I follow the slides with love. There are no dance associations in Turkey who know this type of dance as well as you do. There are several dance schools. they are also focused on money. I learn a lot from your videos by following you.
Hello, my name is Odysseus Bailer and NYC. I am blues, lindy hop dancer, instructor, DJ and Black American Cultural lecture. I want to first say, great job on the video and really helping to break down what you are teaching based on how you understand it in your own body. There is one thing that stood out that I would encourage rephrasing. You both kept saying things like “self-expression is an important element in Lindy hop.”, “creativity is another element of lindy hop.”, etc. Creativity and self-expression are important values, or as you have said elements, of Black American culture that is expressed through lindy hop and jazz music. By saying something is an “element of lindy hop”, even though that phrasing is quite common and personally i find extremely annoying, it gives off the impression that the music and dance is separate from the culture to which it originated and started from. Thank you for taking the time to read this message and keep teaching and keep being better moving forward.
Hi Odysseus, thanks so much for your thoughtful comment! I gotta say, you are 100% on the nose. I've (Kris, the follower in the video) done a lot of thinking about this over the past while, and if I were filming it today I'd like to think I would've done a much better job of this, and communicate better how much I value not only the great dancers who created lindy hop but the entirety of Black culture that made it what it is. I don't know if or when we'll be able to do more filming and do a better job with this in our videos, but there are definitely a lot of things along this line that I will do differently next time. Meanwhile I can assure you that I'm trying hard to do better in every live class I do. Thanks again for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time.
I'm just about to turn 76. I am not a dancer by any means. What I seem to see here are lessons in rhythm. Something strange to me. But after watching, I tried it. Surprise!!! Not ready for ballroom yet, but it worked.😎🕺(kinda)
@@joshblack2362 Hey Josh, no I wasn't born a dude, I'm a cis-gendered lesbian woman. Not sure why that's relevant for you, but there you go. Also by the way my name's spelled Kris, not Chris :)
I took this class before I went to my first ever Lindy Hop Party. Even though I had never danced with a partner before, I could still follow along fairly well because I had aalready learned some steps from this video. Thank you!
I have casually danced (ballroom) for decades. This is an EXCELLENT intro to dance because it doesn't lock a person into patterns - the death-knell of dancing - a prescription for failure. I was taught "rules-based" when it is better to be taught "feel-based" - like this video. Good job.
Thanks so much! That idea, of dancing "feel-based" is I agree really good for any dance. And I think it's especially important for anything connected to jazz :)
24:17 This is a brilliant online teaching methodology. I’m following the male teacher, solo. Just watching for his improvised body language tells me when to move my foot into the backstep/rockstep. In addition, I’m watching this at .75 speed, perfect for this beginner. Than you teachers for so kindly sharing your time and skills with the world.
My fiancé and I signed up for the online pass and all of the classes have been so awesome so far! We can't recommend this channel and their classes enough if someone wants to learn swing dancing :)
Oh boy, this has been so much fun. Thank you. You are great teachers. I am trying to do it with my husband but sometimes it is just me. It gives me a lot of joy and makes me smile when I am practicing, and I need to smile more so this is the perfect remedy for that. Thank you so much. I look forward to the next lessons.
Simply wonderful! This video help me integrate all the pieces together for the learning of swing dance in the last few months, i.e., rhythm, steps, partnership, and fun in artistic expressions. Thank you.
You two are wonderful! Your positive energy is incredible, I had such a great time learning this is a cold, rainy day in Argentina. Thank you and greetings!!!
Guys, you both are simply too good. I am from India and a big fan of Lindy hop. In your first lesson, you have focussed on the very basic fundamentals of the Lindy hop which is the Rhythm, Pulse, Groove, timing and partner feel, understanding/coordination etc. All the intermediate & advanced steps can come in later once a learner has the basics in place. You both have structured it very very well. By far the best beginners tutorial I have come across. Thank you so very much. I learnt soo much in a single session.
Thank you so much Xavier! I'm really glad you liked it. We have the rest of the course, plus a full program including more advanced material, and our live-sessions community, over at swingstep.tv ;)
Wow! It is amazing the way you are teaching the firsts steps! Me and my wife are having fun with Lindy Hop and this video helps a lot! Regards from Brazil :)
Thanks Pedro, I'm so glad you enjoyed the video. If you'd like more from us you can find full courses over at swingstep.com. Either way, I hope you and your wife keep having fun dancing Lindy Hop together!
