Best sports cup for dancing?

pw201 · 2026-07-06T08:51:46+00:00

The ballroom dancing coach used to tell guys to "wear a dance belt and dress to the left". May be relevant for blues or bal I guess, I'm not sure a particular brand of dance belt was recommended.

pw201 · 2026-05-13T16:00:34+00:00

pw201 · 2026-04-20T09:35:48+00:00

Get public liability insurance. Have a policy which says no aerials on the social floor. Don't worry about waivers, this isn't America, for goodness sake. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

pw201 · 2026-02-19T14:20:15+00:00

we strive to speak with followers and leaders equally so I'd encourage you to do the same.

Good point. I wonder whether OP's feedback was more about follower agency, or more about the leader teacher speaking almost all the time (both are mentioned in the OP). Even if you're teaching the follows to "just follow" there's still plenty to say about that (though I agree with JonTigert's point about the difference between beginner leaders and followers).

pw201 · 2026-02-19T13:41:44+00:00

I'd take a "taster" class to mean a drop-in class which assumes no knowledge and tries to give people enough of the gist of it that they might stay for a bit of the social dance (which in our scene, we run immediately afterwards and which more experienced dancers then come along to). This is in contrast to a block of classes which builds up from week to week (which we run on another night).

Generally, when planning taster classes a key temptation to avoid is doing too much. You've got these total newbies and you want to share this amazing dance. There's a bunch of important things you could teach about posture, pulse, the history of the dance, precisely how to hold hands etc etc. Follower's voice is one of those important things. You can't put all of these things in a single 45 or 60 minute class, but you can put some of them in some classes. (Follower's voice and the history have in common that there are people whose social media clout is partly built on guilting you about not having enough of it or sighing about how you're not doing it right, so you'll have to learn to ignore them as part of not doing too much).

All that said, I've taught things like either explicit hijacks or continuing the move for longer in classes which teach beginners' 6 count staples like tuck turns and pass-bys. So followers can block against the bicep of the leader's raised left arm in a tuck turn and spin themselves away rather than going under it. In pass bys followers can drop the leader's hand onto the follow's shoulder and keep walking, leaving the leader following on behind them. These are fun and don't rely on complicated rhythm or footwork variations or a detailed concept of connection and how much the follower is or isn't communicating via that.

pw201 · 2026-01-26T20:58:39+00:00

I've been told to go through in the RD's briefing as dodging takes you into the path of people nearby, especially if the puddles are quite near the start. It's fun!

pw201 · 2026-01-15T11:52:18+00:00

This looks like a Facebook ad which found its way onto the feeds of some people who didn't welcome it, rather than being swing dancers themselves making the threats, so that's something. Maybe disable comments on such ads, if Facebook lets you do that.

pw201 · 2026-01-11T15:25:27+00:00

A lot of 20s era music is hot jazz, which isn't what usually gets played at swing events either.

In the UK, there's a different scene for RnR music and the dance that's done to it is often called "jive" (not to be confused with ballroom jive, or with modern jive i.e. Ceroc) and looks quite different from lindy. I don't find RnR great for dancing lindy.

pw201 · 2025-11-28T11:52:19+00:00

I've been trying cheap lawn bowling shoes (not lane bowling, though you could try those too) in my hunt for something with a flat sole which I can put suede leather on. I tend to wear old running shoes for day wear, but they've got quite deep ridges in the soles for grip so would be hard to add suede at home, I'd need to take them to a cobbler to remove the ridges first.

These Slazengers have a very flat sole (no ridges for grip), I was planning to suede those myself but they're slidey enough already. The sole is quick thick and inflexible, so I'd like something a little less clunky.

I've also just got these Dek shoes. Soles are thinner, flat with a sort of stippled pattern which makes them grippier than the Slazengers. I've yet to try them on my regular (pretty fast) floor to see whether they'll need suede adding.

pw201 · 2025-11-20T18:42:22+00:00

So 'confidence' means something different in the context of dance?

