Monday Swing is a weekly vintage swing dance practicum and social dance on Monday nights with DJ'ed music in a cozy NE PDX setting.

All ages! No partner needed!

7:00 - 8:00 Lesson — Beyond Conversational Lindy Hop w/ Mary and Ashley
8:00 - 10:00 Practicum & Social Dance

Lesson — $10
Dance — $10
BOTH — $15

Series title: Beyond Conversational Lindy Hop

In this class series, we’ll challenge dancers to structure their partnerships from a “Call and Response” framework grounded in reciprocity, full participation, and collective experiences. While we often refer to this framework as “conversational” Lindy Hop, our class series will focus on the dance partnership as we explore the cultural foundations of Lindy Hop, storytelling, and musicality.

Pre-reqs: Intermediate+; have an understanding of conversational lindy hop; know how to do a swing out

Individual class titles/labels

• Week 1: The Cultural Origins of [Conversational] Lindy Hop: Embracing the Artistry of “Call and Response”

  • “In her book Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, [Geneva] Smitherman describes this as ‘spontaneous verbal and nonverbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the speaker’s statements (or “calls”) are punctuated by expressions (“responses”) from the listener.’” - Laurel Frazier

• Week 2: Making Music More Than a Third Wheel in You Dance

  • "It's not the time of the metronome, but the pulse of the performance. It's not something you measure but something you feel... producing a tension, a stretch in time, that the audience can feel, and which, ideally, propels them out of their seats." — Thomas Basbøll, Inframethodology

• Week 3: Embracing Mistakes: Storytelling Through Dance

  • “Music, at its core, is a story of conflict and resolution. As in a novel, themes are introduced, something goes differently than planned, and eventually it all works itself out.” - Adam Longman Parker

• Week 4: Lindy Hop as A Collective Experience

  • "Were we only to discuss a single trope of Black Music that most fully encapsulates its aesthetics, Call & Response would be the one. Its ubiquity reflects an essential aspect of the tradition; Black Music is a collective experience, not a fixed object – and should be appreciated as such.”- Adam Longman Parker

  • "This form and activity of exchange is a signature communal action of almost all African peoples, where the aim is to realize full participation, thus forming a collective. The exchange is not dependent upon the qualities or vocal abilities of the collective’s members since the important thing is to achieve group cohesion, forming a community acquired through singing.” - Ibeth Karina Nava Urdaneta

__________________________________________________________________________________________>> What's a practicum and social dance?
We DJ music just like a regular social dance. You can come out and just dance like normal, or you can come planning to work on something: Ask for feedback, work on a move, play with variations, master a routine.

>> Have a specific question?
Experienced dancers and local teachers are available at practicum to help out with sticky spots.

>> Balboa? Shag? Solo? Learning swingouts?
Let the DJ know what you're working on if you have specific music requests!

This building is not physically accessible to enter. If you have accessibility concerns, please contact PLS.