Perfect. I started training Lindy hop last year and my trainers immediately started with triple step. I soon noticed that some songs were too fast for triplstep. Your lessons have helped me reduce the number of steps and play even when the song is at a faster rhythm. Your classes are great, understandable, clear. Thank you. I'm looking forward to watching the second part of your training. Greetings from Serbia, Dejan
Hey Dejan, thank you for your comment, we are glad you could find this video useful :) Currently we are not planning to open Class 2 for free, as this is a product we offer on our online platform - swingstep.tv . There is some info in the video description as well ;) By the way, if you say you already know triple steps, you might want to take a look at Swing2 or Skills&Drills courses - their first classes are available for free as well. And if you want something that has no triple steps, check out Swing 5 (no preview available though). Also, in the nearest future we will post some short snippets here from different courses, we hope you will be inspired by them and will also find them useful (please, consider subscribing to not miss them :) ) Take care and keep swingin'!
You guys are really good. I went to a few classes and tried this dance and had a hard time ...but your approach to learn the basics is excellent...much easier to learn your way...Thanks !!
No idea why RU-vid decided to put this in my Recommended but I’m glad they did, I’d never even heard of the Lindy Hop now I’m learning it and loving it 🥰
You only need 7 or 8 different steps on each musics. You will have very nice dance at your home kitchen , basement or dance floors. I call excellent dance sports. I have been doing ball room dancing for many years. My body weight never went up more than 165 Pounds at age of 90.
I've ALWAYS wanted to learn swing dance, especially the lindy hop. I did your whole video and I learned SO much! Thank you for making it simple enough to follow.🙏 I actually feel like I know how to dance the basics already and get my groove on to my husband's collection of big band and swing music. Can't wait to follow the rest of your series on your website. 🥰
Thanks Lily, that's great to hear! Glad you're interested in more of our courses - and of course the most important part is that you are already getting your groove on to great music. Keep doing that!
16:00 on for a couple minutes: I think you two realize how difficult it is to SEE a weight shift. The skills you are teaching are way more subtle than they might seem. So, since I'm using your video mainly for (self) geriatric exercise, I'm patient & enjoying your teaching tremendously! Nice music, as well!
Glad you liked the video. Don't worry about age -- lots of people start later into adulthood, and at any social dance night you'll see Lindy Hoppers of all ages. Those of us over 40 just need to warm up our knees a little more before we go crazy :)
It is really fun indeed :). You'll find Lindy hop communities, with social dances, in so many places around the world - it tends to be kind of hidden, but Lindy hoppers tend to be very present on the internet so if you do a search in your local area you'll probably find something. And/or: what about just dancing jazz solo? Over at swingstep.tv you'll also find full courses dedicated to dancing without a partner.
Hey Kathrin, the rest of the course is available at swingstep.com. Or you can try the first class of our other beginners course over here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-X-7DN_nHuSg.html&feature=shares
You two are so much fun to watch and learn from! Thank you sooooo much. Thanks so much for the tips both from the leader's and the follower's point of view. They are very helpful. Hugs!
Glad you liked it. If you enjoy it and want to dance more, why not just invite some friends over and start practicing with them? We know some of the most fun Lindy Hop communities in the world started as just a small group of friends learning from videos and dancing together :)
Glad you liked it! Actually I think it's just a tiny window into the wealth of moves, grooves, and modes of expression that are part of this amazing Black american art form :)
When changing up the number of slow steps to the quick one, how does your partner know? I’m really enjoying this! You two are utterly charming. I took up tap at 50. Now this at 70. “Life is a banquet,” ❤️
Hey there, Kris here. Glad you like the lesson :) Check out what Ali is talking about and showing from around 12:37, his posture changes a bit when he's about to do a rock step (i.e. "a quick-quick"). You can see his upper body is going backwards just a little, and then good while body is continuing backwards much more than if he wanted to do another slow forwards. With some practice is possible to follow those signals just visually. But when you're physically connected to a partner it's much easier because they can also*feel* whether you're moving backwards or not. So the leader's job is really just to move into each step with rhythm and intention, and that will provide visible information to the follower and also will create a physical connection that they can react to as well. By the way I just recently started tap dancing at 44 years old and i love it!
Hey! Glad you liked it. We have a few other free videos here on youtube; the full Swing1 course plus many more are available our website - have a look over at swingstep.tv :)
Thanks for that beautiful dance lesson. You are great teacher 👌👍 Your explanations are so helpful, it made a lot of fun to practice this right with your lesson.
