Why I’m in love with West Coast Swing
Dance has been a journey for me. I have tried different dance styles throughout my life. I found that dance very often felt gendered. As a genderqueer person, it was therefore a struggle to find a place where I felt comfortable to dance freely. Now I have found a dance style and community that I love and I want to share this with you!
Social in it’s core
West Coast Swing (WCS) is a very social dance by it’s improvisational nature. In classes we rotate between partners and on parties people ask each other to dance, also if they don’t know each other. Every dance is a new experiment where you discover what you feel in the music and what you can create with this partner. (Don’t worry – we’ll start with the basics 😉 )
I started dancing WCS in 2019, together with my life partner. Since 2022, I’ve increasingly been going to international events. The events can bring you lots of places and where you meet other WCS enthusiasts with whom you get to share dancing! Also here you can learn from the best West Coast Swing teachers of the world 🤓
Gender roles
The WCS community has grown to be more and more progressive about the role division within the dance. Traditionally, men would be leading and women would be following. The followers role has gotten more autonomous over the years. Now you really create the dance together as a team.
In the past decade there has been a clear increase in the variety of genders within the roles, as well as an increase of people who dance in both roles. Several of the Champion WCS dancers have been vocal about de-gendering the dance and are making the effort to teach in an inclusive way. (Shout-out to Léo Lorenzo, Jesse Lopez and Ariel Peck.)
Switching and ‘stealing’
Lastly, there is a growing switch community, based on constantly switching roles within one dance. In a switch dance I feel we are building our extra dynamic dance together in a – dare I say – anarchist way. Add ‘stealing’ to the mix and we’re doing non-hierarchical non-monogamy in dance form. Perfect, right?! And it’s very cute – see?