Where: Salongen

Start date: 2026-09-24

End date: 2026-09-24

Starts in: 36 days

Registration opens: 2026-08-01 18:00 CEST

Registration closes: 2026-09-24 12:00 CEST

Join us! Discover and develop skills that are necessary to understand and utilize the call & response nature of West Coast Swing. Many people find themselves enjoying this dance as a form of communication and expression. It has been described as a type of conversation between yourself, your partner, the music, and sometimes an audience. So how do you take the steps, patterns, and movement that you know into an improvised and authentic conversation? How do you learn and practice the “call and response” nature dance? In this 3-hour intensive, we will explore the skills that allow your dancing-dialogue to become more alive, clear, and inspiring. We will expand on how to connect, express, and interact with yourself, the music, and your partner in order to experience a continuous exchange of ideas, energy, and musical responses. First, as with many things, it starts with you. This intensive will start with a guided exploration of your own body, movement qualities, and ways of expression. Growing your own self-awareness and solo movement abilities allows you to be more sensitive to your partner and bring more to the conversation. Second, we will bring in the partner, expanding our capacity to interact with a partner. This includes learning how to initiate, listen, and respond to the conversation. And third, now that we have expanded our own movement repertoire and have slowed down enough to practice sharing ideas, you will be guided through how this “call and response” becomes “inspire and create.” Instead of reflecting our partner’s ideas, we can start building upon them, resulting in something created together. Here we will spend some time focused on west coast swing’s specific use of connection from the floor, through our spines and frames and into the partnership. No solo experience required. Open to all levels, all ages, all bodies, and all levels of courage. Come as you are — and explore what becomes possible when movement turns into conversation.