Boston Dancing
Ballroom dancing
The MIT ballroom dance company holds regular dances that are open to the public. Here, people dance rumba, foxtrot, Viennese waltz, quickstep, tango, samba, jive, and paso doble, the same way that people dance swing elsewhere. Most of the dancers compete in standard and latin, so the fact that they dance those same dances socially isn’t as much of a surprise.
West Coast Swing
There’s so much WCS in Boston! If I wanted to, I could have gone dancing every single day of the week. However, I only ended up going on Sunday (Jon Shimmel teaching, followed by practice) and Wednesday (full evening of dancing at the restaurant FiRE + iCE near Harvard).
I happened to be in Boston during Swingin’ New England (November 13-16), a yearly dance weekend with lots of workshops and competitions. I attended sessions taught by Stephen and Sonya White, and Patty Vo. And of course I went “ooh!” and “ahh!” over all the invitational Jack & Jill as well as Strictly Swing competitions. Dancing went all night, but I only stayed until around 3am. Here are some clips from the invitational competitions, featuring some of my new favorite dancers.