Frequently Asked Questions

Comfort is priority in shoe choice, sneakers are absolutely fine to start with. It's all about the soles. To spare your joints, they shouldn't have too much grip. Some dancers eventually choose to get dance shoes that are suede or hard leather on the soles. If you think dance shoes are beyond your budget, take your favourite dancing shoes and get the cobbler to sole them with suede or hard leather. You can dance in sturdy heels (never spiky or stilettos!). But flat shoes remain popular for a reason. Posture and movement in balboa are slightly different, you may find it easier to dance balboa in heels than in lindy hop. But flat shoes are always fine.

In choreography, jams and competitions, advanced or professional dancers will often do acrobatic air-steps (or aerials) but not during a regular social dance. It takes quite the time to practise with safety techniques in place. Air steps are for dancers that train together and trust each other.

A partner is not essential to take part in lessons as dancers rotate partners in class regularly. The best way to improve your social dancing and to have more fun in the class, is to take advantage of the opportunity to rotate and dance with lots of different people.

In many situations like workshops or taster classes, it's necessary to choose a role, either lead or follow. You pick whatever role you like to learn, skipping gender based assumptions of dance roles.

The courses at the local swing dance school Swing in Rhythm follow the 'ELEF' model. This stands for 'Everybody Leads, Everybody Follows', which means that during the courses you get to learn both the lead role and the follow role. That will give you an understanding of both roles and improves your dancing.

We do love live swing music and do get quite the mails with bands that offer their services. Unfortunately we have to work on a shoestring and can only have live music in exceptional cases. That means if we are in a position of organising larger events with a minimum of guaranteed attendance or working in cooperations with external funding.