The way you introduced getting into step, rhythm and a little bit of the count is the way I do it too and it's extremely good and very effective.... But instead of going round and round and doing some assistant steps (not the basic Lindy Hope step), I go straight for the basic lindy hop step but I do it very very slowly so the student can do it too. I pick up speed with time. I make sure they understand the counting and also count while they're doing the steps. This way if they make a mistake it's very easy for them to autocorrect or for me to correct them because it's easy to know where and when they made the mistake.
We don't like to begin slowly and build up tempo later, because we want people to be able to dance on faster songs as well. Different strokes for different folks ;)
Glad you like it! It's not easy cost swing but rather the first steps of Charleston as part of lindy hop. In the rest of our course over at swingstep.tv we also introduce triple step footwork, while continuing to mix 6-count, 8-count, and other movements into the dance.
Glad you enjoyed it! Take it from someone who has known many many dancers over the years who started with several "left feet," if you stick with it and practice (just a little bit of practice is enough if you do it regularly), you'll grow a right foot in no time ;)
You should wear leather shoes on hard floors. You can spin and slighting “ easier”. Dress up and dance under Blue Moon {NC} in evening. You will love under those musics {NC)
Hi Judy, thanks for your comment. Actually we find that different kinds of shoes can be great for lindy hop. Leather soles as you say are great for more spins and slides, the light running shoes we are wearing are great for absorbing impact and when you want a bit more grip on the floor.
I'm a believer in learning to feel the music. If you learn to swing, you can learn to "swing dance". That's how Frankie Manning would teach in the few lessons I saw him in, as well as other instructors who were good at reaching the "uncoordinated", "klutzy", or "non-musical" students. Feel the music, move to the music. Learn to fit your basic universal moves within the basic style if you want to learn a particular dance.
I agree. It's not only important for reaching "uncoordinated" students, it's important because listening to the music - and having our dancing deeply informed by that listening - is a value of Black culture, which Lindy hop is a part of. You'd get that value reflected in the way Frankie Manning talked, but also other famous elders of the dance like Dawn Hampton (who was practically a preacher of groove as far as I see it), and many more, AND you hear it as a strong value from those dancers and teachers around today who were raised within Black culture. If I were re-filming this class today, that's one of the things I'd like to emphasize more.
Thanks Hanaa, glad you liked it! The rest of this course is available with an Online Pass over at swingstep.com -- you get access to this and many other courses over there. We also have a few more free videos too, have a look: swingstep.com/classes/free-beginner-lindy-hop-series/
Hey Dennis! I am happy that you liked it! There are some more free videos in our youtube channel. But the full course of Swing1, and many other great stuff, is part of our program over at swingstep.tv/.
Glad you liked it! Yes we have some playlists - scroll toward the bottom of this page on our site: swingstep.com/this-is-swing/music/ The "medium" and "fast" lists are best for the material in this lesson.
Great, thanks! What's missing is how to deal with musical phrasing while doing 6-count patterns. In this video, you obviously avoid counting it with numbers ;) Do you have another video that explains?
I'm glad you liked it! In Lindy hop we don't restrict ourselves to 6-count patterns at all, and you can fill a phrase in many many different ways. One very simple example using just the moves from this video is the little combo do at the end of the class; we show it around 1:05:00 - there, Ali is counting the length of the moves, but if you count it through musically, or later watch us doing it to the music, you'll see that it fills a phrase very nicely :)
Amazing and beautiful dance💃🕺👯 video🎥👌 Super like👌👌👌 very interesting and helpful information👍👍👍 provided from start to the end. Thanks for sharing👌 Do keep posting 👌🆕 Warm regards and best wishes The UnknownManCub 👍😎👨🏭
Hi Daniel, thank you so much for your kind comments, glad you found the video useful! There are a few more free videos here on our youtube channel; for more, see our full program over at swingstep.tv/.
Hello Clara! Happy that you like keep dancing with us. Would be nice to see you swingstep.tv/ also in our online live activities, then we can dance together.
Hi there! I would like to play your tutorials for youth at a coffee shop. I’m providing popcorn and water and setting up and I need to charge about 8 dollars in order to cover that cost. Can I purchase your tutorials for use with the youth and families? We have a live band practicing as well and when we have a party or event there will not be tutorials. Just for the weekly practice leading up to the event. Thanks for your help!
