This past Saturday, Bold City Swing hosted its first workshop called the “Swing Ouch Clinic” in Jacksonville, Florida. Regional instructors Alex Morrison and Roxie Smith joined us at All About Ballroom and taught us a lot of great stuff. I was fortunate enough to attend and have a great time, so here are some of the highlights from that awesome day.
The workshop started a little after 11 am and ran until about 4 pm, with an hour break for lunch around 1 pm. Alex and Roxie covered a lot of swing dance fundamentals with the goal of improving our dancing and keeping everyone safe while doing some intense movements; additionally, they walked us through a number of exercises that gradually built up to a full swingout, hence the name of the workshop. Although the skill levels of the participants ranged from beginner to advanced, the workshop contained useful concepts for everyone to keep in mind and served as a great reminder for those who needed it (mostly me). For general swing dancing, I think it was the most helpful workshop I’ve attended and I feel like everything made more sense to me in this one than any other one.
An evening dance started a few hours after the workshop ended, running from 7 pm until 10 pm. Almost everyone who went to the workshop came back that night to dance, eat snacks, and have fun, and a few people came to the dance even though they didn’t go to the workshop. Alex and Roxie came back and were available to dance or help anyone who wanted to work on something from earlier in the day. After the dance ended, a few of us stuck around and reset everything until we were ready to leave for the night. I drove home feeling tired from all the dancing but also feeling great about how everything went. I’m looking forward to continue playing around with what I learned as well as attending the next Bold City Swing workshop. This one was a great start and a preview of many more wonderful things to come out of the Jacksonville swing dance scene.