30 Week Lindy Hop Challenge: Favorite Dancing Memory

Every Friday for thirty weeks, I will write about a topic from the list of the
“30 Week Lindy Hop Challenge“.

Well, it's already Sunday, but here I am with this week's topic:

Week #13: Herräng Changed Everything

As you already know, I attended Herräng Dance Camp in 2000 for the first time.

Before I left for Sweden, everybody who had been to Herräng before was telling how special it will be and that I will get into this special 24h swing mode and that this is a feeling I haven't had before with Lindy Hop dancing.

Well, that set my expectations very high. Too high, I have to say, at least for the first few days when I was at the camp. There was no such feeling at all and I felt lost.

Instead, it was overwhelming. So many options (and I would say nowadays there are even more): daily meeting, evening classes, talks, lectures, parties, etc.

I had the feeling I need to attend all of these, otherwise I would miss something. Overwhelming indeed.

Then, I think it was on Tuesday night, I had this magical experience that changed my dancing and how I looked at it forever.

I was dancing with a friend of mine from Switzerland and it was like having a conversation with each other. She was doing something and I was responding, I was doing a move and she took it and made something out of it.

When you're an advanced dancer, then you think: So what? That's the idea of social dancing.

Right!

But to me, that was completely new.

At that time, I already was dancing for several years, ballroom and all kind of other stuff. And as to me, it was about learning steps and moves and choreographed patterns. No improvisation at all. The music was just decoration.

And here I was as a Lindy Hop newbie (I started 9 months before), under a charm, improvising TO the music and dancing WITH someone.

“Now, I know what dancing is!” That was my conclusion after these extraordinary dances.

Of course, I was looking for this magical feeling again and again and more often than not, it was not there while dancing.

But I had now something to strive for.

There was something else I could take from that experience

You don't have to be a super advanced dancer to have these magical moments while dancing. Just enjoy yourself and don't think too much about your dance level!

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