Students Swing for Fun

Looking for some new moves, other than “the sprinkler” and “the dougie”? Every Wednesday and Friday from 7-9p.m., the Auburn University Swing Dance Association gives free swing dance lessons at the Jan Dempsey Arts Center off of East Drake Avenue. 

If you’ve never taken a dance class before, don’t worry. The lessons are geared towards beginners, so a lot of the people that attend are just starting out too.   

Sully Madewell, AUSDA President, says he didn’t know how to dance until he moved to Auburn. “A lot of my friends back home did it so when I moved up here I got really into it.” Now he is one of the swing dance instructors.   

If you are a more advanced dancer, there is always something new to learn. For only two hours twice a week, you can learn some new movies, meet new friends and even get in a workout. For the first hour, the instructors teach different variations of swing, such as East Coast swing and Lindy Hop. “The Lindy Hope is faster and more complicated,” Madewell, a sophomore in aerospace engineering, says, “but it’s fun to learn.”

Next, you take your newly-acquired dance skills to the floor. For the second hour, all of the time revolves around dancing. Since there are normally about 30 to 40 people at the lessons, the instructors encourage partner swapping.

“We have a lot of people come and we swap partners quite a bit,” Madewell says. “That way, you can meet a lot of people that dance differently.” 

So one might wonder, what do you wear to a swing dance lesson? A poodle skirt or zoot suit? According to the AUSDA website, anything from jeans and a T-shirt to slacks and a button-up are acceptable. They do ask if ladies wear a skirt to wear shorts underneath. 

Madewell says they are working on a training program for new dance instructors, but for the time being are relying on anyone who knows how to dance. Some of their instructors have been dancing for their whole lives and some, such as Madewell, have only been dancing a couple of years. 

This November, the AUSDA will be hosting a weekend-long swing workshop. It will consist of one dance Friday night, classes and dances on Saturday and possibly another dance on Sunday.

For more information on the November workshop, or how you can get involved with AUSDA, go to http://www.auburn.edu/student_info/swing//index.php. The AUSDA lessons are open for students as well as the general public.