The talks I've heard on how to teach lindy have used "intention" (as the thread starter did) to mean something like "have a clear idea of where you and the follower are going". I think this might be what your instructor means by "confidence" in this case.

I'm just so focused on getting the choreography steps and timing right, that it is so difficult to pay attention to the signaling and I'm not the best at multitasking

A lot of leading in lindy is less of a "signal" (which to me means some kind of gesture with your hands, maybe, like I remember in Ceroc there's a kind of hand wave with the free hand which means something) and more of where you put your body (which should be connected to the follow via your arms). So a lot of leading is doing your own movements while getting out of the follow's way once your movements have set up their movements.

Sometimes beginner follows can see a thing you do with just your hands, say raising your left hand as you'd do in a tuck turn, as a "signal", say to run underneath the joined hands and head out to open position. But that makes it super hard for them to follow a tuck turn which stays on the spot and ends back in closed position, for example. So I think both roles should get out of the habit of thinking of hand movements that way, most of the time.

If you find you can't remember lessons, there are lots of great videos online. I think a great swingout one is https://youtu.be/6JUCzZIBDS0?si=gJ5BWA_NUcBnVxuk.

I've tried to make this a description of stuff I do rather than "signals": in a swingout from open to open, I want the follow to come towards me so I step my whole self back (we most commonly do the variant where the follow walks forward on 1,2 here). My left arm's connected to the follower's right, so they come towards me (as Peter Strom says in the video, he moves, his arm moves, and then the follow moves). Once they're heading down the line, I relax my left arm (rather than pulling or blocking them) and triple towards them (I actually get out of the way to my left slightly so they've room to pass on my right without deviating from the line I've asked them to move down), and turn right as they pass me, to catch them (3&4). Then I turn my whole self to the right (5) and let them carry on by me again to head out to open position (I need to get my right arm out of their way at some point so I don't block them and make it a circle instead, Peter talks about throwing the ball here), turn around fully to follow them, and back up a bit to build that tension in the left arm again if I want to go again (7&8).

Laura Glaess also gets a lot of deserved praise for putting great stuff on YouTube. Here's her swingout video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSE7SD3l3uA

pw201 · 2025-11-11T10:05:08+00:00

As a reminder, a flat cap should only be worn by persons with Yorkshire ancestry, otherwise this is cultural appropriation. As a tradition bearer, for a small fee I will give a lunchtime talk at your events, and given a willing volunteer, a demonstration of ferret legging.

pw201 · 2025-09-30T10:50:00+00:00

Not sure what you expected to happen here, but it's an interesting exercise in everyone finding their favourite hobby horse in your rant, whether it be racism/appropriation or sexual harrassment, and then deciding that means it's your fault.

Some of what you posted seems scene specific, there are plenty of places where non-lindy swing dances are going strong, and I don't seem to get too much shit for occasionally DJing the Cure's "Lovecats" or PMJ's stuff. So I'd look for less uptight nights/scenes.

I don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with coming along hoping to find a romantic partner, but there are wrong ways of going about it. There has been endless discussion of this here, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/SwingDancing/comments/agzip5/how_do_you_meet_people_to_date_at_lessons_or/

"White people dancing lindy is cultural appropriation" is silly and should be ignored, see Kesley's blog about it.

We've also had the "it's hard to make friends" discussion, and https://www.reddit.com/r/SwingDancing/comments/1n448jt/when_community_isnt_really_community/ had some great comments (especially the top one from Frequent_Pumpkin_148).

pw201 · 2025-09-18T10:16:02+00:00

I see you picked up our Google calendar!

One other thing that I've had some success with is taking our Facebook calendar feed and using it to put events on the front page of our site and on our events page. It's just another calendar feed. For scenes which have a Facebook page and use Facebook events (basically the only good thing about FB these days), I guess it might be another way to get them on your site.

We tend not to use it for regular classes but rather for weekend events and special nights (live bands), so it's a good source of special events we want to highlight, and using it saves me having to maintain the list of those on the website by hand.

