

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You need to get the underarm turn done real well before you can move on to bigger and better things, and sad experience has shown me you need at least 3 months of that before you can progress further.

Considering that in 3 months I taught a group of high school kids who had never done any sort of partner dancing before the Shim Sham, basic social dancing lead and follow, the California routine (minus an aerial, which they performed in front of the entire school (by their choice), and took them out social dancing where they were able to dance just fine with people they had never seen before, I'm going to disagree with your sad experience being any sort of real evidence that people should take into account.

I think Glen's way of thinking epitomizes the problem and, sadly, in many ways represents the conventional wisdom in the Lindy Hop world. Most people start with rock steps and triple steps and simple passes and then maybe get to Lindy Charleston in a few months. In a recent related thread, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post as a college student griping about Lindy Hop; as with all satire, however, there was a kernel of truth in it. I'm glad this thread has arisen because it continues an important subject that has implications for the survival of Lindy, preventing it from returning to a cryogenic state. Here are some thoughts related to teaching Lindy Hop in a college setting:

(1) Don't be afraid to teach a fun move like the Pretzel (not the windmill). By pretzel, I mean a simple right-side pass where the leader first lifts his right hand over his head followed by his left hand; the pretzel is typically unraveled in the next 6 count. I remember once dancing at Frim Fram in NYC and after the dance a gaggle of college students surrounded me and wanted to know about a certain move I did. I didn't know which one they were talking about for awhile but eventually zeroed in on the pretzel. These were students who were dancing Lindy Hop; they were not dancing The Swing.

(2) Don't be afraid to teach some simple lifts like the Frog Jump (stationary or send-out). Again it adds variety and spice - and FUN - to the dance. Air steps ARE an important part of Lindy's heritage and taking the posture that you're gonnna avoid them altogether with limber college students seems wrong-headed to me.

(3) I do agree somewhat with Glen about the music. I would follow this simple rule in selecting music: the songs need to be or have been popular hits (e.g., Take the A Train) which resonate with NON-dancers as well as dancers. The non-dancer aspect means they will have catchy melodies in addition to a danceable beat. There a lot of DJs who will never play Bill Haley music. Are you kidding me?

(4) Do a group jazz step in one the classes. There are oodles of fun steps to choose from. Again, the group jazz stepping will add some variety and FUN to the club.

(5) Now we get to maybe the most important piece: the meat of what to teach and when. It boggles my mind that rock step/triple steps form the heart of initial instruction. What is more Lindy Hop than Lindy Charleston (not 1920s charleston)? And Glen, I really don't understand where you're getting that people have trouble initially learning Lindy Charleston. Consider:

• It is done to 8 counts reflecting the phrasing of the music. Even if dancers know nothing about musical phrasing, they will intuitively feel it.
• It matches the rhythmic pulse of the music. Students will be dancing on the & counts (small skips) without even knowing it.
• It is a more natural and easier movement than triple-stepping
• Big ditto to what Bryn said about jig kicks

For all of the above reasons, you feel like you're dancing to the music. The sooner you get students to feel that way, the better. I bet if you taught students a few Charleston sequences (e.g., side-by-side followed by standard transition to hand-to-hand) and then polled them on which they liked better - the Charleston or simple 6 count moves) - they would overwhelmingly favor Charleston.

(6) Show them videos of people dancing Lindy Hop at the highest level (e.g., ULHS 2006 fast dance final or a Nathalie-Yuval performance or Helzapoppin' clip). Don't dwell too much on the verbal history of the dance. What are the most interesting things about its history? Here a few that come to mind: - It is a uniquely American dance. Waltz, foxtrot, tango, Latin dances, all originated in Europe or South/Central America. Lindy Hop sprung from our soil. - It is the grandfather of so many dances including in many ways HipHop - It helped bridge the racial gap by having white and black people dancing at least in the same room to the same music and therefore sharing a common and very human experience

Hey, thanks everyone for the comments. Lots of food for thought to chew on.

I should correct the record about our local scene and student body. My post was inspired by an isolated, yet particularly abrasive, incident over the weekend which crystallized years of internal kvetching.

Most non-Lindy Hop swing dancers here are highly receptive to learning Lindy Hop and are fun to work with. However, they don't ever attend on-campus Lindy Hop events (likely because they're preoccupied with their own social groups), hence will never be able to learn Lindy Hop. The Ithaca scene is doing pretty well these days; we've picked up many experienced dancers and made great headway in merging the different local factions.

It almost seems that, to apply economics metaphors, there was an over-correction in the number of college + grad school aged dancers after the Lindy crash of the early 2000s which led to a few lean years. The pipeline may have recovered now that clubs around the country have learned how to operate sustainably in the absence of free pop culture advertising.

@Glen

Thanks for the blog pointer.

My engineer mind likes to decompose Lindy Hop into a combination of physics, control theory, and music. But, thanks to evolution, most people don't need to consciously think about movement this way. Your average athlete would flunk a physics test, but boy can they apply physics to kicking ass at their sport.

As for the "anti-American references"; they were meant to be tongue-in-cheek, thought provoking caricatures. Admittedly, I probably have different standards, having resided in Communistic enclaves for the past decade. FWIW, I'm a naturalized Chinese-American who has lived in the US since early childhood; this perspective makes me keenly interested in observing cultural differences.

@Fiddletree

Great comments, as always.

Have you noticed any differences in whether other cultures place such a high emphasis on giving new dancers a sense of accomplishment as we do? I wonder if that's just an American thing or a universal human preference.

