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| how to start lindy in your community |
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America is getting more unhealthy by the minute - and our butts are getting, um, well, we're number one in a lot of things and butts are certainly a category we excell at! Anyone who has been lindy hopping for more than a few months has watched beginners go from "civilian weight" to aerodynamic lindy hopper size (gosh, who knew pounds would drop off if you did the equivalent of running track for 10-12 hours a week?!?). America is also becoming socially inept - TV and video games are creating a generation of bores - the habitat of a dance scene fosters not just rigorous exercize, but sociability (dances are like cocktail parties without the drinks), manners (you have to politely ask her to dance), grooming (people actually shower and wear nice clothes to dances) and nobody does drugs! Wouldn't it be nice to bring swing to your town for one or all of these reasons? some suggestions: - will a local school/church/healthclub/bar allow you to use space for free or cheap? you'll need to teach (or get someone who can) a beginner lesson before the dance starts. you'll also need to play cds on a sound system. click here for a little "swing dance" poster you can print out and fill in (it's a pdf - if clicking on the link doesn't work, try right-clicking and save it to disk). - is there a swing/jazz/rockabilly/50's band that plays one night a week at a local bar? ask the owner if you can teach a 30 or 60 minute beginner lesson before they come on. (we did this by showing up, doing aerials during the band's first song, then approaching the management... lasted 3 years). dress the part (at least wear a swing-themed tshirt), be sociable, dance with beginners as well as your friends who showed up to support you. click here for a little "free lesson" poster you can print out and fill in (it's a pdf). - the following article was written by Todd Schmenk, founder of the York, Pennsylvania York Swing Dance Club (York is a large, but quiet, town in southern Pennsylvanie that really needed a nice swing dance scene so there'd be something worth doing on the weekend - and they got one!). Todd actually got money to start swing dancing in his town from the health department! he's kindly written us an article about why he did it and is working on an article about how he started a dance-as-exercize program in York: An Unusual Partnership Three years ago I had the good fortune of sitting in a meeting at the PA Department of Health. The meeting was held to discuss ideas that could be used to get people moving and for sharing programs that had a proven track record of achieving this goal. At the time I'd been implementing a walking program and had begun to provide a weight-training program, but had discovered that strength training was not for everyone, despite its benefits. I was looking for something in between, something that used body weight for muscle conditioning and motion enough to get the heart pumping at the target heart rate. I had tied local hiking groups, cycling groups, bowling, volleyball, and kayaking groups into the a program called "Be Active York" modeled after a similar North Carolina program. These programs all enjoyed a certain degree of success but were more sports oriented and lacked a social element. It also worried me to offer just these types of "traditional" healthy lifestyles when research was showing that they only appealed to about 30% of the general population. Then I sat through a presentation called the "Step-N-Rhythm" program that was being offered in Philadelphia. The program offered two different activities over a period of twelve weeks. The first activity was identical to the walking program I already had in place. It used pedometers and a track sheet to record activity levels. It offered walks and nutritional presentations, a newsletter and friendly reminders, all of which were present in the York Steps program, but it also offered another mode of activity; dance. Dance was perfect. It was that middle ground between walking and competitive sports. It offered a way to reach and maintain the cardiovascular requirements of 30 minutes a day while providing an excellent activity to help condition and maintain muscular strength and flexibility. It had a social aspect that helped to connect people together and had the power to pull people away from their televisions. It had the potential to reinvigorate the downtown, the area of town that had been built during swing dancing's pinnacle. It was a lifestyle that could easily be adapted to just about anyone's daily routine, but most importantly - it was fun. Fun in that it was not perceived as exercise. Of all the people who went through the original dance program, not one in the post interview had perceived dancing as exercise. After two years, only about 10% of participants refer to the lessons aspect of the program as exercise and "light" at that. Once I sat and listened, it all made sense to me. I had been swing dancing for years by that time and could recall bouncing around on the dance floor for two or three hours, heart pumping, legs pulsing, without a thought of it being hard work or exercise. It had never occurred to me that I could use dance as that middle ground I had been looking for because I myself had not viewed dance as anything more than a fun social event I went to. I definitely never viewed it as exercise. Keep an eye out here for articles and eventually a packet to help you start a dance scene where-ever you happen to live. This scenario above may have happened in Pennsylvania, but there is nothing to stop this from becoming a nationwide phenomenon that can help America return to its roots while reinventing an active healthy lifestyle to combat the ever present obesity epidemic. --Todd J. Schmenk, M.Ed. Todd's credentials: When Todd is not dancing, his "real" job is as a Health Education Specialist for the City of York's Bureau of Health. He is responsible for the health of the community specializing in reducing the risk of heart and bone disease through good nutrition and physical activity. Having certification as a personal weight trainer and fitness instructor, Todd is constantly applying his knowledge of biomechanical coordination and human kinetics to dance. He is co-founder and coordinator for York's Urban Swing Dance Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the swing dances and getting people moving through dance. He is a member of the American Public Health Association, American Women's Medical Association, American Dietetic Association, National Dance and Exercise Trainer Association, International Association for Dance Medicine and Science, and the International Weightlifting Association. He received a Bachelor's Degree from the University of South Carolina and a Master's of Education degree in Community Health from Cleveland State University. |
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