I have been dancing since I started college in the fall of 1999.  My first exposure to formal dancing was when I started going to Friday Night Swing club at Wesleyan University, where I attend school.  I started with East Coast Swing, and then joined a Lindy Hop performance group, where we learned Savoy Style Lindy Hop.  Over spring break 2001, a friend dragged me to a dance lesson at the Portsmouth Ball room, where I had my introduction to Ballroom Dancing and Latin Dancing.  Besides all of these, there are many other types of dancing out there.  I wouldn't call myself a great dancer, but I do know that I love dancing, and enjoy especially social dancing where the give and take of the leader/follower relationship is present.

East Coast Swing
East coast swing is a relatively easy dance to start out with.  It is done on a six count, so when dancing, one is not often starting on the first beat of the measure.  While sometimes this may seem less than desirable, I find that it allows the dancers to focus less on the music, and more on feeling the lead and how the dance progresses.  After gaining the basic steps and knowledge of leading or following, it is exciting to progress to other types of swing dancing. Back to Top.

Savoy Style Lindy Hop
Lindy Hop is a more advanced type of swing dancing, done with a basic pattern of eight beats.  This gives the leader more play with combining the dance gracefully with the music.  Savoy style was the style first danced in the Savoy Ballroom, and is different than Hollywood Style Lindy Hop.  Savoy style is a more mellow and rounded dance that is very connected with the floor, and Hollywood style, the style used for filming dancing in Hollywood, is more showy, with exaggerated movements, and fake outs that make a movement seem like it has more motion than it does in truth. Back to Top.

Traditional Ballroom
Ballroom dancing is the term I use for the non Latin partner dances such as waltz, fox trot, hustle, peabody, and other more anglophile dances such as these.  When done well, these dances look very graceful and fluid to me, with the exception of the peabody, which is a dance that has the potential to remind me of marionettes.  Traditional ballroom dances are fun, but on a bit lower key than... Back to Top.

Latin Dances
This is where ballroom gets good.  These dances are danced, for the most part, to either upbeat or slightly syncopated music, and have a lot of hip motion!  Hip swivels and quick turns make the meringue, salsa, rumba and cha-cha very visually appealing dances that look like they'd be hard to learn.  The best part is that they're not that hard to learn!  The most important thing to remember about these dances is to have fun, and don't worry if you're doing it "right."
Latin dance also has its more sedate or passionate dances, such as the rumba, bolero and the tango.  Didn't I already mention the rumba?  Well, in fact, yes.  When danced to a slower beat, the rumba can be a smoother and more expressive dance rather than a quick paced showy one.  The bolero, from what I can understand, is like a rumba, except the quick steps and the slow steps are exchanged.  Sorry if that doesn't make much sense, I'm still trying to understand it myself.  And there is the tango.  There are two main types of Tango, Chilean and Argentine.  Chilean is closer to the dance that is danced in international competitions, and Argentine tango is the dance of passion.  The Argentine tango came from the dock workers in the Argentinean sea ports.  Unlike many other ballroom dances, it is not a dance that evolved in the upper-class.  Rather, it was first danced by people of the lower classes, who did not know how to dance formal steps, but rather just let the music dictate their movements.  Back to Top.

Other Dances
There are other types of dances that I am interested in learning, such as flamenco and capoera, which is the Brazilian fighting dance.  I may get around to it some day, but until then, I have more than enough to keep me hopping.  And until then, there's still nothing like taking to the dance floor and just letting the music take me, whether at a club, a party or just by myself!