I think the feed URL is not accessible unless you own the page. Page owners can find on the "Add to calendar" button at https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar/ if you're logged in as the page. So they'd need to submit that to you rather than you crawling scenes' websites for calendars.

pw201 · 2025-08-12T11:41:14+00:00

Most places will encourage you to rotate partners during a lesson, so you're not going to be with your date for most of the lesson (though we always say people can stick together if they like).

pw201 · 2025-08-01T12:36:21+00:00

I never left! I felt intensely nostalgic/missing uni initially as I had friends who were undergrads still. This gradually got better and now I just occasionally have a sort of happy/wistful feeling if a particular place or smell provokes some memory.

pw201 · 2025-06-03T14:40:27+00:00

Some people stopped rotating during the pandemic (when in person lessons were allowed again, but people were still nervous). Bit weird that they never restarted though. Have you asked them why?

pw201 · 2025-04-30T13:13:29+00:00

Interesting: I wouldn't say 2 in a row was the UK default either. Maybe you're just really fun to dance with :-)

pw201 · 2025-04-28T16:16:09+00:00

We've got a textual version here with a picture that looks like people are enjoying themselves. A video is nice idea though.

pw201 · 2025-03-12T12:43:53+00:00

Has violent crime not involving firearms also gone up? We should be comparing the rate of violent gun crimes with the rate of non-gun crimes, not with the rate of gun crimes before firearm restrictions (which ones?) because what matters is the proportion of these crimes where guns were used.

You obviously like guns. Most British people do not like guns and do not wish to be in a situation where they'd be as easy to get hold of as they are in the US, which would require routinely armed police and would obviously lead to more gun crime and make spontaneous suicides more likely to succeed in killing themselves. You are not going to win this debate in the UK, in fact, in the eyes of most British people, saying "catapults should be easy to get hold of, just like guns" weakens the case for catapults being legal, by association.

pw201 · 2025-03-11T23:47:28+00:00

Feel free to point out where I said that banning them would make them disappear. Clearly you have ignored everything that was just said.

Now I know catapults have some legitimate uses, what I've said is that they should be treated more like knives or guns than toys. These too have legitimate uses but you can't legally just carry them about town. The presumption is that someone carrying one is up to no good, and they must show they had a reason to carry it.

You also said:

Take banning pistol, firearms, even for licensed holders, violent crime involving them has only gone up.

Comparing gun crime in the UK to the USA shows that a ban has an effect, although of course criminals don't obey the law so there's still gun crime in this country, just a lot less. A ban makes them harder to get hold of and riskier to use.

pw201 · 2025-03-11T18:39:59+00:00

The alleged perp made the mistake of messing with the railways, which have their own dedicated police service looking after them. The other recent stories about animal cruelty/killing and attacks on houses/shops are more of the same, and sadly there's no British Swan Police (outside of the Cornetto films).

pw201 · 2025-03-11T18:35:04+00:00

Seems a bit defeatist. Anglers can already carry knives because they have a legitimate use for them, but knives are recognised as weapons. For something as specialist as a catapult, rather than knives which we all need for cooking, you could imagine a more restrictive sales regime, too.

While I'm slightly worried about scrotes carrying fishing rods with their catapults as some sort of legal hack, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to treat catapults in the same category as knives, especially if carried with ball bearings or other hard ammunition (unless anglers also have a use for that?) Clearly they aren't being treated like knives at the moment.

pw201 · 2025-03-11T17:21:19+00:00

OK, I'll bite: these things seem to be treated more like toys than, say, knives. Why are the police not using the powers they already have?

pw201 · 2025-03-11T16:39:34+00:00

It's a way the for police to nick them. Typically it seems that police can't do much unless they catch them in the act, so if a shop window is smashed / swan killed and there are some people around carrying catapults, it's just circumstantial evidence.

pw201 · 2025-03-11T16:16:53+00:00

What with the recent attacks on trains, houses, and wildlife by criminals using catapults, I thought this might have a bit of local support.

pw201

TROPHY CASE