We used a few different songs over the course of the lesson, I think in this order: "Boot Heel Drag", Naomi and her Handsome Devils "All of Me", Gordon Webster "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket", Boilermaker Jazz Band "Squatty Roo", Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five "Them There Eyes", Les Haricots Rouges (featuring Benny Waters) If you're wondering about a specific moment of music, give me the time stamp on the video and I can tell you which song that is :)
Hello Gisela, thank you for your feedback :) You can find other lessons on our online learning platform - swingstep.tv Please check the video description for all other details :)
Hi Candy, it sounds like you're talking about doing a 6-count basic starting with the forward movement -- i.e. "slow, slow, quick, quick". In that case, as with many other things in Lindy Hop, this does indeed mean that our moves don't stay neatly inside one bar (i.e. 4 beats) of music. For instance, as the name suggests, a "6-count" will cover one and a half bars. Some of the movements we do in Lindy Hop will keep us "inside the bar structure"; usually with moves that take two bars (for an example, see the so-called 8count basic at 42:19 in the video.). But many of them will not; 6 counts is a very common length of move, but there are others too. One thing that you can typically rely on is that our moves will take an *even* number of beats; so that in partnered moves the next move might start on the 1 of the music, or the 3, but not on the 2 or the 4. (Actually there are exceptions to this, mostly because of solo dance movements that we like to bring in to our partnered Lindy Hop... but let's not get too sidetracked :) ) Anyway, this shifting is not a bad thing! :) It shifts the structures of our dancing in a way that is much more interesting than if we were only "allowed" to dance moves that take exactly one or two bars. It means that different moments in our movement will fall on different parts of the music, and this lets us express ourselves to the music in many more ways than if every move was the same length. For an example of that check out the combo we do at the end of the class -- at 1:08:02 we demonstrate it to music, and as we dance it several times on the music you can see that, although the moves "start" on different counts of the music, the overall sequence fills up one phrase exactly, and we can use a fun element (heel-toes) to accentuate the ending of that phrase. Hope this explanation helps!
Hey Sera! The rest of this course is available on swingstep.tv. We've put a selection of our content up here on youtube, full courses are all on our website.
It is very difficult for me, i am always to slow and feel very unstable. Besides this my knee starts to hurt... are there better exercises for beginners?
Hi there! I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble with the material. I think your feeling of being unstable and your knee pain might be related... I would suggest: instead of looking for other exercises (as far as Lindy Hop goes, this is quite easy-going on the body), you might want to do more warming up before you start dancing; for instance you could try some so-called "dynamic stretches". And in your case I would suggest especially looking for warm-up movements that activate your thigh muscles and other muscles around the knee, so that this joint is more protected while you're dancing. Finally: depending on when you experience knee pain, it could be worth thinking about what you wear on your feet while you dance. If you get pain when turning a lot, try putting on leather-soled shoes that give your foot less resistance when you turn, so that your knee doesn't have to do as much work. Or, if you get pain from bouncing a lot, wear well-padded running shoes that can help absorb your movements more. OK finally finally: if you're in pain when dancing, I recommend going to a professional to get personal feedback and advice. For instance a physiotherapist, or a "gait analysis" appointment, can help with this a lot. P.S. I see your username is german... "gait analysis" is a Laufanalyse :) Good luck!
There's a huge difference between slow slow quick step and ...... triple step triple step rock step !!! The slow slow is actually a very fast triple step triple step !!!! They slow slow is correct but it's actually the exception. The rule is the triple step triple step.. If a student gets used to the exception (slow slow) is if it were the rule, that can cause a lot of problems afterwards.... The rule is what we use. The exception is, well , the exception...
For us it's not the exception, but rather the historical foundation of the dance. If you take a look at early clips like After Seben (1929) you'll see no triple steps. I do however agree that the trigger step of very important and shouldn't be left until too late; in our school we introduce triple steps in a few classes after this more relaxed Charleston introduction.
Hmm, that's a fun idea :). Maybe start with filming yourself dancing swingouts with a partner, so that you can see where your feet tend to land, then put simple stickers on those spots; dance that way a few times, then start playing with adjustments - can you make the spacing of the stickers a bit more even, so that your travel will be even during the swingout, or can you adjust so that your travel will be more up and down a line and not too much "around". Then you can train your footwork with those adjustments. After that though I would also suggest changing it even more and playing with options, to make you more flexible in what you can do during your swingout, to make sure you don't get locked in to only one way of doing it...
@@SwingStepTV Thank you for your reply. Sadly the reason I want one is because no one ever does video from above and I can’t figure out where my feet should go. I have taken group classes but everyone teaches the same , watch me and copy, and a lot of us don’t learn that way!
@@zandra7966 I hear you. Watch-and-copy is one good way to learn dance, and a useful skill to have, but it's definitely not the only way and didn't feel as natural to everyone. We have a course that's mostly dedicated to swingouts over at swingstep.tv. There are definitely "watch-and-copy" moments in that course, but hopefully enough other ways that could work for you :)