I had some exposure to swing dancing before high school, when I learned about lindy hop from a video shared with me, and immediately I was thrilled. Who knew you could ice skate without the ice? I knew I wanted to learn how to lindy hop when I started college—what I didn’t know was that you can’t just learn lindy hop; swing dancing by definition means becoming part of the dance community.
Swing and blues dancing are fairly unique in their identification as social dances, creating an atmosphere that forces you to meet new people with every song, if you so choose. When I first entered college, I found it funny how the stereotypes of high school often persisted, leaving students fearful of trying something new without a friend by their side. But when I showed up alone to the first Sunday workshop of the semester (fortuitously a lindy hop series), I found the exact opposite mentality. Every dance epitomized stepping outside your comfort zone—literally by triple-stepping for 2-3 minutes in pretty close contact with, often, a complete stranger.
That kind of environment—one where I eventually became comfortable asking strangers to dance—remains unique in my experience at UConn and in life. It’s the kind of environment that brings together people from various backgrounds for a love of life, a love of dance. And it’s the reason that over a year passed before I realized that some members of the UCSB board held some fairly opposed political views, not because they were apathetic, but because they respected each other in the same way they respected their mutual love of dance.
Perhaps the swing and blues community isn’t a place that’s going to host the kind of challenging discussions we need to be having as a society, but it is a place that reminds us why we need to be having them, and that it is possible to have them. The swing and blues community reminds us that, just like a dance, sometimes we need to listen, sometimes we need to lead, and, always, we need to work together.
Taking a moment to celebrate life isn’t something we do often, and every swing and blues dance is just that—a celebration. But without the whole swing and blues community—that is, any and all lovers of dance—that celebration is missing the colorful and unique experiences that give beauty to life. Denying community interaction not only deprives UConn students of access to the extensive experience necessary to improve their dancing and organizational skills, but it deprives them of a connection to the global society that higher education often claims as its end goal.
This social deprivation is just as true for student organizations other than UCSB. If we are to truly prepare students to participate in the global community effectively, we need policies that reflect a commitment to community engagement. And most importantly, if we are to promote student happiness, then there can only be a loss from minimizing the impact of that happiness, and only a manifold increase in that happiness through inclusion of others, undergraduate or not.
After all, as swing orchestra leader George Gee, whose music and message we recently had to deny public access to, cheers: “Swing makes you happy!” That happiness comes from the people. If you don’t believe us, come dance with us and find some happiness for yourself. You may even make someone else happy in the process.
~ Risa Lewis, UConn Undergraduate