Our journey into West Coast Swing began in the late 1990s through the UCWDC Country Dance community. We competed from Novice through to Professional level in Line Dance and Country Couples, where West Coast Swing was one of the dances included in the overall championship.
Of all the Country Couples dances, West Coast Swing immediately stood out to us. A big part of the attraction was the music, but there was also something about the freedom and personality of the dance that felt different.
Our First Experiences of West Coast Swing
Rob & Michelle Fowler on their way home from the UCWDC World Championships performed a WCS routine at our linedance club in January 1997. Later that year at London Dance Classic in August, we got to see Barry Durand and Lisa West performed their US Open Showcase routine to This Will Be by Natalie Cole.
It was unlike anything we’d seen before. The musical interpretation, partnership and tricks made a huge impression on us as young dancers. Seeing couples dancing at that level — combined with having plenty of other young dancers around us — helped spark our passion for partner dancing.
Watch Barry & Lisa Dancing – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ozFUAMlkY
Learning West Coast Swing Through Competition
When we first started learning West Coast Swing, most of our experience came through routines. We danced with our teachers in Pro-Am competitions and later with our own partners in Open Couples divisions.
At that stage, we didn’t realise there was an entire community dedicated specifically to West Coast Swing, built around lead-and-follow social dancing.
Our early social dancing was largely made up of leadable movements taken from our routines, connected together with the pushes, passes and whips we knew at the time. We were comfortable dancing on beat and could recognise musical breaks, but we had no idea how much further West Coast Swing could take us in terms of connection, improvisation and musicality.
Why West Coast Swing Appealed to Us
After the music, one of the biggest attractions was simply how cool West Coast Swing felt to dance.
It gave us the opportunity to express our own personalities and use the footwork, rhythm and body movement we’d developed through years of solo dancing.
We’d learnt many different partner dances and enjoyed them for different reasons, but West Coast Swing felt particularly relevant to us. We could dance to songs we heard on the radio and artists whose music we already knew.
Line Dance was going through a similar evolution at the time, with both communities increasingly dancing to pop and alternative music alongside traditional Country and Blues. That made West Coast Swing feel contemporary and gave us an immediate connection to the music.
Discovering the West Coast Swing Community
Our first regular trips to the United States were for UCWDC Worlds. That’s where we discovered the late-night “Swing Room”.
Dancers from the Line Dance, Country Couples and Swing communities would all end up there together, dancing West Coast Swing late into the night, usually with the occasional Line Dance or Two-Step thrown into the mix.
Seeing both competitive and social West Coast Swing at Worlds and other US Country Dance events was a huge inspiration.
Back home in the UK, however, opportunities to dance WCS were still limited. We might get to dance West Coast Swing once a month at a weekender, with just a handful of people carving out a slot beside hundreds of Line Dancers.
As a result, rehearsing and competing with our Country Dance routines remained our main focus until around 2005.
Discovering West Coast Swing Events in the USA
A major turning point came when we attended Boogie by the Bay in 2006 and again in 2008.
Seeing so many people gathered together purely to dance West Coast Swing was mind-blowing. We’d entered some regional Jack & Jill competitions before, but attending a major national event that was beginning to attract international dancers was a huge step in our development.
Watching the Classic and Showcase divisions live for the first time is something we’ll never forget. Performances such as Parker Dearborn and Jessica Cox dancing to Red Alert by Basement Jaxx, and Jordan Frisbee and Tatiana Mollmann dancing to Pump It by The Black Eyed Peas, showed us another level of what West Coast Swing could become.
We were also fortunate to watch Strictly Swing divisions filled with many of the established professionals who had helped shape the dance and inspire the generation that followed them.
From Country Dance to West Coast Swing
Looking back, we were experiencing West Coast Swing just as the community was beginning a major period of international growth.
After attending Boogie by the Bay in 2008, we began focusing seriously on our goal of competing in the Classic division at the US Open Swing Dance Championships.
And that’s really where the next chapter of our West Coast Swing story begins.
Start Your Own West Coast Swing Journey
If you’d like to start learning West Coast Swing, you can begin with our free Level 1 course and learn the foundations of the dance at your own pace. Start Learning