Sarah writes to say ‘What if I come to a Hot Ginger night and don’t know how to dance those swing moves?’. Well, the answer is, you can always just get a cocktail and stand there looking stunning in your vintage frock.

But no need to worry. There are always lots of swing dancers doing their bit on both of our bijou dance floors, but we love it that people just get up and do their own thing and sometimes even dance alone.

But if you want to learn how to rock it on the dance floor, there are two swing dances you can try…

Balboa

Hot Ginger are now heavily promoting this dance. We absolutely love it but no one was teaching it in Birmingham, so after a year of moaning about it, we decided to teach it ourselves! Stephen and Kerstin have been dancing Balboa for a few years now and have recently emerged as a great new teaching couple for this dance. You can see what it’s all about here, and if you like the look of it, look out for one of our all day workshops or our free taster classes which we sometimes put on before our Hot Ginger nights.

Then take advantage of our Non-Stop Balboa Dance Special. It’s an hour of non-stop Bal tunes for you to practice your steps to. You can play it at any time right here from this site.

Lindy Hop

The other swing dance you’ll see on the Hot Ginger dance floor is Lindy Hop. If you want to learn this, you should do what lots of other Hot Ginger regulars are doing and pop along to Frankie’s weekly Lindy Hop classes above the New Billesley pub in Moseley, Birmingham every Thursday evening (during school term times, pretty much). The Beginners’ class is at 7pm and teaches you some basic moves and footwork. It’s lots of fun and only costs £4 for the hour. There are also two other classes, for Improvers and Intermediates, and we find that after a few Beginners’ lessons most people quickly move up and do the first two lessons together (for £7).

Once you know some Lindy Hop you can take advantage of our Non-Stop Lindy Hop Special. It’s an hour of non-stop L:indy tunes for you to practice your steps to. You can play it at any time right here from this site

Other links

A great Facebook resource for Birmingham swing dancing is Becky’s Swing Birmingham group. They occasionally arrange one-off classes and intensive courses and it’s a good way to keep abreast of what social dances are happening in the West Midlands region.

Elsewhere in the Midlands, there’s AYD Balboa in Gloucester, Balboa Bunch in Cheltenham, and Leicester Lindy Hop.

If you fancy learning a few swing moves in London, the two that we know personally are the brilliant Swing Patrol (run by Scott Cupitt who was the mad Aussie swing dancing on the Trafalgar Square plinth last year) and The London Swing Cats, run by Robert and Claire Austin, the lovely people behind the Hepcats’ Holiday weekenders (which we go to every year).