How do the typical European scenes compare in terms of # of Lindy Hoppers and availability of classes? All I know is that Gothenburg is ridiculously huge (with a huge Lindy Hopper population and local lessons available at pretty respectable levels), while Cambridge corresponds roughly to a large US college town. I'm curious because I think that a rational dancer would take classes if that is a cost-effective way to improve given their life situation.

I think one of the reason that American swing dancers stop taking classes is that, in most scenes, it's easy to max out on what's available locally. By that, I mean that the local scene may have neither enough level-appropriate classes, nor enough quality social dancing to passively sustain continued improvement. In many scenes, advancing past the low advanced level requires devoting significant energy to traveling and setting up a practice regimen; I would guess that traveling is significantly harder in the US given its geography.

That's not always the optimal life balance decision. For me, the question is, "Should I work out a practice regimen and travel like crazy, or should I work out some experiments & proofs and schmooze professionally so that I can finish my dissertation."

I'm pretty guilty of being lazy and preferring the easy passive route to leveling up in dance. When I was in Seattle last summer, I decided to just dance socially six nights per week and take a few private lessons (skipping the more challenging alternative of humiliation as a relative n00b in the many fine blues classes available there). Without having to do any real work, I was able to break me past a plateau that I was stuck on for over a year, while requiring less energy expenditure.

@NoNameJiver

That was a pretty sweet impersonation :-)

To quote a relevant anecdote from my pal:

Kid: "You look like you took a class, we were able to figure this out on our own!" * nearly yanks follows shoulder out, trips two couples, and walks all over the music * My pal: "That is highly evident"

@MadMabley

Thanks for the kind words. Love your thread about know-it-all "The Swingers"; much useful advice.

Ithaca? Some of the best lindy hoppers in our midst today were once teenagers/young adults dancing in Ithaca.

For what it's worth to your cultural question, my experience in Canada and England is no different from what you see in the US. I've danced/taught in a few other countries, but not for a long enough period to be able to comment.

I think that a lot of why you have college kids not mixing so much with the general dance population has to do primarily with two causes (and excuse me if I write funky right now, I am drinking fancy champagne out of a bottle, haha)... 1)They are shy, geeky, and in a new and potentially uncomfortable situation. Dancing within their own people is a way to stay comfortable 2) The local dance scene doesn't try to include them, which perpetuates #1. It might range from not asking them to dance much to being flat out mean. I experienced both of those when I was a college dancer, but when I traveled further afield, I found people to usually be very kind and welcoming. The students I taught that I dragged out to dances were usually to shy to ask anyone to dance, so I would always encourage local dancers to ask them to dance.

If the community as a whole makes an effort to be more inclusive, both on the dance floor and socially, the college kids are going to break out of their shells more.

I'll write more later regarding what I've seen in other countries. I think whoever it was above got it right though; people in the US often outgrow the dance instructors, which is why they stop taking classes a lot of the time. The reason that happens less in Europe is because most European dance scenes are in big cities (Barcelona, London, Stockholm, etc), and they usually have kickass teachers to learn from. There aren't small scenes peppering the continent so much, as in the US. Still, there is more of a culture of taking classes, and actively learning, in Europe. I think it can actually be too much, at times. Like, to be able to go to some major workshops you have to list the other international workshops (and levels) you've been to in the past 6 months or whatnot, before they let you in. I've been dancing a long time, but lately haven't had the time or opportunity to go to workshops, so that makes me look bad. There is also a lot of 'what teachers did you learn from?', whereas I haven't heard that much in the US. I am someone who picked up most of I know from social dancing with private lessons from random great dancers to round it out, so my response to that is 'errrr....'

As someone who learns a lot more quickly by watching things on the dance floor, and trying them out, and having occasional private lessons (as opposed to taking weekly classes), the US system did fine by me. But I must say, European dancers often kick major ass.

I like this discussion :)

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(1) They seem to have a hard time socializing with the general population. (2) They strike me as overly confident given their skill level. (3) They strike me as intellectually incomplete. [...]

You just described every teenager on the planet. :)

Thank you for your commendation, and I don't know you, but I think I might just love you. Come drink fancy alcohol out of their bottles with me before lunch! It is certainly fun.

I think I forgot my fancy pants at home in Italy, so I have to drink my champagne like the good ol' redneck I should be! ran out of moonshine...

I think that's a good idea (although I am not the right person to impliment this because I am not so awesome at technology).

However, I don't think the problem is getting people, it is keeping them. Keeping young people is simple. You befriend them, and get them to make swing dancing their social group. If it is their social circle, they will stay. If not, they will wander away when the next fun thing comes along. This is something simple everyone can do. Invite the youngsters out after the dance to waffle house or wherever you go. If you are having a cookout, invite them. If you are having a house dance party, invite them. If they have events/dance classes, show up and bring your friends to show your support. Talk to them and get to know them and embrace them into the dance community.

That is absolutely the only way to keep them once you get them going to their first class/dance.

For the past day it's been percolating in my mind that I had viewed a swing video collage like the one I proposed but I have not been able to place it. Relief at last! I finally recalled that it was on the Swing Remix site. Here's an example from that site which kind of has the "look and feel" I'm after. And go to the :55 through :60 portion of this video I referenced earlier to view a clip more focused on young people dancing the Lindy.

Also Fiddletree, you raise an interesting question and one I've been thinking about for the last few days while these threads have been active: Do we do a better job at (1) recruiting or (2) retaining young people? I am completely clueless on this one and not even sure how to assess it. With respect to recruiting, do more college students join the swing club initially than other comparable clubs whatever that means? With respect to retention, how does the turnover rate compare to that of other clubs? For example, I think ballroom has a wider more entrenched infrastructure so we have to work that much harder to attract people to Lindy Hop even though the dance is better suited to young people.